sacrificial mill vise?

One thing I have not seen mentioned in this thread is SOFT JAWS. Replace your hardened vice jaws with ones made of AL. Then hitting the vice jaws is no big deal. Often done intentionally even. Plus they hold the work far enough from the bottom you won't come close to hitting there either.

If you don't know, machine a notch in each jaw to hold the work - no need for parallels. I often make custom jaws for irregular parts.
 
Kinda like these,
82745DCA-8F22-449C-ACF7-2D966BA9D6D1.jpeg

Replaceable soft jaws, someone gave me buckets of these unfortunately only two masters.
 
I made the (missing) jaws on my Bridgeport vise out of 1018 steel bar. They work great, and have been for many years.
 
shooter123456 said:
While I certainly respect the opinions of the two posters before me, and I agree with parts of it, I think my opinion conflicts with theirs.

You don't teach a kid to drive with a Ferrari. They will make mistakes that are inevitable, and it doesn't make sense to screw up expensive equipment if you don't have to.

I have been machine for 4ish years now, and as recently as 3 months ago I have cut into the jaws of my vise. My machine is CNCd and I jogged the Z down instead of jogging the X axis. I don't think I was being careless, I just made a simple mistake. When I first started, I made many more mistakes much more frequently. My equipment was cheap and my mistakes were inexpensive. That is inevitable, and that is how you learn.

Depending on how much the Kurt vise cost and how much disposable income you have, I might consider picking up a cheap one to learn with. I have seen some of those vises going for $1000+. I just picked up some decent 4" vises for $85. If I had a nice Kurt vice 4 years ago, I would park it on a shelf and use one of the cheap ones for a little while until I got the hang of things.

Just my 2 cents.
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kind of why I asked the question. I fully appreciate everyone's comments about being more careful....and to some extent I can appreciate that there is some muscle memory that is developed that helps to be more careful as well. I have an extra $100 for a cheap vise, I dont have the money to to start buying pieces to repair the Kurt.
 
The thing we did not address about being careful is that it is most important to the operator's safety to be careful. You can get hurt, maimed, or killed doing this. A shop full of tools that can burn, poke out eyes, and cause lots of other havoc must be respected. When something in the shop goes bad, we often do not have time to duck. A little bit of extra time and effort can reduce the chances of injury by a very large percentage. "Y'all be careful out there, ya' hear?"
 
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Firstgear said:
....and to some extent I can appreciate that there is some muscle memory that is developed that helps to be more careful as well.
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Sorry, brother, but it ain't muscle memory. It is thinking about where your cutter is going to go, every single time. It takes no more effort to work carefully than it does to work carelessly.
 
I think buying a "sacrificial" vise, or at least considering it to be sacrificial, is setting yourself up for failure. IMHO, you're more likely to be careless if the consequences are inconsequential. And that can bleed over into other aspects of machining. That said, just because a vise only costs $80 and doesn't have the Kurt logo doesn't make it a sacrificial lamb. My mill vise only cost $139, but if I ever accidently customize it, I guarantee you that I will cringe, grimace and most likely utter unkind words for which I will have to apologize to my neighbors with young children. ymmv

Tom
 
Good tools do not "cost"
They PAY.
Buy the best you can afford. I mean we don't marry an ugly sheila, knowing that there is a good chance we'll bugger it up, and get a good one later on. or do we...?
 
THAT'S RIGHT - SOFT JAWS, not an inferior second vise.

Go to monsterjaws.com, where they'll sell you CNC machined aluminum or soft steel jaws for your Kurt at about the same cost as you'd pay for the material alone!
 
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