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DIY Woodworking Vise

Started by lowpolyjoe, December 28, 2013, 06:54:28 PM

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lowpolyjoe

I got some hand saws for Christmas and I'm going to try to get into jointery using hand tools.   I see the first thing I should have gotten is really a nice vise.  I did some looking around and the few that I was considering were in the $200 range. I had a vision in my head of building a simple vise from scratch.  Yesterday I stopped by home depot to price out the parts - I decided if I could keep it under $50 I would give it a shot.  Basic parts were at $47.  I picked up some locktite and epoxy that put me over budget, but they are general purpose and I'm always meaning to grab them anyway so I didn't count them towards the limit.

There is a long series on youtube (11 parts I think?) of a guy building a nice DIY quick-release vise.  I watched a couple of the videos and  it looked similar to what I had been planning, just a bit more complicated and fancy.  I didn't have that sort of patience  :D   so this is quick and dirty, just so I could have *something* to work with.

Assembly is almost complete - I've hit a bunch of snags that make me think it wasn't a great idea, but i'll share my experience anyway  :).



lowpolyjoe

This is the bill of materials, all from Home Depot

(1x) 3/4" Threaded rod, 24" length
(1x) 3/4" Threaded rod "build a bolt" kit
(2x) 3/4" ID Black Gas Pipe, 24" length
(2x) 3/4" Gas Pipe Floor Flange

Also needed,
Hardwood for the jaws - I had some oak on hand (at least I think it's oak  :D)
Epoxy
Long bolts or lag screws for mounting
Threadlocker - although I haven't used it yet and I'm not sure my plan is going to work.



Drilled some holes for the threaded rod to pass through the middle and the pipes to pass through each side.



To avoid having the floor flanges stick out of the vise I made some recesses with my trusty router and circle jig and inserted the flange with the flat side facing out.  Test fit....




lowpolyjoe

I was planning to use one thick piece of hardwood for the front jaw and two thinner pieces glued together for the back.  A nut for the threaded rod was supposed to get embedded in a carved recess and then sandwiched between the two pieces when I glued them together.  I screwed up and chiseled out the recess on the wrong side of the wood - the holes were not symmetric so I couldn't rotate the pieces and I had already cut a dado for the sacrificial jaw clamp material (I don't know what that's called?).  I don't think it's a big deal, but as a result, the nut will be on the back side of the second piece of wood, not sandwiched between the two. 

Pardon the blood all over everything from this point on.  I pinched my finger pretty bad when I test-fit the pipe in the through-holes and the masking tape bandage wasn't doing such a great job  :D



This is the epoxy I used to on the nut.



I put everything together to ensure the nut was in the right spot for the threaded rod to pass through, and I glued the two pieces of wood together that will make up the rear jaw





lowpolyjoe

I don't have a real work bench.  I'll be trying to attach this vise to these cabinets I built this past year.  The work surface overhangs the cabinets by a few inches to allow me to clamp stuff to the edge, but that means i'll have to build up the mounting surface so the rear jaw mounts at the edge of the countertop.






There was a good deal of chatter when sliding the jaws back and forth on the pipes... I hit it with some finishing wax I had on hand and it seemed to help A LOT.  Not sure how long that will be effective.





GAB

lowpolyjoe:
Sorry to see that you like myself sign your work in blood.
Sure do hope you are not on blood thinners and you heal fast.
Wishing you and all a very Happy and Prosperous 2014.
Gerald
W-M LT40HDD34, SLR, JD 420, JD 950w/loader and Woods backhoe, V3507 Fransguard winch, Cordwood Saw, 18' flat bed trailer, and other toys.

lowpolyjoe

I had to route out a little divot in the countertop because my mounting surface did not extend perfectly flush - so I could slide the rear jaw in place.  I mounted it with some big lag screws I had left over from a failed attempt to build a DIY cant-hook (I *really* thought it was gonna work  :D).





