MAKING A GIANT VISE. 1 of 4

everybody welcome back to the shop and today i have a really fun project that i want to get started and it's going to be a blacksmith vice i'm not going to build just any blacksmith vice we're going to build a giant floor standing vice that looks just like this so this is what i came up with and as you can see this vice is gigantic the original ones normally weighed in about 500 pounds and i've heard i get extra points if i get anything above that or at least i'm going to try so this vice stands almost three feet tall and it's about three feet wide and it's a big giant one piece construction of course the original ones were cast but we're gonna make it steel this is the working end this is kind of like a anvil slash vice you can pound beat and clamp on things and then in the center here we'll have to put some sort of moving arm that pinches your work in between those two points and on this end we're going to have some sort of screw that pushes that arm over one of the things i like about cutting something out of plywood is i can see it and visualize it and i can already see a problem with my first design as i really don't like this meat down here between the hole and this valley i'm going to increase that a little bit and then problem number two is that it doesn't fit on my piece of plate steel so what i'm gonna have to do to fit this big weird shape is cut it on this w line here so we're gonna go do that and then come back and try to lay it out on this piece of plate to maximize our usage and not waste anything i have to cut out two sides to make up the body of the vice there it is maybe i can't think of a better use for this piece of plate than turning it into a giant vice so let's hack it up in the water jet [Music] i'm going to come back to the water jet once it's done cutting but until then i'm going to do some machining over here at the lathe so let me show you what i'm going to work on next i have this big six inch round bar that i'm going to saddle right here in the framework when this is done and that's this piece and what i need to do to it first is square off both ends on the lathe and then we'll take it to the shaper and make a notch in the side of it to accept a jaw so while we're waiting let's get this all cut up [Music] so [Music] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Music] that was pretty cool the shaper does a really good job clearing off a lot of material rather quickly and look at the pile of chips that's just awesome they're all over the floor hear that i've got a mess to clean up now that we got a pocket cleared out in this block i want to pull it out and we'll take it to the acer mill and we'll tap some holes and do a light finish pass on it and be able to get ready to mount a jaw into this part so let's go do that now so [Music] i'm really happy the way this part's shaping up the shaper did a fantastic job and i have some holes tapped in here to be able to accept a jaw a little bit later on but until then i need to mount this thing into a frame which i believe the water jet should be just finishing up so let's go check up on it fresh off the water jet this is an inch and 5 8 plate and this is making up the body of the whole vise and we're going to have two of these if we have to weld together and i cheated a little bit and used the water jet five axis cutting and i made it have a bevel on both sides of my plate so that when i go to weld it i have a full penetration weld nobody will even know that this part was even cut apart so we'll weld that together there but what i also did notice is when the water jet was cutting this part out there's a lot of stress that gets built up in these rolled pieces of plate and it literally has a potato chip to it and you could notice this as it popped out of its framework when the water jet was cutting so we're gonna have to deal with that as we weld these parts together i've been looking forward to burning some wire so let's get these two pieces welded together [Music] [Music] [Music] what do you guys think this is our first look of one side of this big giant blacksmith vice coming together overall i'm really happy the way it looks it's starting to look like something cool and this is much better looking than that piece of plate that was just sitting underneath that scrap pile over there so we're turning something that was not useful in something useful but our zigzag or our lightning bolt welded connection did a fantastic job of helping keep this plate straight and also be able to clamp something down to a fixture table that is always nice and helpful too and these are actually cut at an angle on the water jet at like 10 degrees because these two plates are going to sit kind of like this if you're looking from the top down you're going to be wide at this jaw and narrow back here just to kind of give it some cool angle and some body to it it's starting to look pretty cool this design is a deep throat design so you can see whatever we put in here we're gonna have this much throat to be able to put a large object in here like a big piece of sheet metal or something weird i think this is the strength to this style and two it's gonna be herky and we're going to be able to really pound beat or weld and not worry about damaging the vice overall so this is going to be extremely useful here in this environment but the next step we got to do to get this vise together is cut a floor out a piece of plate steel for these two pieces of place to sit on and then assemble them in the correct orientation and then tack weld the jaw into place and that will hold everything together and then we'll move on to the next step so let's get going with that [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] do [Music] do [Music] well guys take a look how this beast is coming along i have this whole thing tacked together just because we don't know what might happen a little bit later down the road but four tacks are holding everything into place and we have everything square plum and level now the next thing i