I Need To Build A Milling Vise. Best Kind To Make????

[ih8beingold]

Originally I had planned to save up and buy a nice milling vise. I have been getting by with a drill press vise and I am at the point where I have had it. Between breaking end mills, wasting valuable material, and now ruining my only dovetail cutter, I NEED to do something asap. Embarrassingly my finances are limited and at my age and level of education I have accepted the fact that my life is what it is. So instead of moaning, I'd like to fix the situation by building a descent usable vise, and using it as a learning experience as well. If you were going to build one, which style would you build?? I have a mill drill and the table is about 8" x 20 something. So if anybody has ideas , pictures or just a helpful comment (good or bad), I'd really appreciate hearing them. I'm wide open to any ideas. Please keep in mind I have only a crappy vise to use to build a good vise. Chicken and the egg thing. LOL Thank you.

 

[JimDawson]

I guess if I were in your position I would build a Kurt style vice. A 4 or 5 inch would be about right for your mill. The design is pretty simple and can be duplicated on a milling machine. With a little creative thought about setups and design, you could do most of it by clamping the parts to the table rather than using your current vice.

It would be a bit of a project, and we would love to see pictures of your progress.

 

[Terrywerm]

Ditto on the photos!

Sent from my SM-G360T using Tapatalk

 

[KMoffett]

Jim,

Looking at your list of machine resources and ih8beinggold's, I don't see that building-over-buying is even a choice for him (?). Mill vices are about as important as the mill itself. I doubt that he can make a vise that is even as precision as his mill-drill. You can pick up used Kurt or import clone vises for some very reasonable prices on eBay or Craig's Lists. They should be very suitable for a mill-drill.

Ken

 

[T Bredehoft]

PM (Matt) has some 4" for somewhat less than $100, that are not at all bad.

 

[francist]

Well, I guess if I were to try building one I might try one like this. I think it's absolutely gorgeous.

-frank

 

[JimDawson]

Jim,

Looking at your list of machine resources and ih8beinggold's, I don't see that building-over-buying is even a choice for him (?). Mill vices are about as important as the mill itself. I doubt that he can make a vise that is even as precision as his mill-drill. You can pick up used Kurt or import clone vises for some very reasonable prices on eBay or Craig's Lists. They should be very suitable for a mill-drill.

Ken

Ken, you are proabaly right. If one had to buy the materials new, I suspect that they might cost more than a good used or maybe even a new import mill vice. Then there is the cost of just the expendable tooling. It would be possible to build a vice on a mill drill, but it would be a time consuming task and require a lot of very careful setups.

 

[Superburban]

Jim,Mill vices are about as important as the mill itself. I doubt that he can make a vise that is even as precision as his mill-drill. You can pick up used Kurt or import clone vises for some very reasonable prices on eBay or Craig's Lists. They should be very suitable for a mill-drill.

Ken

I agree. About a year ago, I picked up a near perfect Enco 5" vise for around $100 including shipping. Recently, I picked up a 5" no name with a few dings, for $60 including shipping.

 

[Uglydog]

Have you tried carefully placed hold downs?
Much cheaper than a vice.
Take a alot longer to set up. However, there are things you can do with hold downs you will never fit in a vise.

Daryl
MN

 

[astroracer]

I just found this one at an Antique store last Friday... $35 dollars.

I finished cleaning and refinishing it this morning. Best 35 dollars I've spent in a long time.

What I am getting at here is look around. There are a ton of these vises out there. CL and Auctions are good places to find them also.
Mark