Countersink for the nut and washer that will go on the inside of the front jaw:



Test assembly:



At this point my hunch was confirmed - the pipes don't seem to exit the flanges exactly perpendicular.  The clamp jaws aren't perfectly parallel.  When I tighten it down both jaws close eventually, but there's some play, which is a bummer



lowpolyjoe

My idea for the handle was a slotted contraption that would allow for sliding it back and forth (as good vises generally have).

I cut some pieces out of a 2x6 I had laying around and made a dado in 2 of them that would fit the nut



Glued some pieces together.. there are only 3 sides.. the 4th is just a piece of wood to assist in clamping





The threaded rod comes in the 'open' side and the nut slide through the channel pretty well






There is a big problem with this plan that I realized just before I took this picture.... I had planned to tighten 2 nuts together with a lock washer between them to enable me to spin the threaded rod, but my handle design only fits a single nut.  Once I put the nut-lockwasher-nut grouping together, the handle doesn't fit at all. 

I'm still trying to figure out an alternative... I've got a few ideas - i'll keep you all posted


lowpolyjoe

Quote from: GAB on December 28, 2013, 07:44:06 PM
lowpolyjoe:
Sorry to see that you like myself sign your work in blood.
Sure do hope you are not on blood thinners and you heal fast.
Wishing you and all a very Happy and Prosperous 2014.
Gerald

Thanks Gerald.  No blood thinners.  I'll survive. 

Happy holidays!

beenthere

Joe
You have some good ideas cooking there. Keep pecking away and you will have a vise to use.
Thanks for taking us along on the ride.  8)
south central Wisconsin
It may be that my sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others

justallan1

Nice job. I may be making one myself soon and now have a few ideas. Thanks.

Allan

21incher

Nice job. Looks like it will be stronger then a store bought one. I love that many members on this forum have the attitude of why buy it when I can build it better myself and then post pictures to give others ideas to build off.
Hudson HFE-21 on a custom trailer, Deere 4100, Kubota BX 2360, Echo CS590 & CS310, home built wood splitter, home built log arch, a logrite cant hook and a bread machine. And a Kubota Sidekick with a Defective Subaru motor.

jueston


lowpolyjoe

That's a cool vise.  The series I watched is from the same guy and is closer to what I was looking to build (but nicer):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeNU7WqNoVY&feature=c4-overview-vl&list=PL9A80111B17370F44

I gave up on my handle idea I posted above - instead I'm going to try to use an approach similar to his for a handle

lowpolyjoe

I decided to try to reinforce the outer jaw with a metal plate I had laying around.   Unfortunately, I didn't have a drill bit big enough to drill out a hole for the threaded rod.  I tried the "circle of small holes" approach but my crummy drill bit wouldn't track straight and progress was poor.  Eventually I massacred the plate with my grinder and produced a hole big enough for the threaded rod to poke through but small enough that a washer would still have a good amount of contact area:





I then chiseled out a recess in a chunk of wood that would fit the nut on the end of the threaded rod.  A hole drilled through that chunk of wood in the other direction should accommodate a dowel that will slide back and forth and turn the rod.   This approach was taken from John Heisz's youtube series on building a vise (see my link above). 





While doing some test fitting I realized that the random piece of wood I grabbed wasn't going to cut the mustard.  I think it was pine - it was so soft that I could feel it denting from pressure against the nut it was supposed to help turn.   I didn't have any thick pieces of hardwood on hand so I glued together a couple of small pieces of oak.  I will repeat the process using this:




lowpolyjoe

I don't have a lathe and had the brilliant idea to try to turn a handle for my vise on my drillpress the other day.  Bad idea and I paid for it with a scare.  I had done something similar a while ago - mounting a circular cutout in the drillpress and then shaving it down slightly by holding some sandpaper against it as it spun.   This handle project didn't go as well.

