Upgrade Vise Prototype TEST REPORT

[Josh]

Thanks a lot Josh! It’s a great video as ever. And it gives a very good picture of the new vise, including strengths and weaknesses. I love the ingenious way in which the lever works.

I was wondering whether taping knives like the dagger or the thin knife you showed with foam tape or something similar would make straight clamping easier.

Yes Mark, it would probably help. The dagger in the video was having issues in either vise =)

[Bill Kirkley]

Great video Josh!

There is no doubt it is a cool well made and well thought out devise. Being a lover of all things mechanical I think it is really cool.

Trying to be objective I was considering the pros and cons of this over the Gen 2 devise.

For this devise the obvious plus is ease of clamping. People have talked about it being self centering. Has that been tested?

You can test this by clamping a blade and attaching the cube to the blade and zero the cube. Then unclamp and re-clamp it to see if it remains zero. When this is done care should NOT be taken to position it vertical while clamping.

The plus side of the Gen 2 is that it can clamp a thicker blade. It can also be adjusted, tinkering with the top and bottom screws, to clamp the blade with no gaps between the blade and vise jaw. (Josh mentioned there was a gap when he clamped the thinner blade)

Taking cost (assuming the Gen3 will be more expensive than the Gen 2 vise), and versatility into account I would vote for the Gen 2 vise. Especially for the occasional user who does not mind a little fiddling to get a blade just right.

For ease of use and quickness I would vote for the Gen 3 devise. I think the Gen 3 would be for a production user, or someone who is not good at fiddling to make something work, and of course most people on this forum who love gadgets and must have the latest and greatest!

[Zamfir]

Finally got to watch the video Josh. Great job!

Already miss this vise! It will be exciting to see what the end product is. I am sure we are not telling the Wicked Edge team anything they have not already experienced!

Great note on the distal taper! It will help to have a little slop in them pins. The main knife I was playing with was the Spyderco Cali 3.5 which looked similar to the Manix you were clamping. I can see how there would be a significant increase in force on a distal taper if the pivot could also move a bit in that direction..Great suff here!

[Bill Kirkley]

My logic may be wrong, but I don’t think the vise jaws can rotate to accommodate distal taper. I have attached a drawing. I think the pins would keep the handle end of the jaws from moving outward, and the cam wedge would keep the point end of the jaws from moving inward.

Another question. It does not look like any of the testers sharpened a knife. With the guts of the devise exposed a possible concern would be debris getting into the mechanism, causing premature wear.

Attachments:

• G3.JPG

[Josh]

My logic may be wrong, but I don’t think the vise jaws can rotate to accommodate distal taper. I have attached a drawing. I think the pins would keep the handle end of the jaws from moving outward, and the cam wedge would keep the point end of the jaws from moving inward.

Another question. It does not look like any of the testers sharpened a knife. With the guts of the devise exposed a possible concern would be debris getting into the mechanism, causing premature wear.

Your logic is above me Bill… I am no engineer (unfortunately!) I guess we will know if it helps soon enough! It would be SUPER nice if Clay could figure out how to make the jaws rotate on a pivot or something… would probably be pretty difficult though. On your second point I don’t see that as a concern but it is very easy to disassemble and clean. Even if you ever did have any issues WE would cover it under warranty, but that would have to probably be several thousand knives.

[Manny]

I wonder if Clay is doing any changes to his final product after his pass around?

[Gib Curry]

just popped up! Guess it did finish after all 😉 Here you guys go
………………..

Very nice, Josh. Thank you.

A couple of things I noticed….

* You were showing something I tried to allude to. While the new handle can “seem” to get in the way; it is designed to get out of the way — in multiple directions….. early in the video I noticed that you were clamping blades and, casually, flipping the clamp bar out of the way. Already second nature. I found that, too. It didn’t take but a few moments for it to feel right.

* You said something about the right side being a couple of degrees higher than the left. How did you mean that?

It made me realize I made an assumption I didn’t verify. I assumed the FFG like Spyderco get clamped evenly and vertically. But, I didn’t actually measure with the angle cube.

With the current vise, you mount the blade, zero the cube, measure the angles, subtract, divide by two, add to one side take away from the other and the angles come out equal. (Or something similar to this…)

With this vise, when we mount the blade, zero the cube, should the angle cube give an equal right/left side measurement? (Given the +/- of the left/right cants)

* I noticed you moved your whole base when you set the clamp one time. I mentioned I’ve switched to a heavy wood base. I think the first two times I set the clamp I also moved the base. After that it was simply holding the base down for a second or two then everything was fine. I don’t think it would happen if I had it on my stone base.

~~~~

We understand that this is an early prototype…. and I really like it. With that in mind, I’m very interested in how they’ll tweak and improve the first production models.

They came very, very close the first try (OK, probably first public user try)

~~~~
Good job, WE.

