Experimental Vise
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- This topic has 13 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated 03/23/2015 at 2:27 pm by
Bill Kirkley.
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03/22/2015 at 12:32 am #24569
I was looking for a way to make a cheap and easy to make stainless vise. The one pictured below cost $6.00 (at my local Metal Supermarket) for 14 inches of 1X1/4 flat bar. I had a tap but if you were to buy one, I would recommend the Cleveland brand that can be found on MSCdirect.com. It is a little more expensive but a good sharp tap makes a world of difference. You also need to get a # 7 bit. I forgot but you guys will need to get a 10-32 tap and drill for the base. You will also need a countersink. That almost necessitates a drill press to do it right.
To make this you have to be able to weld stainless or know someone who can. You need to be able to drill and tap a straight hole, a drill press is probably needed. You will need to be able to cut the pieces. An abrasive disk will work but you need to go slow and you need to be square. You also need to be able to grind or file (ugh) a bevel on the tip as well as grind the base to length.
A 1 inch bar is often slightly less than 1 inch. So you need to cut off a piece about 1/32 larger than 1 inch and carefully grind it so it just fits in the blue WE base slot. You also need to accurately drill and tap the 10-32 hole in the 1X1 base piece.
It performed pretty well but did bend a little at the tip. I cranked down really hard to bend it. I don’t think the small bend makes much difference. I ground the tip to about 1/32. A little thicker might prevent the bending. It was surprisingly rigid. I could not deflect it pushing on it.
The knife can be rotated in the vise but did not seem to do so while using the stones. I think this is hot rolled stainless. The face was not perfectly flat. grinding it flat may also help with the rotation. Cold rolled stainless would likely be much smoother but will cost more.
I did not pay attention to the rotation of the base when I welded it so as you can see in the last photo it is off. I clamped the two pieces to a piece of angle iron to get a perpendicular face to base.
I ground a roughly 45 degree angle on the bottom of the vise piece that was to be welded to the base so the weld penetrated all the way through. I only welded on one side. The side away from the flat of the base to protect the threaded hole.
This is something some of you may want to play with. I am a beginner sharpener and it may not preform good enough. You may choose to try it on mild steel first.
03/22/2015 at 3:37 am #24571This reminds me of something I ran across about a year ago or so. And it’s actually one of the better and more aesthetically sound homemade WEPS I’ve seen.
Excellent job on all your recent tinkering by the way! Awesome stuff :cheer:
~Steven
03/22/2015 at 4:50 am #24572That’s a nice design! His vise is virtually identical to mine. The nice thing about his is the use of angle iron for the base so no welding is needed. He also used two top screws I presume to control rotation of the free vise half. I think he used a wider piece of flat bar which would give a better grip and diminish the tendency for rotation in the vise.
03/22/2015 at 7:22 am #24577Aloha Bill, this is a mockup I did. Keep in mind I have no experience building with metal and am very envious of your skills & equipment.
The concept was solid, just not finished. That and the tension screw being offset to each side causes the clamps to twist. It was designed to insert into existing vice.
With a belt sander on the way and recommendations for you on steel, I will probably attempt a redo… Thanks for all the cool stuff you’re posting!
03/22/2015 at 3:50 pm #24597Cliff, I like that double plate idea. I think you can simplify it and only have to drill one hole in the two side plates. The bottom center plate will need to be the same thickness or slightly thicker than the blade. You can shim it with paper or something to get it right. The down side of the design is it will take some fiddling to hook it all up.
You can grind your bolt head and nut thinner do you can get a lower angle. You are going to love your grinder!
We had a vacation in Hawaii over 30 years ago. It is an amazing place! Maui was our favorite! We loved the “Road to Hana”. Someone tried to sell us some pacalolo!
Attachments:03/23/2015 at 12:11 am #24619I made the vise I pictured in my last post and it works great! It has a tight grip and very good resistance of the blade to rotation. I think the key to that is the fact that it is 1 1/2 inches wide.
It is made from 1 1/2 inch wide by 1/8 inch thick cold roll mild steel flat bar. I cut 3 pieces 2 inches long and drilled a 17/64 hole in two of them.
I beveled the end of the two vise halves, and ground the bolt and nut by clamping it in one of the vise halves and another piece 1/4 inch thick. I think if you are going to do this you will need several lengths of screw and thicknesses for the bottom piece to accommodate different blade thicknesses.
I think if I ground the bolt and nut a little thinner, and tapered the end of the vise more acute angle, I could have gotten a lower angle.
03/23/2015 at 12:37 am #24623Wow Bill, so with the right tools you were able to make something similar to what took me painful hours with a jig saw and a hand drill…right tools for the job and all that I guess. 🙂
I like the simplicity of your interpretation. The idea behind mine was a completely adjustable clamp for FFG blades where you could adjust each side clamp independently too.
One of the things I see by looking at your earlier fab work is to drop the adjustment screw down lower to completely get it out of way as much as possible.
