Portable vice - buying advice sought

OK we may have a winner!

I like the look of the
"AXMINSTER TRADE VICES TWO JAW CLAMP-ON VICE 62MM"

**LINK**

- I could cover one vice with smooth plates - and the other end might be useful as is.
- It can be clammed to a table top (although not more than 4mm thick)
- The larger jaws still slightly small (62mm), but I can live with that.
- I still can't find any magnet soft jaws that small but hopeful I can cut some larger ones down to size.
- Occasionally specifically smaller jaws might be useful
- Build quality looks rather poor but I can live with that

- I has a nice square-ish anvil
- The faces of the larger jaws could be useful occasionally, I suppose e.g. can grip rounded items etc
- Jaws are made from hardened steel so should be quite durable (e.g. resist accidental filing/sawing etc) and obviously can be replaced if that does happen.
- Price is not unreasonable £42

The jaws are off-set to the left - "to allow longer rods or bar material to be clamped" although I'm not clear how this works in practice!

Your table top isn’t going to be very rigid at 4mm

.

I give up

[quote] Jaw width (7 to 10cm) [/quote]

... but It appears that I am on your ‘ignore member’ list anyway.

MichaelG.

@Tim Stevens -

>>>

It seems to me that there is a contradiction between:
a) the need not to mark the surface its clamped to, and:
b) the need for an attached anvil.
Either you are intending to hammer stuff on it, or you want no marks on the table.
>>>

I don't get you. Are you talking about damaging the part or the vice itself? To get clear, I am planning to work on some parts which are fairly soft and can mark easily and some stuff which need to be hammered.

The Axminster vice (above) is obviously not heavy duty and I agree that heavy hammering would be a mistake, but it seems well reviewed for what appears to be mostly model-making use.

Michael it's call COMPROMISE.

As @Andrew Tinsley said in the very first post "You need to whittle down your "must have", requirements, then you may be in with a chance." So that's what I'm doing. YES, it doesn't match my original spec. YES, it's rather irritating, but we have to live in the real world and clearly something has to give.  

@Ian Parking - "Your table top isn’t going to be very rigid at 4mm. "
Correct. It's a stupid design flaw. That said, my current table is only 25mm and it does me just fine. More of a worry is future tables and benches being too thick to clamp to at all. 

 

Edited By John Smith 47 on 28/04/2021 20:57:11

Edited By John Smith 47 on 28/04/2021 20:58:56

.

But you didn’t ... except in your own head

Enjoy whatever you buy !

MichaelG.

Word of warning - clamp on vices aren't very secure, which is why many of them are provided with bolt-holes! I have a clamp Stanley on my electronics bench and jolly useful it is for light work. But it's not in the same league as a 4" Record, and I don't trust that as an anvil either!

The requirement I got wrong was the jaws, which are rubber. Melt instantly they're touched with a soldering iron...

Dave

Consider acquiring a smooth jaw vice of your choice and then carefully fill in the recessed screw holes in the jaws with Liquid Steel, JB Weld, or epoxy ?

A simple solution.

Edited By Mike E. on 28/04/2021 22:47:57

Hello John

if it interest you I have this vice, it came in an auction lot, it is redundant to me as I have plenty of other vices, in fact it has been clamped to a shelf since the day I got it:



it’s of Japanese origin so is of decent quality, has smooth non replaceable jaws-76mm wide as can be seen above, minimum table clamp thickness is around 12mm. There is a little anvil and a facility to hold bar, Some marks to the top of the jaws nothing major.

Yours for £30 including postage

I hope this helps

William

Easy enough to make your own soft jaws from a bit of aluminium angle cut at the ends and bent around to clip on to the vice.

I didn't like the idea of using my (Record) vice as an Anvil so I bought a piece of Steel bar 6 x 6 x 1 inches. It's small enough NOT to get in the way and is a good base to hammer things on. It cost about a Fiver from a Metal warehouse.

You might be looking for a record imp vice:

https://smallworkshop.co.uk/2019/08/12/the-record-imp-vice/

I own two and they are pretty dam good. Available from ebay with a little patience.

+1 for the Record Imp's

I have a larger 4½" one on a swivel base, and a couple of the smaller approx 2½" ones.

One of the smaller ones has its serrated jaws still, and the other one has some smooth steel jaws.
My main bench vice has solid aluminium jaws, I never have the need for the serrated ones for the work I do.

