Fantastic Tools From The Toolroom #1 Precision Vises

[Music] welcome back doc stools this is your first visit to my channel I'm Tom I'm a lifelong metal worker avid tool collector and practitioner of all things mechanical during the day I work at a not so secret government lab helping people that are a lot smarter than I am by making sure they have all the tools instruments and widgets they need to do their scientific research when I'm here at home in my own shop I'm on a never-ending exploration to learn as much as I can about my trade and along the way my duty is to share my trade knowledge and experience and try to preserve it here on this channel now with that said let's see what we got going on today what do you say we go over to the tool room and check out some fantastic tools I think we're gonna get a pile of ices and look at vices today okay so I went and check that all the vices in the Ox tools tool room and all the precision vices I should say and and here they are and I might have missed one or two but I'm pretty sure I got them all so this rip this is kind of an interesting cross-section of vices precision vices so we'll kind of go through them and talk about each one and some of the features on each one so folks can kind of appreciate some of the thought that goes into some of these different tools how they're used they're what I would say advantages and disadvantages things like that so now we're to start should we start on the this side or should we start on this side I don't know let's start at this side because this is a kind of a unique piece here and and we'll chat about this one now this one is a an ebay fine I meant I was an avid tool collector and this is something I saw on eBay that that I needed to possess and somebody put a lot of work into this thing and I think I bought it for a hundred and ten bucks and honestly I couldn't buy the tool steel and he treated for for that kind of price and so you know when you're looking for this kind of stuff on on eBay you know some guy sweated bullets over this thing to make it I mean it's got an engraved angular scale in two places here it's the way that it's got a removable handle this thing is pretty bad to the bone here now that said you end up with a pile of these because you know if you're doing tool room work or what we call tool room work which is basically kind of a variety you end up with a lot of different tooling to kind of get these jobs done now this one's kind of neat in that if you just had a quick kind of semi precision angular setup to do you could get it done now my only complaint about this particular one is the the screws to lock the to lock the rotation are here inside the vise so not like super convenient I think I would personally probably would have tried to put them somewhere down here where you could get Adam while still having your piece clamp but whatever doesn't matter so you know you can set up a compound angle like that lock it down and put your piece in and go to town you know this would be good for grinding tool bits let me grab a tool bit and I'll show you what I'm talking about all right so here's a you know example of a tool bit being put in there it's a acne threading a tool there so you can lean it over at this angle and then wrote for for your clearance and and then you know I don't have it set exactly here so and then grind so that's kind of why I got it you know I thought it might be kind of handy for for that because you can read the angles kind of direct here and then here's the other scale here although let's see yeah that was the other thing it said there's no there's no reference mark on this particular scale in here that was something else that I was like oh he didn't get to that or maybe a war off or I don't know what so or maybe he had it and it looks like this was modified a little bit or something I don't know maybe don't know anyway so that's one kind of neat neat use of a kind of a compound angle of ice like that and this would be kind of a pretty pretty sweet tool-making project take you some time and to do all that work so let's look at another one here so that's one let's do this one next this is a Hermann Schmidt and let's take a close look at this all right so here's the Hermann Schmidt they call this a v0 f v0 for grinding vice and it's it's a really nice piece they do Hermann Schmidt does a really nice job this ground square and parallel and flat and then they they actually even lap the bottom of these guys here you know interesting Hermann Schmidt they must grind these under some kind of clamping pressure either clamp close or they clamp an object in there I'm not sure exactly how what their process is but if you look at how this is constructed so you have kind of this base piece and then your clamping is occurring at some height above the main base right so what that does is that introduces a force that tends to to bow this because we're well above the neutral axis of this this lower section here okay the rail of this vice so so I did some measuring on this and kind of an unclamped and I was like wow this thing's kind of out of square right but actually it's kind of cool because what they've done is they've kind of accommodated some clamping pressure into the geometry of this so when you actually grab onto a an object like this and then I'm lucky I'll get the no no I'm not lucky this is my one complaint about this style of ice is these little these little dingers uh you know you got a get a fiddle with them so when you when you actually when you actually crank down on this what happens is it takes it bows it a little bit so now if you go too far you're gonna bow it too far so how much is enough well I fiddled around with it and it did some measuring and I came up with about 25 inch pounds so I actually bought a this is a torque T wrench here okay that slips when I get to 25 inch pounds which is more than enough to hold things that are that are parallel and ground already right now unfortunately I can't loosen with this I have to use this one here and just a note that you know for some of