Adam Savage in Awe of This Fractal Vise!

I'm so excited hi everybody uh what is a fractal Vice it is like the coolest thing ever um originally patented and built in the 1920s by an American company is it is a set of nested crescents that allows a vice to conform to highly irregular shapes this is excellent a few years ago I made a die Filer and I used some cast iron pieces and when you when you make stuff when you make tools at a cast iron you're working with castings and those castings often need reference surfaces flat bottoms perpendicular edges and things like that and honestly when you're working with cast iron pieces the the lack of squareness because of the casting can be really difficult to hold on to it properly you can use wood shims and soft jaws and there's other mitigating strategies but a fractal Vice handles that like in a tremendously great fashion and hand tool rescue a fantastic YouTube channel hand tool rescue I do watch those guys all the time they uh a while back they found a fractal Vice an original one I have never seen them show up on eBay uh I mean I know that they have here and there I just keep missing them anyway hand tool rescue took one which even had a missing jaw and replaced that jaw and brought it back to life and I I first caught wind of the fractal Vice years ago years ago I saw a picture of it that hand tool rescue brought it back some brought in some more information about it and I it's known who makes it and all that stuff but that's not important what's important is I wanted one of these things and I could not get one there's a there's a there's a there's a jeweler who's got a Kickstarter with a small fractal device I'm on the list for that one there's a Etsy guy who sells a 3D print file for a fractal device but I was doing a search and I saw one so the thing about the internet is you can't just search once and be like I couldn't find that you got to go back and search again and then again every few weeks every few months I get a lot out of that when I go and can search more so recently about three and a half four weeks ago I came across a fractal Vice I had never seen before made out of steel and it was made by Alibaba or it was purchasable at Alibaba and it's funny yeah we're gonna crack this puppy open oh my God it's so exciting [Music] seems like it barely made it here oh oh [Music] look at that foreign [Music] [Music] oh it's got pins yeah I think we can [Music] oh all right oh my gosh oh my gosh oh oh they built it exactly the same way as The Originals oh my gosh oh but they don't have any uh uh fascinating I see you okay oh my gosh let's crack this open so all right that's one way of holding on to that fascinating [Music] okay ah you do have a that's why all right I will yeah that's for another day fixing that I think I can bring this all the way down there we go that's nice okay all right I've teased you long enough let's um let's see it grab something oh my God it's all right there [Music] there it is so that's that's what I'm talking about there the fractal Vice will grab all this most of it yeah it'll grab all this [Music] you can't even see it wrong here we go [Music] I think that there's actually an interesting thing here there we go don't know oh yeah look at that dude dude dude incredible let's see that again and we'll put this hat out [Music] there we go all right oh dude right right grabs really nice and oh it's not quite oh my God yep all right um full disclosure I spent more on this than ice I spent a lot this was 2500 bucks uh shipped from China um and it's meant to the way you're the way you use it actually swivel on that base should give me just a sec [Music] I do all right so I'm gonna lose some that oh yeah oh yeah amazing and does this also okay so um the way this operates is the these Jaws grab irregular things tightly got a nice Acme screw thread here to attach it all together it's a very nicely it's nice tolerance all throughout this uh and a couple little issues here and there um so uh there might end up being a few things that I do on this to refine it uh uh one I think that the uh it's method for uh just look at this they're method for holding this is a dual this is a a right hand left hand Acme thread right so it goes one way and the other way so that the Jaws can open and close um I'm just using two effectively effective grub screws here they're like m8s or m10s um I may refine that this knurled handle for tightening it not nearly enough I think I need a little so that's another project and then I want to talk about the construction because the original the original uh fractal Vise is not just a masterpiece of engineering it's a masterpiece of construction uh and this is made in nearly an identical fashion so each of the semi-circles operates the same it is a if you can look here can you see that yeah it's a dovetail that's a dovetail it comes out like that and that means that there's a matching dovetail here and they all thread now when hand tool rescue fixed theirs each of the jaw pieces was actually numbered every single one and which one it went next to um and that's the kind of Hazard with uh construction like this is that it's so specialized there's no like making one part and they all just work not not like that um they don't move quite as smoothly as I would like them to I honestly the tolerance is great um but they there's feels like it feels like it needs a little bit of elbow grease and work so I'm actually going to take it apart I'm gonna use a little steel wool on each part I'm gonna throw in a little uh no actually what is the right stuff to use for that would actually be whey oil [Music] so get money [Music] and um I'm gonna take this apart oh and I'm gonna keep it all so that each piece goes where it should [Music] on the um on the real on the original vices