Nothing Special For You Guys, but it is metalworking

Now I want to make a set for my screwless vise . It's not as big as yours ... I considered thinning the noses of a couple of my clamp bars but this is much more elegant . Gotta finish the gas check punch set first . Started one of mild steel but decided to use O1 instead . Because I remembered I have some .

I have a bunch of those imports screwless vises. I kind of think of them as consumables, but they do cost a lot more than they used to.

Mine's a shop made 2 1/2" made from mystery steel . Realized when I was about 75% complete the plans called for aluminum .

You have a better vise. I do actually have one aluminum vise, but in my opinion is an average home owner vise only slightly better than a novelty. Its convertable for a whole bunch of uses, but its not the "best" vise for the job for any of them. It can even be turned into a drill press using a hand held drill with the round boss for a side handle. I keep it mounted up because it its soft aluminum, and for really soft stuff it came with clip on plastic prismatic jaws. Its got a lot of cool features, but I don;t use it very often except if I need a vise right now and I happen to be standing right in front of it.

Steel or decent cast iron is a better structure for a vise.

I only make my multiple part fixture plates out of aluminum because fast and aluminum is (generally) cheaper than steel.

I've been playing with some ideas for universal high density fixture plates for a while now. If I ever get my head around all the accessory parts I'll probably make a half dozen of them tailored for each mill in the shop.

Mine's a shop made 2 1/2" made from mystery steel . Realized when I was about 75% complete the plans called for aluminum .

-- Snag

------------------------------------- I have a very old horizontal bench milling machine with a lever feed for low volume production. It came with a pile of custom aluminum jaw inserts for the steel vise. That might be the best combination of metals. I leave copper covers on my bench vise jaws most of the time.

I have an old Columbia or Columbian bench vise that came with a heavy steel work bench. The guy who gave it to me long ago showed me some of the best soft jaws for it was either plywood or MDF cut the width of the jaws with with a notch cut to fit the square lower of the front jaw. Drop on and take off in a second. For parts sensitive to marring, have one set of MDF drop ins with leather glued inside.

I tried the same thing with my Harbor Freight bench vise with the swivel head. They they tend to swivel around the round part, and even if they don't when you turn the head over they fall off. LOL. I use the Columbian (just looked) preferentially.

Oddly it has smooth steel flat jaws, that I can't see how they are attached. I never looked until just now, but I don't see any screws. There is a tight closed seam between the steel jaws and the cast body.

FYI: I have some smaller vises (probably sell or give away) leftover from my dad's hardware store. One says Columbia and the other says Columbian.

I have an old Columbia or Columbian bench vise that came with a heavy steel work bench. The guy who gave it to me long ago showed me some of the best soft jaws for it was either plywood or MDF cut the width of the jaws with with a notch cut to fit the square lower of the front jaw. Drop on and take off in a second. For parts sensitive to marring, have one set of MDF drop ins with leather glued inside.

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Cutoffs of oak hold up pretty well as jaw pads or rough parallels for milling and especially drilling. I tested a piece to 2000 PSI across the grain with only slight deformation, mostly erasing the saw marks, to qualify my shed rafter design for metal joist hangers. You may accumulate scrap aluminum the way I do scrap oak.

The worst job I give soft jaws is clamping pipe fittings and the threads of stubborn bolts etc.

When the neighbor who installed kitchen cabinets cleaned out his work truck in addition to oak I also acquired countertop scrap which made good milling vise jaw padding. The dull circular saw blades can be annealed, cut, worked, and rehardened enough to cut glass before tempering.

If he has Corian scraps it machines nicely and is pretty tough plastic/resin. Years ago one of the Ukrainan mold makers started out learning on the CamBam forums. He started out with drops, cutouts, and off cuts of the Russian version of Corian. I seem to recall his day job back then was in a cabinet shop. The exact details are hazy.

Around here the scraps, off cuts, and cutouts I find are all Marble, quartz, or other stone. I have a couple pieces I picked up at illegal dump sites that I use for gluing down sand paper to "flatten" rough work. I prefer not to put sandpaper on my surface plate unless absolutely necessary.

Here is that weird aluminum vise I was talking about.

There is a lot in that picture.

The DeWalt radio is bluetooth linked to the cell phone in the vise. Yeah, I use the vise as a "camera" mount sometimes when I am working on that bench.

To the left are the old vise hold downs for that screwless vise. I used them for a number of years. Still have a couple more screwless vises using those old pin bridge mounts I want to eliminate.

Oh, that reminds me. I knocked off that blue tap and die case. I need to go pick them all up and put them back in the case. Low grade Lowes/Kobalt stuff, but its the set I toss in the truck when I go to somebody else's place to help them out.

Right now I am testing out the radio to see how long it will play on a

Oops. Forgot the image link.

Pushing 6 hours and its still showing full charge on the battery indicator lights. Sure beats the heck out of my ghetto blaster form high school that used a small fortune in disposable D-cells.

I switched off the streaming and went to local radio. It was killing my cell phone battery.

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That video ate 1/5th of my daily data ration in a few seconds.

I have one of thos zyliss vises too. as a portable vise.

Its only a 2 minute video. The first few seconds are a static image.

I also put it on YouTube.

\\ You should expect over 40 hours for sure. Likely well over 100 at low volume. Less than1/2 watts power. You have 60 watt hours available. At full volime of about 2-5 watts you should still see over 24 hours

Getting close to 7.5 hours now. The first few hours were kind of a chore to hear. It sounded really flat. When I turned up the base and the treble it started to sound decent. Not a lot of EQ adjustment on this thing, but there is enough to make it tolerable.

Been busy all day in the shop, so its just been back ground noise.