us Gronk errs you may want to shorten these these arms a little bit the temptation is to to to reef on this and whale down on this but what you're doing is you're actually bowing the base even more now you know for a lot of work that doesn't matter its flying or whatever but I'm telling you the do fussy stuff you need to watch how much you're you're tightening these up now one nice feature these are ground square parallel and perpendicular and blah bit everything right I think they guarantee 1/10 my measurements say that it's better than half of that okay when you don't clamp too hard so one cool feature is that you can you can grind this surface here and if you want to create a perpendicular edge there you can just actually flop the vise over and do the same thing and grind that and now you got a really good 90 degree and you know you're off to the races okay so this is very very very handy on the grinder to do this kind of work another usage is you know you have an angle block you can put against the rail so now you can instantly create a nice angle you know because the end of this is trustworthy and square right and you know you can stand them up on end like this if you need to do those kinds of things you know I don't know what do you have in here maybe something that needs an edge there so pretty versatile thing now underneath here you see we talked about this a little bit is this hollow under here right so if you put this vise and say you're milling machine a curt vise or something like that and you squink on it here right it collapses this up so you can make a little a little chingus like that that goes in there that you can open up to or maybe put an adjustable parallel in there or something just so that this doesn't crush down and and distort okay so you know keep in mind everything's kind of rubbery you know when you're working to close limits let's see what else should we say about this um so this is advertised as a forage vise right well I've always been kind of chicken so there's three right there right and they're saying a whole nother inch right okay well that's somewhere out there I've always been chicken to run these off of the end of the rail right so but they're advertising it as a for advice so hermit Schmidt says it's okay it's probably okay so there's other makers suburban makes advice like this Anton let's see who else and then there's there's some import ones starett makes one to starett makes a nice piece I think they're all you know right hovering around a Killa buck this one's a little bit more I think than a Killa buck and if you're gonna if you're gonna buy a new one save your pennies and save a little bit more and get the stainless steel version right so when you use this around coolant and whatnot you can get in fact I have a little bit of staining on this one here something sad in there too long or whatever with coolant on it get the stainless one you can put it in the EDM the sinker or the wire or whatever and and not worry about it getting corroded or anything like that and if you take care of it it'll last you a lifetime and it's harder than a monkey's uncle and very very useful around the grinder and just in the shop so anyway that's the Hermann Schmidt tool makers vise and the Hermann Schmidt uses this this kind of sliding notched Deeley popper underneath and I have to say I'm not a gigantic fan of this system because it's a little bit fiddly sometimes and some guys will modify these and they'll put a little spring under here or do something and but anyway I mean it's pretty minor gripe okay there's others that you see out there that have a series of holes along this edge and they drop a pin through those are okay too there are a little more positive so if you're if you're working in in in one area right it kind of stays nicely and then you just run this down and run it up run it down run it up you know change your parts up so that's just something else to think about just a slightly different style these are pretty nice they they don't give them away you can find them nice ones used on eBay for I don't know half price something like that would be my would be my target point you know okay alright that's that one way and there there's this little brother will just do that one real quick this is I bought this one brand new I treated myself to this and so it's the same thing smaller version and this one's nice because you like I said before you can kind of you can stick it in another vice like this and do a secondary you use this like an insert vice and you can take this in and out set it up on some angle blocks do something like that and and it's got counter bores in it here so you can like attach it to a fixture if you want which is a nice feature I wish they sold a little parallel sets for these that would be a pretty pretty sweet little addition as it is you know if you use six-inch parallels and stuff in here they just stick out and nobody makes a real nice set of short or length short length parallels for these kinds of things the guys end up making their own stuff on that it's next one this next one is kind of an interesting historical piece this is actually a manufacturer one it's not a somebody's project this is a Joseph B fakes FAK es Royal Oak Michigan so I guess it was a tool-making company back in Michigan I see a lot of shop made vices that are kind of done on this particular pattern and in fact like we were using a we modeled this up at work and we're using the drawings for you know kind of a machine shop training program so guys could make their own their own vices so this is kind of interesting in that it's got its own screw right and you can you can crank down on it and it doesn't have the little the little notched bar like that now this one here I kind of modified it a little bit so I've attached some phenolic plates here okay and they're attached with counterbored screws in either side and then to those I've used some double back tape or adhesive transfer tape to attach strips of balsa to the phenolic plates and so this is consumable and you just peel those