there were actually set screws in the center of each of these Jaws um and uh that set screw was uh coupled to a corresponding slot in the bottom of each one of the receiving Jaws and thus galling there it's a little gallery um yeah these are nicely deferred parts I'm just letting my hands touch every part of this part and it's been a little way or along here oops that's important oh that's nice oh okay so now [Music] it's all this dude burning is really nice there's not a lot of stuff catching them [Music] [Applause] [Music] whoa that is so one thing I may do is I may actually uh machine a v in the middle of these final Jaws um to create just a little bit more of a landing surface oh that's nice there's definitely was some grit in the oil this was packed in it's a nice to move it I may end up getting a little lapping compound in there oh such gorgeous things they actually seem to be interchangeable parts which is remarkable um see if this grabs a little bit better yeah see this gets stuck in places like this and I think that if I uh I think there's I think I can do some things to make this even better but [Music] dude dude freaking fractal Vice fractal Vice fractal Vice um fractal Vice in the house we are going to uh they'll be they'll there will be there will be some projects making this even better making this thing work for me uh [Music] I may end up getting some lapping compound into these mating surfaces to kind of get them to to mate together a little better I can just feel a little yeah it's okay all right we have a um [Music] this is so freaking exciting this is just such a rare piece of kit it's uh I can't believe someone made it I can't believe one can purchase this commercially right now uh we'll include a link to where I got it and we'll see if they still have it um yeah needs a little bit of yeah yeah all right just need some love there to make it to make it a little smoother but [ __ ] it's all there these just lift right off and go right back on it's a really nicely made thing wow it's worth just mentioning that the US has a really America right now the United States has a really complicated relationship with China [Music] all right politically absolutely so economically totally um and also in the mythology of like China right the idea of like you know there are YouTube channels that call a whole class of tools made of chinesium and the idea is that they're like you know lesser because they're made in China uh and you know some of that is some of the some of the uh uh uh stereotypes about products coming out of China are based on portions of reality and some are not what I see here feels fundamentally like interesting to me because I don't someone on Alibaba someone has a factory on Alibaba where they make Machine Tool kinds of equipment things and somebody in that factory was like hey boss I saw this thing called a fractal Vice I think I could program a CNC and makes make one of these out of Steal what do you think the boss is like great idea go do it like this only exists because of a of a mind and that's perhaps what I want to bring up here is that in all of the stereotyping we can do in the US and we do a lot of it about Chinese products the makers of those products are faceless to us we're not engaging with them as a as a thought exercise but when I see this thing I am engaged with somebody who decided to execute this incredible thing that's all it's [Music] yeah there's remarkable stuff going on over there and uh yeah there there will be more to do with the fractal Vice but for right now we're just gonna enjoy it it's just such a beautiful thing oh and it pivots really nicely you want it to Pivot because you want to be able to lock it you want to be able to um lug something down and then choose your angle of attack on the mill um and it's a big pain in the butt to load this up on a uh like a rotary table if it's unnecessary so fractal devices always have a turning aspect to them um and like I said there will be other videos where I take this thing all the way apart and get some advice from the comments for this video give me some advice about making these mating surfaces really nice and smooth and my best practices for achieving that because I want to get this so that all just like uh I do think I want to and I'm gonna go look up my reference material on the slice I do think I'm gonna adjust the actual mating surfaces of these little front Jaws not sure quite how just yet but I do my thoughts um what a freaking thrill what a thrill this is to have this it really was in transit and I was following it all day long to get to the uh the tested mailbox aren't you I'll keep it no now you move [Music] uh I'm curious about your best practices uh machinists in the comments about the best practices for getting these mating services to fit with each other I'm going to shoot some b-roll of this uh magnificent that thank you guys for joining me for this is incredible I feel like this tells me there's like I don't know I just like I said before I sense a real creative mind behind the impetus to make this not just naked Commerce and how to make a sheep this somebody wanted to see this extent in the world and I am better for it and I want to thank you person who executed this project I'm delighted to own a piece of your work um yeah thanks you guys for joining me I know this is a really quick show and deal but I had to show it to you I will see you guys next time bye-bye foreign

Channel: Adam Savage’s Tested

Views: 1,694,889

Keywords: tested, adam savage, machining, fractal vise, adam savage tested, adam savage tools, adam savage favorite tools, adam savage fractal vise, adam savage vise, adam savage fractal, what is a fractal vise

Id: NUhrF0xkhhc

Length: 23min 54sec (1434 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 08 2023