# Fixed a Chinesium Vice



## Shotgun (Jul 23, 2021)

We've talked about these cheap chinese vices that you get off eBay for $100, ad infinitum.  Yeah, they suck. . . 

except when they don't!!!

I took mine apart today.  I had measured the moveable jaw lift before at 1.5thou.  I measure it by putting an approximately 2" round bar in the vice and then clamping down on it with an indicator on the moveable jaw.  What I did was to remove the large "ball bearing cut in half" from the moveable jaw and polished it with a 2000 grit sponge pad under running water. I'm telling you, I made the thing shine.  Then I took a grinding ball that came with the dremel tool pack, and cleaned up the pocket that the "ball bearing cut in half" lives in.  You can't get in there very well, so I just sort of ran it around until the casting roughness was gone.  Cleaned it all up, put a gob of molybdenum grease in the socket, and stuck the half ball back in.

Then I turned my attention to the ram,  Clean up the edges with a small file.  They were kind of sharp.  Then filed the angled surface that engages the half ball until it was smooth.  It had a sort of ridge in the middle.  I kept going at it, pressure through the file into the center of the angle, until it felt really smooth.  Spread some of the grease that had squeezed from under the half ball onto the face, then put it all back together.

Clamped that heavy sucker back onto the mill and put the 2" round back in.  This time the moveable jaw DROPPED about 4 thou as I cranked down on it.  I figured I had screwed something up and got a bad reading, so I backed it off, and went at it again.  It dropped the SAME 4 THOU!!!

It ain't a Kurt.  It will never be a Kurt.  But, it's mine and it's working!

Word to the wise:  Chinesium is never a finished product.  It is a kit at best.  For the Kurt look-alike vices being sold right now, take it apart and file the ram perfectly smooth, polish the half-ball, and clean out the pocket it lives in.  Then I think you'll be happy with the money spent.


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## MrWhoopee (Jul 23, 2021)

My vise came with the mill and I know nothing about its history. I just recently gave it a cursory check. Nothing intense, just a few .0005 indicator passes over the jaws and bed after stoning off any irregularities. Every thing was surprisingly good, but what really caught my attention was that the moving jaw pulled down .0005 under pressure.


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## graham-xrf (Jul 24, 2021)

I don't know, but I am guessing that 0.004" drop, and for @MrWhoopee 's case 0.0005" drop is an intentional and desirable design feature that will drag down on the surface it contacts, to have the work snug up better to any parallel (or whatever) under it?

I have not yet taken a machinist vise apart, so I am unsure what the "ball bearing cut in half" part looks like.


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## WobblyHand (Jul 24, 2021)

It's literally a ball bearing sliced nearly through it's diameter.  To make mine used a pipe with 0.485 ID, pushed in a 0.500 ball bearing and pushed the assembly into a belt grinder.  Made the flat.


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## Shotgun (Jul 24, 2021)

graham-xrf said:


> I don't know, but I am guessing that 0.004" drop, and for @MrWhoopee 's case 0.0005" drop is an intentional and desirable design feature that will drag down on the surface it contacts, to have the work snug up better to any parallel (or whatever) under it?
> 
> I have not yet taken a machinist vise apart, so I am unsure what the "ball bearing cut in half" part looks like.



Yes, @graham-xrf , you got it in one.  Mine was raising when I clamped down.  So you go to the trouble of setting an item up on parallels, give it a good tap to seat it, and then the vice pushes it out of place.  Now, the device will pull it down to where you were trying to get it to be.


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## jeffmaxwell_amarillo (Jul 24, 2021)

Thanks--I will give that method a try on my "precision" chinese vice.


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## WobblyHand (Jul 24, 2021)

jeffmaxwell_amarillo said:


> Thanks--I will give that method a try on my "precision" chinese vice.


Good luck with it.  I tried with mine - it did get better, but wasn't great.  Reduced the lift some.  Maybe I need more patience to work on the nut some more.  Found it awkward.