off and scrape them off when when they get all dinged up this is an old gunsmiths trick for holding really delicate little parts and the idea is that this wood is so soft here you can see the tweezers is poked right into it right this wood is so soft that you can you can put a little you know literally a little watch part or a little you know trigger mechanism or something in there and you can clamp down on that and it'll kind of embed in the wood and lock it in and then you can do some some work to it now I wouldn't say machining work I would say stoning or polishing or something like that would be the appropriate now this one I normally keep it on a ball swivel mount that I had made and I took it off for this video and this is also a good vise you know a good kind of insert vise that you can put in another okay you can plop it into another voice like this and set it at an angle it's small enough and handy enough now it's one it's one weakness is that it's got the slot all the way through it underneath okay so some of them have bridge pieces here see it's hollow underneath here too and that's actually pretty thin there so when you clamp this in another vise it tends to lock up the mechanism okay so something to be aware of if you're gonna build your own vise is if you cut this big slot through the bottom and you fit this toolmaker style where there's no player or whatever it doesn't take much pressure on this to lock up the the mechanism so that it doesn't turn now this one's cool and then it has these notches in the side so that you can use some hold down clamps on it like this so you could mount it to a you can mount it to a plate with some toe clamps some little toe clamps and hold it down and you know set it in an angle or whatever this one works good on the surface grinder - you know for quick setups you can just plop it up there and then and then you just got a knob which is really nice and that's what makes this one nice too is it's just got a hand knob you don't need a tool and you just crank it down and off you go right so that's a Joseph fakes a little tool makers vise they're a little granny vise oh this is cool says Raven Raven I always thought it said Raven it might be an F I'm not sure I think I bought this off Craigslist and yet they pop up on on eBay every once in a while you know 50 to 100 dollar kind of kind of range there okay that's that one this one is one that I made geez you know what I don't know I have to look at my notes and see when I made this one you know it's just something fun to make and and I still use it off and on it's kind of kind of nice for certain kinds of things the only thing that's weird is this is a right handed screw so when you quote unquote tighten the screw that I open so I didn't bother to make it a because I use a piece of all thread on this now this is this is a nut it's basically an idling nut here and that nut there's a couple of thrust bearings in there so there's no play in that nut and so it's nice and smooth and this advances the the jaw now the other thing is that's kind of interesting about this one is that these little side guide rails here that keep this job you know kind of straight with the world.they overhang just a little bit you see it's got a little step there and what's nice about that is you can plop it in another vise like that and it's kind of instant parallels there right okay so and I think I don't know if I don't think I planned that actually it just kind of came out that way and you know I couldn't go any deeper yeah I don't remember how you know it's been so long and then this always bothered me as I should have used smaller fasteners there but hey c'est la vie right no big deal it still works I'm not gonna make it again let's just put it that way so this one is what this one is inch in three-eighths okay kind of an odd number there and this was all made out of 41 42 pre hardened material so it's about C 25 something like that and so you can still you can still machine it and work with it and but it's it's got a little bit of durability now I loaned it to a guy at work many many years ago he says oh I need a little I need a little vise to hold this thing blah blah blah you know he's doing and I say well here you can use this one right now I should have asked what he was doing okay and because when he gave it back he had used it to to solder something okay and he had used some acid flux you know on the thing that he was soldering and so this thing was a mess and I don't know and a few years ago or whatever I got so sick of looking at it and I took it all apart and I kind of read I dusted it off and reground it and and finally took all that corrosion off but you know what what are you gonna say right it's like oh well you didn't tell me you're gonna do that right and but you know here I load it to them so you can't it kind of can't go back on your on your your gift or whatever right or it's difficult and now he should have gone oh maybe I shouldn't hey I'm gonna solder on this man I might splatter some stuff on it or whatever he didn't do that either so and I guess we're both at fault from being a bozo or whatever so anyway yeah that's a cute little a cute little one there I don't remember how big that one opens up but I do I do use this one and my friend Charlie the old tool maker he engraved it for me he built a little pantograph engraving machine and he said oh bring some stuff over that you want to that you want to engrave so I brought a bunch of junk over there and he engraved some stuff for me okay so that's one that Tom made and let's let's look at this little insert one next okay these little insert vices are actually pretty cool they you know these are offshore and all the I don't know the big name tool peddlers sell these the the interesting part is is the price these are incredibly cheap and for what they are that's actually you know the price is pretty good now that said when you if you get one you need to do a little checking on it because they may not be square or straight or flat or whatever so do a little checking on them