I inherited a couple of cheap 4" drill press vices.
I improved on one of them by cleaning up the ways, making a much longer, close fitting guide block and added aluminium soft jaws.
Now its a halfway decent low profile machine vice.
The "V" is convenient for mounting cylindrical parts vertically but in retrospect it need only be on the mobile side as I invariably use a parallel on the opposite side.
The soft jaws were given a final in-situ clean up and again any time I need precision or they are looking a little tired - since you ony remove thou's you can repeat this many times.
I've attached the block drawing but obviously this only suits this vice and my clean up dimensions.
Ken
View attachment vice.zip
I improved on one of them by cleaning up the ways, making a much longer, close fitting guide block and added aluminium soft jaws.
Now its a halfway decent low profile machine vice.
The "V" is convenient for mounting cylindrical parts vertically but in retrospect it need only be on the mobile side as I invariably use a parallel on the opposite side.
The soft jaws were given a final in-situ clean up and again any time I need precision or they are looking a little tired - since you ony remove thou's you can repeat this many times.
I've attached the block drawing but obviously this only suits this vice and my clean up dimensions.
Ken
View attachment vice.zip
