Pseudo-Fractal Vise Jaws

[pontiac428]

I usually don't watch random carp on YouTube, but this video came to my email inbox so I decided to pay the 5 minute ante and watch it. I'm glad I did, this pseudo- fractal vise jaw design has a lot of merits and is easy to do with stuff already laying around the shop. Dude's techniques are crude yet fundamental; I think that's on purpose to demonstrate the concept over the methodology. I don't know where this guy learned to operate a hand file, but it's easy to let that slide when you see the finished result. It opened my mind to another type of fixture for the bench or mill, and I have plenty of old timing gears. I guess even a blind YT-hating hog like me finds a few acorns.

 

[woodchucker]

I'll have to watch, but I don't think I will ever make one.

 

[pontiac428]

Here is a true fractal fixture.

 

[Shotgun]

I like those sort of videos more than the ones that demonstrate yet again how to do single point threading, but that one doesn't seem very useful.
He turned the width of the gripping jaws into a 3 point grip. The grip is still linear, and won't conform to an odd shape (as noted when he gripped the pliers). If he mounted two jaws on an angle half the width of the jaws, and used two on each side of the vice, with a pivot in the middle, I think he'd have had a winner.

 

[Shotgun]

Also note that on a real fractal vice, once a jaw makes contact with the part, it only moves in the plane of the movable vice jaw. His has to slide along the part to settle. The additional pivot would have rectified that.