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Where is your vise mounted?


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Like this one here.....(the one on the left!)

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Hi KRS

Thanks for your reply. Yes, I think that would be good. A strong piece of tube welded to the plate-just the right size for the leg to fit in without moving-don't think I would drill through the plate though. Just weld to the plate as it is so that the forces are striking the plate and not the concrete floor. I will stand on the plate while I work at the vise also-so it cannot move. I will also fill the upright square tube with sand and fit a small top plate to bolt the vise to. Are there any other suggestions which might help too please?

thanks

 

Tom.

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My 5" Vise is mounted to an 8" I-beam with 1.25" plate on the bottom and 1" plate on top.  Bought all at the scrap yard.  Vise and mount weigh just over 300 lbs which is good until it's time to move the square bottom stand, then not so good, but it works well for me.

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Hi stockmaker, thanks for showing that. Some weight there boy! Rounded plate for me means I will be able to move it around if needed. I like the top plate mounted to one side. Are you right handed? I am a lefty and may put it off to the right. Is the leg just a tight fit into the tube at the bottom?

 

thanks, Tom.

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Hi Tommy Tap Tap, great name!  Another picture of the stand from the front.  I had to mount the vise to the side so the vise mounting bolts would clear the Center I-Beam bar.  I know I spent more time on the leg anchor than any other aspect of this post/stand.  At first I was going to forge it so the leg final fit perfectly into anchor, but decided that was beyond my present tooling, I ended up using a 1.5" dia. steel pipe (I think).  Than finding the perfect place to position the pipe under the vise was perplexing, the leg would move, left/right/up/down/in/out, depending on how tight the leg clamp was.  I wanted the clamp to be very tight, but I also wanted the leg to come straight down.  I went with a slight compromise, but mostly in the straight down config. The leg just sets on top of the steel pipe. I did debur the pipe edges in the hope it would not cut into the leg.   Good luck with yours.

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Great! Thanks for all of that info. that has helped me a good deal into committing to the style and execution! That front on photo shows it perfectly for the top plate. The name I chose for the site came from my missus who refers to me as Tommy teapot due to my liking for English tea-seemed natural to follow it up. Thanks again. Hammer on man!  Tom.

I will post pics of my effort soon!

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Tom: I REALLY like a round flat plate for stands but prefer the equipment mounted in the center it makes it a LOT easier to tip up and roll. It balances. I really recommend NOT welding equipment like vises to stands if you have any alternative at all. You don't need anything fancy to socket the leg. The hole doesn't need to go all the way through so long as the leg end can socket in and not shift sideways. You aren't likely to drive the leg into the ground through the plate. Another easy alternative is to find a nut that'll slip over the leg end and weld that to the plate. Almost anything that'll prevent the leg from shifting is all it really needs, seriously a leg vise works just fine with the leg poked into a packed dirt floor.

Oh, my 4" leg vise is mounted to an inadequate, collapsible tripod stand. It seemed like a better idea than it worked out to be in use. My 6: leg vise is mounted to a table.

Frosty The Lucky.

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Thanks to you both. Thomas and Frosty. I agree Thomas and understand the dynamic behind trying to shift oneself from standing on a plate-not possible in the way it is to be used. Yet it still has a form where it can be moved if needed esp. if space is at a premium.

Frosty, you are so right too in what you say. It wont be a real heavyweight but like most things in a 'smith 'shop they are heavy enough and anything we can do to make life easier for well seasoned bones has got to be good in my book! I don't want to over engineer this little project and I do like the idea of having the plate foot at the rear, giving me that bit more room to manoeuvre on the plate but it has just occurred to me that (bearing in mind this is only a tiddler vise-3 inch jaws and wont be holding large pieces or being smacked like i'm in a title fight)) and will be around 39" to top of jaws- that I could weld two fillets of steel to the plate, each side of the foot(square) and be able to slide the whole foot(containing the socket for the leg as well) back and forward some several inches and lock it in place with a couple of through bolts to the plate. That would work for me? i.e. back for using and forward for moving. Nut on leg sounds good too. What do you boys think?

 

Tom.

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All very interesting mountings for a vice. 

