Help mounting bench vise

Forgive the bad ascii art. Is there a "right" way to mount this? Or better yet a "bad" way to avoid doing it. I'm mounting it on the left side of the workbench.

I have a 5" craftsman bench vise and the holes are only symmetric about one axis.

The four holes look like this:

x x

x x

Should I mount the wide end to the edge of the bench or the narrow end?

The funny thing is the rotation is 180deg about an axis like this

x x -------------- limits of rotation x x

rotation 180 deg.

That seems odd as I would want the rotation to be over the edge of the bench and off to either side. But I can only do that if I mount it as above.

This can't be that hard....

Reply to
Polaris
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Reply to
Jim Behning

I recently mounted the same model vice to the front right corner of my workbench. It's oriented so that the 180 deg rotation goes from the vice handle hanging over the right side of the bench, past the point where the vice handle hangs over the front of the bench, to where the vice handle is over the bench to the left of the vice. Not that hard, but I didn't notice that the holes weren't symmetric until after I'd drilled the first set of holes in the bench... Kerry

Reply to
KERRY MONTGOMERY

The only way I have been able to mess up mountiung a vice was when I mounted one so the fixed jaw was behind the edge of the workbench. I could only clamp something 9 inches long or less in a verticle position. Anything longer would hit the bench. You might find the the wider holes are placed closer to the center swivel of the vice to facilitate the fixed jaw being further from the workbench. The back holes are placed further away from the swivel to give you a longer mounting surface.

Reply to
Oughtsix

-06, That makes perfect sense, especially if Craftsman intends the vice to be mounted to the left front corner of the workbench. If the wider holes were mounted next to the front side of the bench, the vice could rotate 180 degrees clockwise, so could be used off the left side of the bench, and could rotate so the jaws were over the bench behind the swivel of the vice. Not so good for mounting the vice at the right front corner of the bench, as then the 180 degree clockwise rotation wouldn't allow using the vice off the right side of the bench. Thanks, Kerry

Reply to
KERRY MONTGOMERY

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