want to tackle before i weld this thing out is getting a moving jaw in here and situated and it's going to look something like this piece of cardboard cut out and it's going to mount in here and this is going to be the pivot pin it's going to rock this thing back and forth now in order to get this arm when we cut this out on the water jet mounted into this frame i want to make some bushings that get welded into these holes and something special that i did when i had the water jet cut this out was cut the holes not perpendicular to the surface they're actually cut at five degrees and this is going to help me not have to grind because these plates are at an angle now i'm going to be welding in a bushing that looks like this we're going to slice it up and then i'll be able to weld this bushing in perfectly centered with the pivot pin and the opposite side that's just going to allow me some flexibility uh when i fabricated these parts that don't have to be so perfect so we're going to slice this up cut some parts on the water jet and have a moving jaw so let's go do it [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Applause] well just call me captain obvious because we have our bushing here tacked to the arms but i now need to tackle the shaft which is going to be this piece of three inch cold roll it slips in really nice and what i want to do is i want to machine a groove on the end of the shaft so that the set screw has something to grab onto and it doesn't gall and these bushings are going to get welded into the frame of the vise so set screw groove need to match up and then i'm going to drill straight through the center to or at least i'm halfway into the shaft and then i'm going to thread drill and tap for a greaser but i want to drill a cross hole in here that way we can get grease all up inside this bushing so that it moves real free so let's go to the bandsaw cut the shaft down and then go to lathe and do some machine work there [Music] you're probably wondering why i didn't put the greaser right in the center on that bushing right between the two jaws yes it would have been easier to put there but i'm afraid that it's going to get damaged from parts falling on it it's going to collect a lot of dirt grit and grime and it's going to be a little bit harder to grease in that location so moving it to the outside it's going to solve all those problems [Music] take a look at how cool this jaw fits in here between these two rails it moves really smooth on this hinge pin along with the grease that we're going to install but i'll show you how nice it moves take a look at that that's pretty cool this thing is heavy duty won't be breaking this anytime soon so the bushings are just sitting there resting we'll come back and we'll tack them and weld them into place but just when you think that this thing cannot get any crazier let me show you what we're going to add next 30 ton hydraulic jack that's right we're going to put a 30 ton hydraulic jack right in between these two frame rails to add that little bit extra power if ever need be so this jack is an air over hydraulic bottle jack very inexpensive but i want it to push on the arm so we're going to add a foot that needs to attach to this other arm around that center pin right there so we need to make a couple of these and then the jack will have to make some sort of table for this pivot to work properly so let's go to the water jet and cut all the parts to make this happen [Music] got all the parts all cut out i'm going to show you my plan of attack for this these two arms are going to get welded to our existing pusher arm we're going to lose a little bit of mechanical advantage with our little short lever here but we're still going to probably pick up 20 tons of force but i'm not too worried about that these two arms are going to be separated apart it's going to sandwich this little triangle bracket in between with a pin and then this plate matches up to the bottom of this hydraulic jack and i used the technique where i snapped a picture of the bottom with my phone and then traced out and copied the line of the photo to perfectly match this weird base plate that you could almost have a hard time measuring and i'll drill and tap some holes and we'll be able to mount this wee little three quarter inch plate to this jack and we'll weld the plate to this top of this triangle giving us a tilt effect and then we'll worry about what we're going to do at the top a little bit later so let's get these all sanded ground down all cleaned up polished d-bird and then welded onto the [Music] arms a lot of you guys have asked me about this cool little cap and gun that you guys have seen me used in the build and it has a clutch inside so as i push it turns right as i pull back it turns left and the end swivels so that you won't break the tap off okay here we go this is three quarter plate 3 8 tapped hole [Applause] okay and all i got to do is just pull back voila that easy [Music] [Music] [Music] i want to give you a little update on this hydraulic jack base plate mount i have it all tacked together everything fit up really nice it's definitely heavy duty and it's going to take the power that this jack will generate but it's not quite complete yet i still have to build some spacers in here to center the jack on these two arms and as you can tell it's quite floppy and it's not going to do any work in this configuration so i need to design and build a top pocket for this ram here and i need to give it a little bit of thought on how i'm going to do that so we will continue this thought process in the next video and i'll see you guys there [Music] you

Channel: Fireball Tool

Views: 487,955

Rating: 4.9473095 out of 5

Keywords: fireball, tool, Fireball tool, Welding, vise, huge vise, biggest vise, gigantic vise, how to build vise, fireball vise, heaviest vise, largest vise, blacksmith vise, DIY vise, how to vise, waterjet, weld vise, hydraulic vise, vice

Id: gFrhwC0eeCs

Length: 22min 1sec (1321 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 23 2020