Making this Twin Screw Gear Linked Vise

in this video I'm going to be going through the build process of my new twin screw vise and the interesting thing about this is that it has gears that link the two lead screws together so they'll both turn at the same time and what that means is that when you clap something in one end it won't close on the other to get started I need to glue up a couple of pieces of papal to make one thicker piece and to do that I'm gonna flatten one side on my homemade jointer before glueing them together and while the glue is drying on that I can get started on making the gears and I've picked out a scrap of half-inch Baltic birch plywood that's big enough for all five and then I paste it on the templates that I printed using just a glue stick there are five gears in total and the two on the ends fit on the spindles and the ones in the middle are what I'm calling the transfer gears and those turn on 3/8 inch axles so I'm drilling all those holes now I'm cutting part of the template away for the spindle gears and that'll stop the large Forstner bit from tearing the paper off altogether with that done I can start cutting them out by first cutting out around them roughly and then I'm gonna clean that up on the disc sander to bring it right up to the tip of the teeth now to cut these out I first started by cutting out each tooth individually but what I found was that it was easier to make mistakes doing it that way so what I did was I changed to roughly cutting one side all the way around and then the other side all the way around to clear out the majority of the material in there and then I could clean up each truth individually by nibbling away at it with the blade the bandsaw does a pretty good job of cutting out the teeth they're fairly smooth but they definitely can be improved and I'm doing that here on my homemade 1 inch belt sander by the time I finished making all of the gears the glue had tried on the spindles blank and I can start machining that by cutting it to rough length and then trimming it down close to the final size on the table saw [Music] and to save a little bit time while turning it on the lathe I got a trim off the corners on the bandsaw now it's over two lathes where I've got the blank mounted between centers and the first operation is to true it up and turn it into a cylinder that's the correct diameter the spindle is not very complex it does have to be precisely made for the spindle gear to fit on there and I'm going to start by turning down that shoulder and checking as I go and I slip the spindle gear on to the tailstock so I can use that to periodically jacket the second shoulder needs to match the hole that will be in the front cover and I made a gauge from quarter-inch plywood she checked that as I go the spindle also needs a one-inch hole for the lead screw to fit into and this is something that probably should have done while the blank was still square and I could easily clamp it in the drill press space and drill that hole but I'm gonna try something else and it starts by me pinning on a piece of plywood with the one-inch hole in it but I'm doing this because that center hole that's in the spindle is bigger than the tip of my drill bit and what this guy will do is they'll keep the bit from wandering around or at least that was the idea and it probably would have worked if I could have held on to this but then I remembered that I have a chalk for my lathe and I could put the spindle in that and then I could take the chalk off of my drill press and use that to drill into the end of the spindle the Chuck left some dents in the wood but I think that these spindles are still a little bit too long anyway so I'll probably trim that off after I did the other one in exactly the same way and now what I'm doing is I'm fastening the spindle gears to the spindles and I'm using screws to do that with no glue I want to be able to take these gears off in the future if something happens I'm using polyurethane construction adhesive to glue the lead screws into the spindles squeeze some in the bottom and then push the rod down to force it up around the sides and while the glue is drying on those I can get started on cutting out the other parts for the jaws and here I'm laying the circular cuts I need in the Gear race plate with my compact compass and then I can clap that in my quick-release vise and cut it out with the jigsaw and the jigsaw action goes a lot faster when you take out the old worn-out wave and replace it with a newer [Applause] the next part is the main plate for the moving jaw and this has two holes through these screws and three for the transfer gear axles I also need to make two recesses in the front side for the one-inch washers that fit into and again I've marked those out with my compact compass and I'm gonna cut them freehand with the trim router with that much done I can actually try it out let's see how it works and make adjustments if I need to but this looks like it's working pretty good the next piece I need to make is the front cover and I decided to use clear plastic for this because if you've got gears you might as well show them off and I've got this sheet that I bought many years ago for a few other projects and I'm just gonna lay that on top of my table saw and cut out the piece roughly with the jigsaw and that leaves a fairly rough cut so I'll just clean that up with the table saw [Music] and then I'll make it even smoother by sending it starting with rough grit and working up to something really fine here's a bit more compact compass action to lay out the holes for the spindles to fit into and I don't have anything big enough to drill this out exactly but I do have a hole saw that's a little bit smaller and I'll use that first and then finish it on the spindle sander and it also needs a bunch of holes drilled and countersunk for the screws that will hold it on to the gear race plate and again with that much done I can put it together and check the action it's very important when you're building something complex like this with a lot of moving parts to check it periodically to make sure that everything's lined up and working correctly and make adjustments if you need to before final assembly everything checks out so I took it apart again and here's something else that should have been done when the spindles were still square and that's to drill the holes for the handles to fit in but doing it the hard way always makes it a little bit more interesting anyway and while I still have this set up I can drill the hole that will pin the spindle to the lead screw next I need to get started on the fix job parts and here I've got a piece of 3/4 inch plywood that I'm cutting out into this odd shape I need for the nuts to be individually adjustable and these round collars do that or at least that was the plan before I messed up I actually glued the nuts in before the thing was ready and I had to scrap it and make a new one and that's the reason why it looks different in the end next I can get the rest of the moving jaw parts glued and clad together and then when that's dry I can glue on the solid wood caps the last assembly step is to thread the nuts on to the lead screws and I'm going to hand tighten these with spacer blocks in the jaws of the Vice and what that does is it keeps the jaws parallel while I line up and glue the nut collars to the nuts and it's important to push the collar up tight and even so that it sits flat on the washer and ism' wobble as the lead screw turns I let the glue dry overnight before screwing on the nut collars and to do that I'm using four in each one and the purpose of these collars is to allow me to make adjustments if the jaws ever go into parallel then all that's left is to install the handles and to mount the vise on my workbench all right Showtime I get to see how it actually works and it's not bad I have to admit that it's a little bit stiff but I'm sure that'll loosen up after I use it a few times and if you're interested in building one of these yourself I have plans available on my website the link to those is at the end of this video and also in the description my plans are step-by-step and easy to follow and my projects are always designed to use commonly available materials and hardware so you won't have to buy anything special [Music]

Channel: John Heisz - I Build It

Views: 1,124,325

Rating: 4.8663468 out of 5

Keywords: woodworking, how to, diy, jpheisz, ibuildit, project, vise, gear vise

Id: LnbY0eHZ0CY

Length: 12min 30sec (750 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 13 2019