On my next attempt I think Ill go with a wider clamp surface like you’ve suggested, possibly a side by side double screw at the pivot…and then have an adjustment screw on each side, but this time staggered vertical
I need a better way then a hand held jig saw to cut steel like this for sure…
03/23/2015 at 12:53 am #24624Seems to me that you’d get more clamping force if the screw was farther away from the lower plate. More clamping force would mean less torque needed on the head of your hex-bolt. Cutting the height of the head of the hex-bolt lessens the strength of the bolt quite a bit. Maybe you might want to switch to a 1/4-20 button-head cap screw. I know you probably don’t have access to the tools, but if you could counter-bore both sides about 1/8″ deep and 3/4″ diameter, you could use sockets and not grind of the head of the bolt or the nut. The steel is strong enough that it wouldn’t pull through.
Another idea might be to make the lower plate (the one clamped in the vise) changeable, according to the thickness of the spine of the blade.
I guess I’m not understanding why you didn’t make one side of your clamp and the lower plate out of one piece. And why did you abandon the jack screw? It’s the leverage advantage of the jack screw that produces the high clamping force.
03/23/2015 at 2:51 am #24628Cliff, Yes, your idea is definitely better for FFG blades. I am fortunate to have the tools I have, it makes things easy. If you are making short cuts a hand held hack saw would likely be easier than a jig saw.
TCMeyer. The reason I went to a single screw was to get away from having to tap the hole. A lot of people don’t have the tools to tap a hole and those that do sometimes find it difficult to get a perpendicular thread. The lower plate has the same function as the jack screw so the clamping force is the same.
The plate is 1/8 inch thick so I don’t think counter boring is an option.
The lower plate is changeable. I agree, it would be best to have a plate for each spine thickness or maybe 2 or three pieces of paper thicker to counter any flex in the plates when you tighten the bolt. You would also need various screw lengths.
You are right about the position of the lower plate, the farther away from the screw the better the clamping force. Since the lower plate is a separate piece, you can position it as close or far away from the screw as needed. That said, where I put it resulted in a very tight clamp.
As for weakening the bolts by grinding the heads, I don’t think the torque I placed on them will cause failure but if they fail, they are cheap to replace. A button screw would work but you still have the nut to contend with on the opposite side so I went with a bolt that is easy to find.
The whole idea behind this design was to come up with something anyone with a hack saw and drill could make without much trouble.
03/23/2015 at 5:55 am #24636Cliff, I was looking at your vise and I think you have the jack screws tapped in the center part of the vise. I think if you tap each vise half you can have both jack screws centered and opposite each other.
Attachments:03/23/2015 at 6:19 am #24637Cliff, I was looking at your vise and I think you have the jack screws tapped in the center part of the vise. I think if you tap each vise half you can have both jack screws centered and opposite each other.
Now see there is a much simplier solution then I had even considered!
I had the jack screw pushing thru to leverage the opposite side and to get it down more flush in the side profile, but I bet it wouldn’t matter that much for day to day sharpening above 10 degrees for most stuff…especially if the “clamping flaps” were a bit longer on the bottom. …exactly more like what you have originally posted above but with a longer clamp on each side of a thinner center. Having 2 jack screws pushing equally but on opposite of same spot would seem to be beneficial also…
I may have to try sourcing a bit of stainless here locally. Thanks for taking a closer interest and sharing your insights, really appreciate it! B)
Aloha, Cliff
03/23/2015 at 6:35 am #24638Cliff. I would go with mild steel to start with. Stainless is a bear to work with. You will likely find mild steel is more than adequate.
03/23/2015 at 10:39 am #24639Bill: I understand your intents. I was in error guessing that the steel was 1/4″ and that you had a tap.
But you are wrong about the screw producing the same clamping force as a jack screw. In your design, the clamping force produced by the screw is divided between the knife spine and the lower block. Consider that if the screw produces 100 lbs of tensile force, the points of contact only need a 50 lb average to counteract the 100 lbs.
I certainly won’t dispute the fact that you’re getting adequate clamping power, but I believe it’s coming from the width advantage of your jaws, not from the screw. Consider this: If the vise were only 1/4″ wide, it wouldn’t take much force to rotate the blade (move the handle up and down), even with a very high clamping force. The wider the jaws, the more lever advantage there is to oppose such a force.The WE design is a compromise, offered to accommodate the widest range of blade designs. Simple test: clamp a piece of some material is each vise (WE design and your single-screw design) and compare the crushing damage after applying about the same amount of torque to the screw. I was thinking maybe one square inch of aluminum foil folded about 5-10 times. I don’t recall what the figures are, but the force applied by the jack screw on the WE vise is multiplied by 3 or 4 times any force you could apply with the upper screw. Simple lever advantage. The upper screw is the fulcrum and the distance from the fulcrum to the jack screw is divided by the distance from the fulcrum to the pinch point. The ratio is the force multiplier. With the single-screw design, the ratio for the clamping force is divided.
03/23/2015 at 2:27 pm #24642TCMeyer. Yes, you are right, the leverage analogy convinced me.
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