Small machine vice for lathe vertical slide

I have always wanted a small vice for my vertical slide on the Myford.

About 5 years ago I bought the book, "Useful workshop tools" by Stan Bray, in this book there is the description of the fabrication of a small vice, using workshop scrap.

I bought some steel bar of the relevant section back then to make the vice but never got round to doing it. I have always made a plan with angles and bolts etc. for holding things onto the vertical slide but there is often a time where a small vice would just be better.

Recently I purchased a milling machine and accessories making the need of a small machine vice for the vertical slide redundant.

As a first milling project however, i took it upon myself to finally make this little vice as accurately and precisely as possible.

In this thread, I shall describe the fabrication in as much detail as I can with as many photos as possible. Hopefully it will be beneficial to some.

I had a ball making it and learned a lot along the way.

Below are two pieces which I squared up in the mill. The one on the left was a test and the longer piece will be one of the vice base peices.

Below are the main pieces of the vice, machined to their final square sizes:

Here is a picture with the angle on the moving jaw machined and the locking screw hole drilled..

Before I even started on the practical work, I designed the vice in Solidworks, making the necessary adjustments to suite the size of steel bar I had as well as making corrections for metric sizes.

Stan has allowed for Metric or Imperial sizes in his drawings which helps to accommodate most people.

Here are some pics of the vice with the drawings:

In the pictures you can see I have marked off the line for the holes in the fixed jaw.

You may also notice in the drawings and on the actual item, that instead of bolting on a piece at the bottom of the moving jaw, to fit between the base, I have machined this from one piece. I think it is neater.

Instead of using parallels, I used the DTI to set the work in the vice. This method takes longer but allows one to be very accurate. I also do not own a set of parallels...

Preliminary markings were made on the piece to confirm that my mill was correct.

Here are some pics of the embryo vice with the fixed jaw in place.

The next step was to machine the clamping groove along the entire length of the base pieces. This initially posed a problem as I did not posess a decent milling cutter of the right size. The slot is 4mm wide by 4mm deep so in theory a 3mm cutter is what was required.

After much fidling with old used cutters I had enough and bought a decent cutter.

The above photo is one of the initial procedures, using an old cutter in the drill chuck- not ideal.

I did not have a collet set at this point.

After the groove was finished, the holes in the base needed to be drilled.

You will see by this point, I had purchased my collet set.

Here are some more photos of the bits together with most of their holes drilled

Below is the setup I used to keep everything square whilst drilling the holes into the vice base pieces for the fixed jaw screws.

I also found an old set of parallels that belonged to my grandfather.

A very nice project their Ryan. I like those pull-down-and-in clamping type vices (vises).

Ed.

Hi Ryan

Nice machining; I can follow the assembled items from your top views but am having bother visualising how the clamping method for the moveable jaw as there are no underneath views showing how the angled screw operates. On mass produced similar 'precision' vices it shows the jaw being clamped by pulling up a pin against the drilled holes that have been machined along their centre line leaving a '1/2 hole' arrangement... as your pics stand I fail to see how the moving jaw is clamped. Am I missing something or do you intend / have pics showing underneath clamping arrangement ?

George

Nice job, 😀

Thanks for the good feedback.

George, I have not finished posting the build pics or description yet.

You will soon see how the whole lot works.

Will try and post a few pics later.

Regards,

Nice job Ryan. Thanks for sharing.

IanT

Here are a couple of pictures showing the machining of the brass jaws:

Some more with the Jaws in the vice

In the pic above, the sides of the jaws have been machined as well.

Please excuse the quality of some of the photos.

The brass jaws are fixed in place with c/s machine screws and are replacable. One could use copper for softer jaws or hardened jaws as required.

I am afraid that I did not take any photos of the rest of the machining. The moving jaw was set in the four jaw on the lathe and the cross hole drilled for the cross bar.

The cross bars for the moving jaw, the base spreader and the moving lock bar were machined from 10mm silver steel and or 8mm 304 stainless steel depending on the size required.

One fault I did find in the design is the hole in the top of the moving jaw. With the pivot at the cross bar, the jaw did not originally have enough movement forward and backward making the vice useless. At first I relieved the underside of the moving jaw as other designs show. This did not work due to the pivot being lower down than the top of the hole in the moving jaw. Modern vices of this design have a hemispherical washer at the top which pivots in a round bottomed hole allowing large movements in both directions.

As this is not the case here, the hole was enlarged at 45 degrees from the top improving matters dramatically.

See the photos below.

Above is a photo of the entire vice disassembled.

The hole at the bottom of the moving jaw, machined to allow more movement. (This did not help much and was a waste of time).

Here you can see how the vice is locked, using a machine screw through the movable cross bar.

As it stands, this is as far as the vice has come, I have not used loctite on any of the screws yet, nor used the vice for any jobs yet.

I still need to drill the dowel holes into each base leg and the fixed jaw and put in the dowels.

This would ensure that the vice does not get out of square when tightening onto work.

I would also like to machine some small clamps, specific to this vice, for fastening it to any machine/ rotary table or vertical slide as originally intended.

A nice job, Ryan.

It's made me feel very ashamed of one I made several years ago, so much so I've completely taken it apart for re-working!

Neil

Hi It looks well. I wish I had the patience.

Brian