MEW 288 Readers Tips

Just reading through the latest issue of MEW 288 and Readers Tips is always a favourite page for me, even though I usually have seen them before or use the tips myself.

But congratulations to Geoff Harding for his novel use of a cheap drill press vice, for holding long work pieces. Chopping the vice in half! I think this is the best readers tip for a long time!

Nice one Geoff

Ian

+1 on that comment !
With the addition of a couple of angle plates or some stout angle bar you could use them as vertical clamps on the mill , bench or welding table

Bit of a bugger if you lose one half though 😁

And with some suitable packing the work could sit directly on the table.

Thanks to GH for an excellent suggestion.

I bought two of those cheap vises years and found them to more useful than ever I thought. Might consider chopping up one of them, never thought of that !

Sometimes I see a Reader's Tip that makes me laugh out loud, Geoff's certainly did that.

It's so obvious - when you see it, an utterly brilliant idea and a deserved winner

Neil

Hi, one of those "why didn't I think of that" moments.

Regards Nick.

Neat idea to use a drilling vice, but not a new concept. Similar items are available commercially:

Albeit not suitable for hobby size mills. If you overtighten the vice there is a chance of distorting, or even cracking, the table.

Andrew

Also deserving was the previous winner in MEW 287, Brian Roberts, for his truly simple but ingenious solution to keeping parallels in place in a machine vice with bits of foam to separate them. Inspired in my view

Brian