To me it all depends what you do on your vice. In the shop I worked I had two post vice, one smaller attached to a massive steel bench that had an engineer vice at the other end, and the main post vice, a 6" one, was mounted on a steel post concreted in the ground.  Smooth concrete all around, no shelves behind it, nothing. 

Main reason we did decorative work and the jigs for making scrolls all were made on a L angle to be clamped in the vice. So I needed something that can be pulled sideways pushed and shoved, hammered on and that I could walk all around without anything in the way, close to the anvil and the forge. Definitely not portable or movable or that could be tipped over.

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I've got postvises all over the shops; mounted in several different ways; 4 postvises---2 large, 2 small bolted to work benches, one with hundreds of pounds of steel plate stored on it, and finally a large postvise bolted to a utility pole that supports the shop roof.  Noisy to use but Very Stable! (got another one like that one at my rental down south...)

As well as a couple different ways to mount a travelling demo vise: 55 gallon drum (fill with water and it's stable! bung lets you drain it for transport.) Folding metal sawhorse---pretty flimsy but the sawhorse was free and had tong racks already built into it.  "Legs" of 1/2" sq stock designed to bolt onto the mounting bracket and then go down and peg into the ground.

Lets more than one person work in the shop and I don't have to traverse afar to get to a vise.

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I picked this out of the job site dumpster today, 12X12 and 36" tall. Thinking of using it for my post vise. I can make a base for it, I have several circles of heavy plate. I have a lot of 2" X 1/8" lengths I can use for strapping to stop the splitting and all kinds of angle up to 4X4X1/4" to mount it to the plate.

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  • 4 months later...

I have two post vices my first one the biggest of the two has been mounted to my old work bench for years and has been my go to vice for a long time the pillow blocks broke off when I got it and my neighbor who was a certified oilfield welder welded them on with his SA200.

my smaller one is mounted to a sunk railroad tie in my forge only issue is the jaws are a lil off but it does its job 

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My stand is a vertical piece of 4x8 I-beam,  with a base made from two pieces of the same. 

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The above photo was before I made up two brackets to hold the vise to the post:

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I added some bits of pipe to hold chisels and punches:

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Not shown: the steel plates and buckets of scrap that I stack on the back of the base for additional stability. 

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  • 5 months later...

 

Currently have 3 vises the latest one is a portable to take with us. A 4 1/2 inch that weighs 45 lb and the stand 15 lbs fabricated out of stuff from the resource pile.

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The main shop vise 5 1/2 inch 16 inch stump embedded in concrete, solid as a rock for the last 30 years.

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The outside vise 4 inch with a RR tie embedded in concrete with a cast iron bracket for the leg.

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5 1/2'' Indian Chief. Bench legs and foot of vise are set in concrete and bench top is through bolted into wall .

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Mounted at corner of welding/ layout table on post bolted into concrete footing.   Vise post bolted to underside of table.

The vise is mounted so it does not  take up any of the surface or edges of the table.

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7'' Columbian mounted into main structural post and footing. The tool tray at right is handy for keeping hammers and tools handy for the job at hand.

 

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Vise mounted  to steel post bolted to footing.  Top of vise is below level of platten table , so no obstruction to long work on the table.

Note grease fitting on leg pivot.

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Rigid 6'' machinist vise, on post at corner of welding table . This takes advantage of the mass of the table but doesn't intrude on any of the surface or edges of the table.

These Rigid forged vises are the best new vises out there IMHO,  more versatile  and equal or surpassing the equivalent Wilton Bullets

 

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"Mobile" vice. Peter Wright 6" on stand. Needed a bit of counterbalance so borrowed my son in law weights :)

Legs are RHS 5" x 2.5" x 1/4" (gift from a neighbour) Base plate is 1/2" taken from old boat cradle. (You can see lines of pitting from salt water on the underside)

Had to import the 5/8" square head bolts from the US to keep the vice original, nothing like it here. The vice was found by a local picker under the bench of a dirt floor workshop half sunken. Most bolts had wasted away and one of the spacers was gone too. The construction of this vice is peculiar and the mounting had me scratching my head for a while, especially the support with a sort of keel under the front jaw. 

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I'll have a nap now

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