Home Brew Tools - Nut Vice

Nomad

I decided to make a nut vice of the type on the Stewmac web site, which is basically a cheapie small drilling vice with replacement jaws. After a load of searching, I found a candidate vice...

http://www.mscdirect.co.uk/VJL-57530K/SEARCH:KEYWORD/product.html

I then went to the cheap steel shop on eBay and got 250mm of 40mm wide by 6mm thick steel. After taking some measurements and working out some angles, I cut off two bits just over 50mm long...

One bit was 1mm or so longer than the other. The hacksawed ends were tidied up in the milling machine. I then drilled and tapped a couple of holes in each piece. This was done by removing the original jaws from the vice and clamping the two bits of steel in their place. A transfer punch was used to make the hole positions by whacking it with a hammer through the screw holes in the body of the vice. They were then drilled and tapped M5 (that being the size of the screws).

The vice was then put in a... ...vice...

...at an angle of 60°, set using a bit of scrap MDF cut to the desired angle.

I then started milling away the corner...

This continued until there was about 1mm left of the original flat surface at the top of the jaw (about 2.5mm left in this photo). The vice was then flipped over and set to 60° in the opposite direction, and the same milling operation carried out.

After a bit of deburring, I had...

...which does...

I'm happy to report that nipping the nut up secure didn't snap it.

I also did a check to see what sort of angle I can expect...

I'm in two minds at the moment whether to chamfer the outer part of the vice body to make more room. I'll try it as it is first and see what I think. You can see here why one bit was a tad longer - the jaw on the left sits in a little recess.

Total cost was about £16, which works out rather a lot cheaper than the Stewmac version (which is £50+ with possible import charges on top).

m_c

It's always nice when you manage to build something that would of cost you a lot more.

Nomad

It is, but there's always a balance to be struck between things like the amount of cash saved, the time it takes to do it, other time commitments, and how good a result you can get compared to the ready-made version.

Out of the various things I've made so far, I think I'm most pleased with the chunky carver's vice...

http://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/93043/home-brew-tools-chunky-vice

About 50 quid to make compared to around 200 to buy the commercial version. Took a while, but I got some good chisel practice cutting the big box joint between the base and the fixed jaw. And it works a treat - easily my most used home brew tool so far.