Vice Stand Design

[Curly]

Just putting together a design for a stand to hold two leg vices and wanted to put it in front of you guys.

 

My doodle in paint is pretty self explanatory but looking to use railway sleepers as the end material which the vices will be mounted on and inch box section to connect the two. The box section will also act as a tool rack with some round bar added and the lower bits of box section will be used to hold hardy tools.

 

What do you think?

 

My main concern at the moment is how stable it will be, hopefully adding some wider feet should help with that.

 

I also wouldnt mind it being reasonably mobile so currently thinking of ways I could add casters which could raise and lower the whole stand. Maybe using a trailer jack at each end??

 

Any ideas or input most welcome!

[Chinobi]

could lay another sleeper between the feet as a lower support and to make it more rigid, so long as your tool racks are similarly rigid you shouldnt run into problems with it racking if you lift one end.  too bad you cant run a cross brace between the two tong racks to stiffen it up, that would be ideal but you would lose half the rack space between the two spars, you can use the cross brace as a single rack for most of its length.

 

as for mobility, the easiest would be just to keep some furniture dolleys handy and lever each side onto a dolley then just push it to wherever you want and drop it off.  beyond that you can design any number of systems to keep wheels mounted and either have them only touching the ground when you lift on side, or lower them with a nut or some other system.  one method i have put some thought into for a temporary mobility system is to drill yourself a hole (or cut a notch in the bottom) to accept an axle and make the wheels and axle be removable, just wedge up that side, mount the wheels, drop the wedge and boogie.

 

were it my rack i would consider relocating the hardie rack so i wouldnt have to bend down to almost ground level and navigate a curtain of tong reins every time i wanted to get at a hardie tool or replace it.  maybe set your tong racks down a little farther and center the hardie rack above it with enough clearance to let you get at tools on the inside rail without much interference.

 

Good luck!

[ThomasPowers]

What about sideways loads---stick a 2 meter bar in the vise and pull from the side and I think you will tip over your setup.  Looks nice for a light duty set up or one you expect to be mainly hammering on.

 

My heavy load vise is fastened to a utility pole cemented 5' into the floor of my shop  (It's one of the roof supports)

[Curly]

Yeah thinking sideway loads as you put it might be a problem, however currently I don't have a permanent workshop and unfortunately don't have anything to bolt a vice to that will not move. Might have to go with this until I get a proper workshop to set up shop.

 

Chinobi, agree with having the hardy rack higher, mostly it was there just to make use of the lower support. As for mobility, think having a set of fixed casters on one end and a lifting jack with a wheel on the other would be the easiest to do, just not sure if that will be too much stress on the inch box section.

[Chinobi]

if you change up the design at the bottom so the sleeper along the floor runs the entire length and the verticals butt in on top of it you can attach your casters and trailer jack directly to that horizontal beam and the upper sections will only have to deal with the load from the vices and your equipment being a handful of degrees off vertical, otherwise, yea it might be a concern that the entire box frame might be taking too much stress at the corners.

 

you could also go for a triangular design, which would help fight having a 'short' dimension and could reduce the tendency of the whole thing to flip if you do as Thomas says and work a long bar like a lever.  or instead of mounting both vices on the ends facing away from each other, take one and rotate it 90 and put it on one of the long sides, so the jaws are parellel to the length of the rack, this will also help resist the whole thing overturning if you need to generate some leverage.

[Curly]

Good shout with the idea of turning the vices 90 degrees think that would certainly make it less easy to flip. Also taken into account putting the sleeper along the bottom as well. This the sort of thing you had in mind?

[Chinobi]

close, see attached photo below for what i was referring to (really quick and dirty, just to show the relative placement of the horizontal and vertical members) you could/should probably keep your triangular feet on both sides of the verticals, or at the very least put something down, like an L bracket or something, opposite the triangular foot so you still have support there and gives you a place to mount the post for your vice.

 

mount your casters as close to the floor as you can without them touching so you only have to jack the far end up a very small amount to enable rolling, and spread them (im assuming you are using two) as wide as you can to give it a more stable base when rolling. with two vices on it it will probably be getting pretty top heavy, to say nothing of all the iron in your racks.

 

id keep the vices perpendicular to each other as well, rather than lining both of them up with jaws parallel to the racks, that way you have one lined up in each axis, no sense duplicating what you already have.  set one on the side by the trailer jack because the jack will interfere with the vice's post, and set the other up on the far end so the post threads between the casters, or terminates on another L bracket on the far end, to which you can also mount the casters.

 

the intent is to have one solid continuous member running the length of the whole thing on the bottom, and then attach your verticals to the top of the horizontal, that way your casters and jack are fixed to one piece (though i dunno what the mounting height of your jack will be), rather than two separate pieces connected by a third.

 

 

edit: image shows as attached within the editor, but its not coming up in the post, probably related to all the technical stuff they are ironing out at the moment

edit2: nevermind, there it is :)