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## graham-xrf (Jul 25, 2021)

WobblyHand said:


> It's literally a ball bearing sliced nearly through it's diameter.  To make mine used a pipe with 0.485 ID, pushed in a 0.500 ball bearing and pushed the assembly into a belt grinder.  Made the flat.


Ahh - got it now. I got scrambled on the word order "ball bearing" vs "bearing ball".
Oops!  

I have a vise still to be unpacked that is similar in style to the one in the picture.




With the screw lock at 45° like that, it looks as if it will always "drag down".


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## WobblyHand (Jul 25, 2021)

@graham-xrf, that style vise is a very good value.  They are relatively inexpensive and work very well.  Very low jaw lift.  One thing you may need to watch out for is the bottom edge of the hole in the moveable jaw.  On mine, that edge was very sharp (totally unfinished) and the burr would catch on the screw threads on occasion.  I lost 3 screws in 6 months of use.  


The fix is to ease or radius the edge of the hole by lightly grinding the edge with a dremel stone.  Just went through this recently.


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## mattthemuppet2 (Jul 25, 2021)

I did a similar work through on my Shars 4" vise ($110 I think). Fixing the half ball and wedge made a bit difference. I also made the fixed jaw key fit better and tapped the base for longer bolts for the fixed jaw. Funnily enough I get a little bit of lift from the fixed jaw flexing backwards, but a tap with a dead blow hammer usually fixes that. Other than that it's dimensionally dead on as far as I am able to measure. Pretty good value, even with the extra work.


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## graham-xrf (Jul 25, 2021)

WobblyHand said:


> @graham-xrf, that style vise is a very good value.  They are relatively inexpensive and work very well.  Very low jaw lift.  One thing you may need to watch out for is the bottom edge of the hole in the moveable jaw.  On mine, that edge was very sharp (totally unfinished) and the burr would catch on the screw threads on occasion.  I lost 3 screws in 6 months of use.
> View attachment 373344
> 
> The fix is to ease or radius the edge of the hole by lightly grinding the edge with a dremel stone.  Just went through this recently.
> View attachment 373345


OK - so the very first thing out of the box is to relieve the sharp edge where it might contact the screw (at some angles), like in your previous picture with the yellow pen.

Know that I really value this posting, because this is stuff I don't know. Most of my experience has been with electronics/electrical stuff. I am shortly going to unpack the vise, and get the cosmoline (or whatever) stuff wiped off. It won't be the first time I took something to pieces before even I used it for the first time


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## WobblyHand (Jul 25, 2021)

I didn't know about things like this either - had to learn the hard way!  As you have often heard on HM, a lot of this tooling from low cost countries is missing the finishing touches.  In my case, the sharp edge made contact with the screw threads under some infrequent conditions.  If the sharp edge is radiused, the screw would skate over the edge rather than having the sharp edge engage the threads.  

I had made the issue worse by putting in a slightly longer screw.  I used a 40mm long screw rather than the shorter stock one.  Was always having the screw fall out of the nut with the shorter screw.  That can be a pain when you have trammed your vise and your fat fingers don't fit in the slot of the vise very well.  

You will find this vise is of a very simple construction.  It will be easy to ease the edge.


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## Shotgun (Jul 25, 2021)

graham-xrf said:


> It won't be the first time I took something to pieces before even I used it for the first time


I've come to the determination that modern Chinesium is manufactured so that anything that is visible is finished, and, lately, to a high degree of accuracy.  I have a strong suspicion that the companies there have people watching all the online reviews and revamp their process to address the negatives in the reviews.  However, if something is not obvious to the naked eye, they will cut corners and cut them hard.  

But, in many cases, it only takes a few minutes with a file or grinding stone to clean, smooth, and round off edges.  Silly things like an edge that interferes with a screw, or a ball bearing that doesn't float because the socket it sits in was as cast.  I got ER-32 collets that had 6 thou of TIR, that completely disappeared after I dug the cut shavings out of the slots.

I think setting the expectation that the tool will have to be torn down and finished before it is ever used is a good expectation to have.


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