and but it's a good basis it's this needs it may just need a little bit of tuning up and and these are kind of cool because you once again you can drop them into another vise and hold apart and you know if you're running the CNC or whatever you can have five or six of these and load parts and plop them into the machine and they can go to town on it and you can be loading the next one as long as they're all you know the same or pretty close to the same and this one has the added feature of having a you know a little step ground into it the so it acts like a you know set of parallels in there and you know once again it's parallels for these vices you gotta kind of come up with their own stuff if that's what you need and so the price on these is so low that they're pretty hard to ignore and this is a good place to start your collection is one of these little guys cuz once again you can you can stick it in at an angle and another vise there's just a lot of things you can do I mean you can just use it to hold a part that you're you're doing for something else you know and I think this is like 70s or something like that okay it's right at an inch you know it's 25 24 millimeters there or whatever and let's see how far will this thing open up here it's the last step it'll open up 20 millimeters or a little over 3/4 okay this is an active probe but you know I think these are all made in the same factory and they just laser-engrave you know whoever's buying the the latest shipment or whatever but I do recommend that you that you check these when you get them on the surface play you know check these surfaces so to make sure that they're they're parallel with the base and and then that they're perpendicular to the sides and things like that right so just do a little checking on them and I want to say that you can catch these on sale in the sub forty dollar range which is pretty pretty frightening actually that they can actually get the steel make it grinded heat-treated Oh put it in a shipping container get it over here sell it for $40 and still make a couple bucks on it so a little bit frightning right okay so that's a little insert another insert vise and this is actually a good one to have if you're gonna if you're gonna go shopping for one and also this has the the hollow bottom here too so you got to be a little bit careful squeezing on this because if you you pinch it right here on the corners right on the corners in the in a vise like that it'll collapse it and then it actually won't be very stable you need to put a little cut a piece to fit in there put a screw in there or something like that to hold it apart so that it has something solid to clamp to and this has a couple of taps holes in it too that you can attach it to something else actually got a bunch of them never used any of those they're not finished very well and I just never had occasion to use to use any of those but a handy a handy vise nonetheless so this one this one's got a bit of a story which is actually pretty cool this was made by a friend of mine his name's Steve Steve Edwards actually and a super cool cat tool and die maker retired guy and it's actually kind of a Craigslist story now I don't know five years ago something like that I put out a video fantastic tool maker tools and I had met Steve on Craigslist and I went out to his place and I bought a bunch of tools from him and you know anyway I'm driving away and I was kicking myself I'm like D'Arnot I should have bought that vise right but I ran out of money and you know I used up all the money that I brought with me and so for five years I've been kicking myself well we had a little a little kind of a meet-and-greet local machinist you know metal workers get together at Chuck Bob burritos place a while back and I sent Steve an email and I said hey man we're having this thing once you come out if you got time or whatever well guess what he showed up it was great and he brought a whole bunch of stuff to trade and sell and and and dupe and swap with and so I got a second chance at at this vise and I pounced on it he gave me a great price on it and he was so glad that it went to somebody that's gonna use it and then it appreciates all the work that he put into it this thing's a beaut Steve has this kind of very cool sense of style and I really like his stuff now and this is his rendition of your grainy vice yeah and he probably hates the little the little dinger thing here too so when he made his vice he he put a screw on it and boom it's pretty nice now this screw is interesting here it's a it's a to start screw you see how fast it's moving for the rotation right so it's a to start screw their proportions it's it's it's deep it's rather deep for the width which is there's nothing wrong with that that's fine and it's just very very nicely made now the one disadvantage of having a screw on the on the vise like this is it makes the length longer when you're up on the up on the grinder and sometimes that kind of can get in your way a little bit so this style here with the screwless vise here they tend to be they tend to be a lot shorter and more compact okay anyway Steve did this you may an electrode and the EDM diz initials into this thing and then I think somewhere oh yeah he's got a electro penned in here too got a bronze nut it's just very nicely made and now this one here has a little step so you can you can clamp it down you know you can clamp it down on a on a mil table or something like that and since it's a solid base you can grab it by this by this edge and in another vise and you know do the vise on vise action like I've been describing to you this witnessess so it's a little less than three inches it's instant three-quarter deep something like that Oh and he said I didn't even notice that he's got at least one there let's see if he's good - yep he's got two so you can bolt this down to something else and no one's Steve he probably had some other accessories that this one attached to here you know a few tap tools for putting stops on or attaching a semi-permanent parallel or a step or