Pedestal Mounted Vise

Do any of you guys use a vise on a pedestal?

For my uses I would NOT want to bolt it down in one place so I'd have to make it pretty heavy. A few hundred pounds doesn't bother me to much. My concrete filled pickup wheel pedestal for my bench grinders has been working out quite nicely, but it might be a bit light for a vise.

I am also NOT thinking about a post vise, but rather a bench vise bolted to a platform on a pedestal.

Yes, I am thinking about the vise on a hitch mount with a tube under the work bench too. It would work ok on my butcher block work bench, but on the steel top bench the C-channel supporting the top would make it problematic.

Waaaadaaaayaaathink?

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I'd look into the suitability of a pipe vise tripod stand. Threading and unscrewing pipe are the most demanding jobs I use my bench vise for.

-jsw

Jim, My dad has a chain style pipe vise on a tripod (sorta) and its actual ly quite light. I can pick it up and set it in pickup bed quite easily. The third leg is on the end of a 6 foot back with a V on top and the third leg on the bottom. I think its made out of 2" conduit. Its probably close to 40 years old.

to a platform on a pedestal.

I have two vises in the basement. One is bench mounted and it is the one I use most of the time. The other vise is bolted to a pedestal and the pede stal can be bolted to the floor. But most of the time the pedestal is not bolted to the floor. I also have a HF bender that can be mounted to the sa me inserts in the basement floor as well as a few other things such as a pi pe vise. Well actually the pipe vise mounts to the same pedestal as the vi se mounts to.

Dan

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I did my industrial pipe fitting by brazing so I haven't personally used a tripod-mounted pipe vise. It looks like you can stand on the bent-out foot of the near side leg and apply all your strength to turn a threading die handle.

I temporarily clamped a chain vise to my 400 Lb utility trailer to thread 2" pipe and nearly flipped the trailer.

A hitch-mounted vise on my pickup was less handy than I expected because the tail lights are too vulnerable to accidents. When I need to clamp something large outdoors I attach a blacksmith leg vise to a corner of a rollaround or welding table.

I've never built anything that needed a completely free-standing vise; usually I'd rather have it next to a flat surface that supports the work while I'm tightening the jaw.

-jsw

I do. It is a part of my blacksmith shop on a steel plate.

i

I have two vises in the basement. One is bench mounted and it is the one I use most of the time. The other vise is bolted to a pedestal and the pedestal can be bolted to the floor. But most of the time the pedestal is not bolted to the floor. I also have a HF bender that can be mounted to the same inserts in the basement floor as well as a few other things such as a pipe vise. Well actually the pipe vise mounts to the same pedestal as the vise mounts to.

Dan

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Instead of drilling the concrete for a permanent pedestal I mounted my HF bender on a rolling table with sockets to insert a long pipe handle to pull against. The long end of the piece being bent can remain supported while the whole bender swivels.

The table top is drilled to mount several sheet metal bench tools, and inverts on trunnions to bring up a corner notcher.

-jsw

My vise is a 5" Wilton machinist vise on a pedestal bolted to the floor. The wheeled welding table / work bench is next to it most of the time. The pedestal is 6" square tube. I like the setup. Nice and stiff, good for filing, holding rifles for cleaning, and pretty much anything I need a vise for.

Pete Keillor

You misinterpreted what I did. The pedestal is not permanent. In fact the inserts in the concrete floor are deliberately placed in a area I walk thru. This ensures there is always a clear area around where the pedestal can be bolted to the floor.

Dan

Yeah, I remember the pics of that big boy. Bob wouldn't be moving that around too much without a forklift. LOL

I second the suggestion of a tripod pipe vise. I spent most of last weekend cutting and threading pipe, and the Ridgid vise I rented was worth every penny. Solid as a rock, and folds up relatively small.

I considered doing that at one time, but I felt that too many of my machines were either too heavy or too tall for a flip mounting. This setup seems to challenge that thought, though.

5000 Lb. Capacity Step Bumper Receiver I'm starting to look that direction, too, but have been considering mounting my HF receiver hitch mount on the assembly table. I like the concept of mounting the bench bender rotated 90-degrees on the end of the table and using the tabletop as a brace while doing bends on the end of long stock. It'd really help maintain bend accuracy.

The receiver might be the way to go with my 12" tabletop style wood planer, as well. I mounted my little 1.75T winch on a receiver tube and it works well on the truck.