Excellent video, Josh. Thanks, again.

~~~~
For Now,

Gib

Φ

"Everyday edge for the bevel headed"

"Things work out best for those who make the best out of the way things work out."

[Josh]

just popped up! Guess it did finish after all 😉 Here you guys go
………………..

Very nice, Josh. Thank you.

A couple of things I noticed….

* You were showing something I tried to allude to. While the new handle can “seem” to get in the way; it is designed to get out of the way — in multiple directions….. early in the video I noticed that you were clamping blades and, casually, flipping the clamp bar out of the way. Already second nature. I found that, too. It didn’t take but a few moments for it to feel right.

* You said something about the right side being a couple of degrees higher than the left. How did you mean that?

It made me realize I made an assumption I didn’t verify. I assumed the FFG like Spyderco get clamped evenly and vertically. But, I didn’t actually measure with the angle cube.

With the current vise, you mount the blade, zero the cube, measure the angles, subtract, divide by two, add to one side take away from the other and the angles come out equal. (Or something similar to this…)

With this vise, when we mount the blade, zero the cube, should the angle cube give an equal right/left side measurement? (Given the +/- of the left/right cants)

* I noticed you moved your whole base when you set the clamp one time. I mentioned I’ve switched to a heavy wood base. I think the first two times I set the clamp I also moved the base. After that it was simply holding the base down for a second or two then everything was fine. I don’t think it would happen if I had it on my stone base.

~~~~

We understand that this is an early prototype…. and I really like it. With that in mind, I’m very interested in how they’ll tweak and improve the first production models.

They came very, very close the first try (OK, probably first public user try)

~~~~
Good job, WE.

Excellent video, Josh. Thanks, again.[/quote]

Thanks Gib! Yeah I meant that the angle on the right side seemed to be consistently a few degrees higher than the left side, even when I had a “flat” to clamp on to. Don’t know why this was and maybe the next ppl in line can verify. The blade should give identical readings on both sides with this new vise, yes.

Yeah the reason my base slid I think was because I forgot to put that rubber padding underneath one side lol.

[Josh]

I wonder if Clay is doing any changes to his final product after his pass around?

Probably… they are always tweaking things and making them better!

[wickededge]

My logic may be wrong, but I don’t think the vise jaws can rotate to accommodate distal taper. I have attached a drawing. I think the pins would keep the handle end of the jaws from moving outward, and the cam wedge would keep the point end of the jaws from moving inward.

Another question. It does not look like any of the testers sharpened a knife. With the guts of the devise exposed a possible concern would be debris getting into the mechanism, causing premature wear.

There is a slight difference in thickness from back to front of the wedge that spreads the bottoms of the jaws apart that matches the play in the pins so they can rotate very slightly.

I’ve sharpened scores of knives on the machine so far without having issues caused by particles falling into the mechanism though I haven’t done enough to say that it will never be an issue. I am thinking that thousands and thousands of uses would be required to wear it out but we still need to test that to be sure. Thankfully we’ll be offering our lifetime warranty in case something does fail. 🙂

-Clay

[wickededge]

I wonder if Clay is doing any changes to his final product after his pass around?

There have already been some changes implemented and we’ll also use the feedback from this thread for other possible tweaks though most of what’s been said here has been addressed already in the latest iteration.

-Clay

[Bill Kirkley]

Clay Wrote: “There is a slight difference in thickness from back to front of the wedge that spreads the bottoms of the jaws apart that matches the play in the pins so they can rotate very slightly.”

But Clay, if there is a slight difference front to back wouldn’t that imply the knife must be mounted in only one direction. I guess one would hope it were mounted with the handle end toward your lever, but who knows what us idiot users may do! 🙂 Maybe having the wedge thicker in the middle and narrow in the front and back would allow for mounting the knife in either direction.

[Josh]

Clay Wrote: “There is a slight difference in thickness from back to front of the wedge that spreads the bottoms of the jaws apart that matches the play in the pins so they can rotate very slightly.”

But Clay, if there is a slight difference front to back wouldn’t that imply the knife must be mounted in only one direction. I guess one would hope it were mounted with the handle end toward your lever, but who knows what us idiot users may do! 🙂 Maybe having the wedge thicker in the middle and narrow in the front and back would allow for mounting the knife in either direction.

Bill, i don’t think that’s necessary. If you want that capability why don’t you simply mount your WE to a panavise and then you can spin it any direction you like? 😉

[Bill Kirkley]

I looked at the video again and realized the pin and wedge appear to be narrower than the vise jaws. Forgive me for potentially kicking a dead horse but if that is the case, I don’t see how the jaws can rotate inward for a distal taper. The drawing shows what I think are the correct forces and it looks to me like there would be a tendency for the jaws to kick out not in.

It may have been done but can the next tester clamp a quarter at one end of the vise and see if the jaws kick in, out, or stay parallel.

Attachments:

• w3vise.JPG

[Josh]

It may have been done but can the next tester clamp a quarter at one end of the vise and see if the jaws kick in, out, or stay parallel.

The prototype doesn’t really have any play built in like the production model will… so this may not be a valid test

[Author]

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