I chopped off 45deg sections of the square blank to get it close, then predrilled and sunk a lag screw in a good ways (or so I thought).  I put the top of the screw in the drillpress and turned it on to see how balanced it was.  Not balanced at all.  In fact, in maybe 2 seconds, before I had a chance to react, the screw sheared off due to the stress and the workpiece came flying off and blasted me in the forearm pretty hard.  So hard that my hand sorta went numb for a couple minutes.  Not a bad injury but a BIG scare.  If I would have gotten hit in the face I definitely would have been in serious trouble- like broken nose and missing teeth sort of trouble.  I was lucky.  I won't be doing this again and urge others to be wary of this hack.  Spinning anything out of balance on a drillpress is dangerous, and testing if it's balanced is just as dangerous  :D 




lowpolyjoe

My early attempt to secure the handle on top of the turning nut didn't work out as the epoxy quickly gave way and the handle fell off  :(.  That was expected, but I was trying to avoid drilling through the nut and rod since I don't have very good drill bits.  But in the end I had to do give it a shot.  I lubricated with some air-tool oil (which i had handy) but I've heard others say to use petroleum jelly or wax.  I drilled 2 holes, one through the nut on each side of the outer jaw.  3/4 through the second nut i broke the drill bit.  Too much pressure and i think i might have been at an slight angle.  I was drilling holes slightly bigger than some nails i had to use as cross-pins.  The threaded rod wasn't all that big and i feared trying to drill anything bigger than that (i think it was just over 1/8" hole).  I epoxied the nails in and later ground them flush with the angle grinder.




The dowel has one fixed cross pin and one longer that rotates freely (and often falls out  :D) that lets me spin the screw like turning a crank.  This speeds up the procedure since the clamp is not quick-release and sometimes requires a lot of turns to adjust.



I drilled out some holes in the jaw and the bench for some dogs - i just used little pieces of a dowel i had on hand (1/2" i think).  Yesterday afternoon i tried making a small dovetail box for the first time ever.  It's a lot harder than it looks in all those youtube videos  :D.    I was missing some tools (most critically a marking gauge and coping saw) and my chisels are not fully bevel edged, so i had some obstacles... but the biggest was certainly my inexperience.  I got some nice saws for Christmas and really wanted to try them out.



The pine i was working with had an awful property of the endgrain turning into a mess when chiseling out waste between the tails and pins.  I don't know if it was too wet or my chisels were too dull (which is almost a certainty) or a common problem in general?  The result was dreadful and i won't provide a closeup picture ;). 

The vise creaked a bit when tightening it down and i thought something was going to give way, but it held up.  There is a lot of play left-to-right and when tightening a piece down on one side the outer jaw skews significantly.  Similarly, the top of the jaw  bows out slightly when closing on a workpiece as the screw applies pressure in the middle.  I may make new sacrificial jaw inserts with a slightly angled face to try reduce this.  The dogs worked surprisingly well, although they would certainly snap under serious tightening and the small diameter means a small contact surface area which resulted in dents in the side of my pine.  I may take a chunk out of the top of the dogs to give them a flat clamping surface, but i fear they will then split when stressed a lot sooner. 


All in all, i think i will get some use out of this vise but i don't think i can recommend it as a good idea.   If you have all the parts on hand or can get them super cheap and have some spare time, it might be worth it... but it's probably a better idea to bite the bullet and order a vise.  I've not worked with a "real" vise so i don't have a good reference, but this seems lacking in a bunch of areas.  At about $50, it was *that* cheap, so it might not be worth the effort - those darn flanges really hurt the budget.   

A few things i would definitely change


  • Wider jaws with more space between the screw and the nearest support to allow for vertical clamping of long pieces that are relatively wide.  Current design can only do about 4" or so
  • Maybe a more vertical reinforcement (mine was horizontal) for applying pressure from the handle to the outer jaw to try to reduce the top bowing out
  • My handle is laughable - i should have spent a bit more time planning and working on it.
  • There is more play in the holes for the supporting pipes than i would like and i think that contributes to the left/right skew effect.  A tighter fit is probably a good idea - maybe by drilling holes slightly undersized and using a small drumsander attachment (which i didn't have). 
  • More attention to detail when mounting to the table would have made things sit better for sure
  • Quick release would be nice - although it was only a minor inconvenience to have to spin the screw for large adjustments. 

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