# Shaper 2 piece Vise



## ErichKeane (Jun 2, 2020)

So, I picked up a shaper about 2 weeks ago, and it didn't come with a vise.  Apparently the factory ones are extremely expensive if they ever become available, and they also manage to take up a bunch of vertical space, which is at a premium with a 7" shaper (Atlas 7B).

SO, I decided to just make a 2 piece vise!  i don't see myself needing the rotating base much (the one on my mill stays under a layer of chips behind the mill!), and I thought I'd like to have the room back.

First, I had to make some T-nuts, all 5/16-18.  This went alright, except I cut out 4 and broke a tap off in 1.  I ended up having to re-mill a whole new one, which was a pain.




Then I made the Fixed-end-bars.  They are 6" long, about .600 thick.  The mounting holes are drilled just over 5/16, and counterbored for the bolts for the T nuts.  I think they were 4.5" apart.  The center hole on the near side is threaded 1/2-13, and has two holes for guides at 3" apart.  This was my first time making chips (just after this!) since I finally had a vise!  I ended up facing the soft-jaws with this tool as well, but I used a block of wood as a sacrificial part.



And I finally finished it today, more than a week later.  The guides took forever to get here thanks to UPS.  The 'movable' jaw is another piece of unknownium steel, with a dimple made at the midpoint (for the tension bolt), and also has 1/2" holes reemed through.  

The guides themselves are 1/2 303 stainless bearing shaft, that claims to be undersized .0005 to .0015.  I bought 2 feet of it, but ended up only using 1, both are 6" (to support my laziness in deciding to not move the fixed jaw ).  This make for a nice slide fit in my holes.  The ends of the shafts are drilled/tapped for 5/16-18 and are soft-jaw bolt mounts   They are currently held in place with bearing-retaining loctite, which seemed to hold well enough.

The soft jaws are aluminum and were done on the shaper (with some help from the bandsaw). They ended up being perhaps a little thick, but the only way to fix that is likely to switch to lower profile socket-head-cap-screws.  They are a little rough, since I used that 'pointed' shaped tool that came with the machine to cut them out, so they have little bit of a 'ridged' texture.










AND, if you care to watch, a little of it working with my new tool grind.  I got some 1/4" HSS in the other day, so ground a bit to see how it works.  The finish is a little 'streaky', but feels baby-butt smooth!
View attachment VID_20200602_155048.mp4

View attachment VID_20200602_155224.mp4

View attachment VID_20200602_155602.mp4


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## benmychree (Jun 2, 2020)

If you have trouble with chatter, turn the tool holder around.


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## ErichKeane (Jun 2, 2020)

benmychree said:


> If you have trouble with chatter, turn the tool holder around.



So I've heard!  I've only cut aluminum so far, which it seems to have no problem wtih.


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## Hawkeye (Jun 3, 2020)

For heavy cuts, you might want to make a set of bars out of 1 1/2" square steel. Keep the T-nuts closer to the work piece. One reason shaper vises are expensive is that they have to stand up to a lot of stress.

Nice solution to the missing vise.


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## Ulma Doctor (Jun 3, 2020)

shapers are the coolest tool in the shop


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## Buffalo21 (Jun 3, 2020)

Ulma Doctor said:


> shapers are the coolest tool in the shop



My great uncle always said “you can make anything with a shaper, but money”


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## ErichKeane (Jun 3, 2020)

Buffalo21 said:


> My great uncle always said “you can make anything with a shaper, but money”


I've definitely heard that one before  

One of the things I've found that is nice, is that the machine is slow enough that you can 'leave it alone' for a few minutes while you do something else, a lot like a horizontal band saw.  Facing in particular is one of them.  

For example, despite being last on my list of things to do for this project, the soft-jaws were completed pretty darn early in the process, since as soon as I had my 2 fixed jaws built, I could just let it run on facing the piece of aluminum while I was working on the moving jaw.  