I wonder who has the best price on 2" x .068" square tube.

Back to Bob's request. I tend to get rambunctious with things mounted in my vise, so I much prefer a solid bench mounting. Ridgid's tripod setup seems to have the feet you could stand on, but it's lightweight and portable. You referred Bob to a tripod mount, like this?

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I was unclear, I meant that the floor inserts would be permanent. What do you plug them with?

-jsw

You can't have too many vises, that's what I think :)

I've got a 60lb 5 inch on a two wheel plus one leg stand and another one mounted to a custom 2 inch receiver. I made the latter so I could take/have a nice vise with me at the old heated shop where I worked on weekends. My truck had 10,000 lb hitches on both the front and rear it could slip into. The shop vise at work was utter rubbish!

Another 5 inch and a 3 inch bolted to seldom used benches.

A 3.5 inch mounted to my small movable welding stand. That turned out really nice. Dad scrounged it years ago and we added to it. Originally a car rim on the bottom, around 4x4 inch tube with a 9/16 narrow rectangular plate on top. Dad had me weld three angle iron legs to the rim so it wouldn't be all tipsy. I drilled half a dozen holes through the top for bolt mount vise grips when I added the vise. Works really nice for holding small things for welding and grinding.

The big 60lb vise is mounted to around a 3 ft x 10 in x 1 in plate on top of two heavy pipe posts at either end. The vise end has maybe 2.5 ft channel iron at the bottom with wheels on either end. The other pipe is just welded to a plate at the bottom. Another channel iron spreader goes between the two posts at the bottom. It is quite stable, yet easy to move around.

I have a few other small, special purpose vises around too :)

I mounted the corner notcher opposite an HF bender or Enco 8" shear, and a small table saw opposite a belt/disk sander. Both sides are similar enough in size and weight. I have to plan to complete all the work with one machine before changing to another, but I grew up using a Shopsmith and have a 1" belt sander for deburring sharp edges between operations.

I didn't combine one wood with one metal working machine because the saw and sander share a motor and outboard supports, and the sheet metal machines all need the long pipe handle to pull against. Also I push fairly lightly to feed into the saw and need it stationary, off the wheels, while I pull hard on the sheet metal machine handles and would rather they roll than tip over.

My jointer and 10" wood planer remain separate, mostly because their outboard supports are tedious to align for 8' and 12' planks from my sawmill. The planer stores under the jointer.

-jsw

I have five vices -- bench, 2 leg, pattern maker's, cabinet maker's -- permanently mounted on benches.

The 8" leg vice is firmly bolted, via the usual band & wedge device, to a piece of heavy-wall 4x4 HSS. The HSS post and the foot of the vice stand in sockets welded to the center of a 4'x4' piece of 1/4" plate.

The vice, even without the attached post, is too heavy for me to lift, as is the plate. But it's easy to pick up first the vice and then the plate with a garden variety rolling engine hoist and prop them in a corner when the space but not the vice is needed.

The plate and socket are heavy/sturdy enough that hammering, twisting and wrenching don't move the vice.

How does a leg vise compare to a machinist's vise for clamping objects with parallel surfaces such as pipe fittings?

The leg vise I found seems more suited to holding manually ground weldments than machined parts since the jaws are never really parallel. I don't do a significant amount of forging or hot bending because I don't have a good safe place for the fire, or the artistic talent for ornamental iron work. 1/2" and 3/4" conduit benders are enough for most of the bending I do for structural parts like solar panel supports.

This works well for bending angle brackets:

I don't have a bench strong and heavy enough for it so I clamp it to a log splitter I beam.

-jsw

The inserts are for 3/4 inch bolts. I do not plug them with anything. They do not seem to fill up with trash, but should be able to be cleared with a shop vac

Dan

You must be married. Here they would be full in less than a month. Even faster if I walked by them regularly ;-)

I should take some pictures of my setups but it would be a job in itself to clear and or move them to a suitable spot. I think "clutter" should have been my middle name...

Ooh, got an EMMERT turtleback type 4 patternmakers vise? (gains reverent look)

8" leg? That's a huge vise.

Do you roll the cherry picker over the plate, then lift 2" off the ground under the legs, to move it? That's a heavy chunk of iron!

I'll bet. Pretty cool. In a hurricane, it'd surely hold the house down, keeping it from blowing away.