something in there so anyway this is this is one of my favorites here and it's it's so nice to know the guy that made this - right and you know he sees me fawning over this and lusting after it and it makes him feel good about it - right that that's going to a it's going to a good home that somebody will love it so anyway Steve if you're watching this video I'm so glad that I got the I got your vise and I'll use the heck out of this thing and and if you come over you can you can visit it if you want so let's see I don't know what else is there much more to talk about here it looks like the nut I think what he did was he's got a boss and it's on on this nut block here and it's just it's just a press fit in here so Steve did a lot of jig grinding in his career so a lot of the tools that that he has that I have now there's evidence of jig grinding on that and he was a pretty good jig grinder so and for those that don't know what jig grinding is basically it's a it's an orbiting abrasive tool that strokes in and out for making very very round precise holes in die sets and and to all the diet work stuff like that so jig bore you know you dig bore the holes and get them and look good location and then you pick them up and and then grind them so you can put them in undersized and then grind them to size on location on the jig the jig grinder and after heat treat so that's the general idea so this is made up out of a couple pieces here I haven't actually I don't I don't think I want to take it apart it's in great shape and there's there's no corrosion on it and it's it's smooth so there's no particular reason to take it apart and and do anything to it there okay that one's three and five eighty something like that which is pretty respectable okay so that's the Steve Edwards vise and then we got one more to talk about and then we'll take these tools back to the tool room and and get our our tool checks back this little gem here this is a starett stare at 160 they call this a tool makers vise what do I want to say about this it's a silly little vise okay I'm sorry starett it's it's kind of outdated and it's it's funky and and I'll show you why so it's got this this little Wiggly piece here and I think the idea behind that is that you can you know grab something that's that's angled or whatever so I'm not clear what the intent there is but it's it's kind of more annoying when you're when you're clamping something straight then you know it's everything is just kind of loosey-goosey flying around there FAK see I'm getting annoyed right now so we'll put that in there and they'll crank it down I mean it does lock up okay and what yeah I'm not gonna throw it out okay so so here's the idea here so this this is an alternate jaw here and it has a little spring clip in there and you can pinch yourself royally okay and click that one in there okay and now we get a little more capacity there but you see this thing is this kind of lazy and yeah I don't know it's just not very satisfying so I guess that this gives it a little gives you without having a really long screw it you know it gives you some more capacity or whatever is the idea yeah I've had this thing for years and you can see that it's basically brand-new I've used it a few times for stuff and then remember where I saw this I saw somebody online who it was one of the youtubers and can't quite remember who they put a handle on it and I went oh that's not a bad idea right cuz I don't know about you guys but every once in a while let's you know I have anything handy you got a teeny little part and you want to you want to you want a belt sand it or or just hold on to it while you while you polish it or do something to it right well this is this a little extra purchase here that you can kind of get a hold of you can get a hold of the the vise and hold it or go over to the belt sander and you know or do something on the belt area this has a little spring tension little twister rod here too and when you find these use a lot of times this rod is missing you know no big deal you can just get a dowel pin and a spring and and recreate that you see a lot of these on on eBay I wouldn't pay more than 20 bucks for one used one if you find if you're interested in one and there's thousands of them out there so I think these were put in you know apprentice kits or something like that okay apprentice kits you know is kind of a standard tool in that one you know once again it's got a solid base so you can grab it in another vise and instead it at an angle or do something with it if you want and what I did now it has a hole through there I didn't have to drill the hole I did quite remember now I think I think it was countersunk and everything I just had to find it was a weird size I don't quite remember now what this what the situation there was but there's there is a hole through there stock so you can do the same thing if you want so yeah I mean if you find one at a state sale or get one on eBay for sub $20 or whatever nice to have around paying full price yeah in fact I don't know what these would be full price my guess is stereo gets 100 bucks for these now stir it makes the precision grinding vice - and it's actually very nice I've seen one in the flesh and it's it's it's well made it's well proportioned it's it's equivalent to the Hermann Schmidt I think and don't know what the price is on it but anyway so that concludes the the first stop to the tool room fantastic tool room tools and I hope you enjoyed that I got lots of drawers full of cool stuff to look at so we'll do this again maybe vblocks or or grinding wheel dressers or angle plates or something like that next so if you have any suggestions throw it in the comments and if you like this hit the subscribe button and thank you very much for watching [Music] you [Music]

Channel: oxtoolco

Views: 57,770

Keywords: Hermann Schmidt, Starrett, Precision Grinding vise, Surface Grinding, Toolmaking, Joseph Fakes, Insert vise, EDM vise

Id: gViHSnsXcIw

Length: 37min 35sec (2255 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 16 2020