Phil

If you have the wide sticking out type jaws shown in the picture above as i do on my main vice you can make wood jaw pieces that are secured by a rubber band at each end going over that sticing out bit. A saw cut in the wood provides a recess for the rubber band to go below the surface. Though I have thought of using oak or other tough wood actually a bit of soft batten is better as it deforms to grip awkward shapes and gets replaced in a jiffy when marked. No loss if a hole needs to be drilled into the meeting faces to grip round bar.
if table top marking is a problem make a bit of steel 4x3x1/4 as a load spreader, deburr and glue a bit of plastic like ice cream carton lid on the contact face.

As a child I had a little clamp on vice which had a bit of casting flash sticking down from the underside of the mounting face so it dug in to the chair arm where I used it. Still have the chair with witness marks but the vice clamp arm eventually broke due to over tightening.

A clamp on vice may be OK for light work, accepting the risk of damaging what ever is used to carry it.

Sadly they do "what it says on the tin". They swivel!

The one that i got with Green Shield stamps has no ball joint, so is more rigid than the one that I bought from LIDL and machined /modified to improve .

So +1 for bolting a vice to a board and using two clamps to hold it to the table / bench.

Howard

John,

Why is Ian's tongue in cheek reply correct? It's your flaw, 4mm is actually 40mm.

Tim Stevens is also right about marking the table by hammering on the vice, I'm not sure how you manged to get to "I don't get you. Are you talking about damaging the part or the vice itself? To get clear, I am planning to work on some parts which are fairly soft and can mark easily and some stuff which need to be hammered". from his post.

You will get a series of rings underneath the table top from the clamp and marks on the top if varnished wood especially if Pine.

Get a B&D workmate and screw a decent vice to that, good strong multi-purpose work platform that can be folded away.

Sorry if I mis-read some earlier stuff. I am quite dyslexic but I do my best.

Moving on... @jann west - yes, that Record Imp Vice looks pretty darned tough. Probably much tougher than I need, in truth as mostly I seem to find myself doing precision work...
One question which is better an oval anvil or a rectangular one? I think rectangular look vastly more useful to me. Obviously I would only be doing pretty light tapping on it. If doing more I would probably slip something under the vice so as to protect the table.

On another note, it's a shame than nobody seems to have invented a method for attaching/removing vice jaws without putting two dirty great holes through the middle of the blades! Like I say mostly I would want smooth not serrated blades.

@Howard Lewis - yes I don't actually want a vice that swivels. But maybe I need to 'compromise'...

@MC Black - Good thinking. Out of desperation I sometime hammer an item that is placed on a large mallet for broadly similar reasons.

@Bazyle - TBH, I think we need a picture or two to understand what you mean. Or is it just me being a bit thick?

Not aware fixing holes are a problem, and if they are it's odd this deeply notched vice is John's potential winner:

The hardened steel jaws supplied by Record are too aggressive for my taste so I replaced them with smooth mild-steel, home-made.

Mild-steel is softer than hardened jaws but tougher than Record's expensive fibre alternative. Occasionally, I avoid marking softer work by popping on a pair of home-made Aluminium jaw covers, which also cover any holes or serrations:

One of the advantages of owning a metal workshop is being able to make and modify tools. It's often easier to adapt than run complicated searches for perfect answers, especially if the Requirement is mostly guesswork. Nothing challenging about making jaw covers: one of those shown is little more than a length of sawn off Ali angle, the other is made from a bit of soft plate bent with a hammer to stay on the jaw. When they get too tatty, or I need something different, I shall make more.

Dave

PS.  No prizes for noticing I don't have an immaculate workshop.   Worse than it looks - the bench was tidied to take those photos...

Edited By SillyOldDuffer on 29/04/2021 17:29:42

Edited By SillyOldDuffer on 29/04/2021 17:33:07

John Smith 47 asks, following a message of mine:

Either you are intending to hammer stuff on it, or you want no marks on the table.
>>>

I don't get you. Are you talking about damaging the part or the vice itself?

A simple matter of action and reaction. If you hammer down on a lump of metal, it will tend to move downwards. What stops it can be whatever it is resting on - and in this case, an area of table already partly loaded by tightening a clamp. And I'm talking about damaging the table. (The clue is the reference to wanting no marks on the table)

Cheers, Tim