Other than the mounting holes (made on the mill), the soft jaws were completely 'hands off' tools, I squared up a large block of aluminum, faced all sides, bandsawed it in half, then cleaned up those cut sides, all in the 'background'.  It was pretty nice!


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## Lo-Fi (Jun 3, 2020)

Love it! 

Can you make up some kind of block that clamps into the centre T slot to give the fixed jaw some support in the middle? Tricky around the screw, I know. 

I noticed that the enormous shaper that Fireball tool has uses twin screws on the vise. Would work on your setup and you could use a standard fixing to the centre slot. Extra clamping force and rigidity can only be good!


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## ErichKeane (Jun 3, 2020)

Lo-Fi said:


> Love it!
> 
> Can you make up some kind of block that clamps into the centre T slot to give the fixed jaw some support in the middle? Tricky around the screw, I know.
> 
> I noticed that the enormous shaper that Fireball tool has uses twin screws on the vise. Would work on your setup and you could use a standard fixing to the centre slot. Extra clamping force and rigidity can only be good!



I had actually considered using all 3 T-slots on both parts and designing it so that it used 2 bolts instead of 1.  However, I REALLY wanted to use as big of guides as I could (to stop binding), and it made fitting everything pretty difficult.

That said, I'm pleasantly surprised with the clamping force/holding force.  While I'm sure that I could make the t-nuts move with the screw, I don' think the machine itself has sufficient power to do so.  

The only downside I've found so far is that the chips get into the T-slots since there is no vice in the way!  I've considered making a 'base plate' for the vise, but at the moment cleaning out the T-slots seems easy enough.


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## ErichKeane (Jun 10, 2020)

So I used this quite a few times, and I discovered some short-comings with it.  Mostly, the jaw lift on it is annoyingly large.  It is fine with the jaws perpendicular to the ram, but when parallel I need to extend the moving jaw so much it lifts quite a bit.  I guess the 1/2" rod is just flexing more than I'd like it to.

I've decided to buy a vise-shaped-object (https://www.ebay.com/itm/264266308467) and make some significant modifications to it.  I'll likely try to shorten it as much as possible by reducing the height of the swivel base and the bottom of the vise itself.  It says its ~2.75" tall, it would be nice to get that down closer to 2.25 inches if at all possible.  I might also take some of the edge flanges off of it to minimize the footprint where not necessary.

The only actual ebay review is clearly that this isn't a very accurate piece of equipment, but I have a surface grinder for exactly that reason


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## f350ca (Jun 10, 2020)

My Logan came with a Palmgren drill press vice. It worked amazingly well. Low profile and don't remember it having much vice lift.
See this one is made in China so may not be as good quality, no idea where mine was made.
https://www.grainger.com/product/PALMGREN-Drill-Press-Vise-41GP28?

Greg


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## ThinWoodsman (Jun 10, 2020)

ErichKeane said:


> Mostly, the jaw lift on it is annoyingly large.



Did you try the ol' drill rod workaround? Put a piece of drill rod (I use drill blanks, usually 3/16 or 1/4) between the workpiece and the movable jaw. Should cut down on the lift.
The vise that came with my Ammco had a *lot* of lift, which I eventually tracked down to the moveable jaw plate not fully seating (buncha swarf and old oil solidified in the bottoms of the thread). It's still not a great vise, though. Tempted to just replace it with a toolmaker's vise.


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## ErichKeane (Jun 10, 2020)

ThinWoodsman said:


> Did you try the ol' drill rod workaround? Put a piece of drill rod (I use drill blanks, usually 3/16 or 1/4) between the workpiece and the movable jaw. Should cut down on the lift.
> The vise that came with my Ammco had a *lot* of lift, which I eventually tracked down to the moveable jaw plate not fully seating (buncha swarf and old oil solidified in the bottoms of the thread). It's still not a great vise, though. Tempted to just replace it with a toolmaker's vise.


I did not. That's a good idea though... I'll have to try it on my current project. The swivel ability on a vice will be nice too, but it would be great if my 2 part vise was still pretty usable for large things!


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