Need advice on "vice"

Can't tell you what the material is, but should you not be able to replace it, you might try a pair of these:

Upscale wrote:#Can't tell you what the material is, but should you not be able to replace it, you might try a pair of these:

It looks like it's just glued on hardboard (the stuff pegboard is made of). You should be able to get a piece at your local "home center" that you can cut replacements out of. I can't tell by the pics how thick yours is. The stuff available locally is 1/8 and 1/4 inch. I think you'd have to move into fiberboard to get any thicker (or do 2 layers of 1/4 inch).

Ed

You could use cork, Homasote or fiberboard. Homasote might be my first choice as it's cheap enough. You can get it at any local art/ craft store.

Five bills??? No vice is worth $500 :)

Use hardboard (Masonite).

Sheesh, youse guys. Vise. VISE. A $500 VISE is over the top. A $5 VICE is inconvenient, but hardly debilitating.

I've spent $500 or more on many of my vices. Booze, sports, even gambling.

It is an expensive amount to spend on a vise, but a good Wilton will run up in that neighborhood.

Will you be able to use one of those white cutting boards made of hard plastic? It is widely available, cheap, and you should be able to cut and shape it easily.

How about using one of those white cutting boards made of hard plastic? They are widely available, cheaper than wood, and easy to work with.

Andy Tenka

be called now? What you have looks like chip board, or wafer board, whatever you call it. Pine is soft, cheap and 10 times better than chip board.

Interesting. Traditionally, at least in the UK, a hardwood such as beech would be used for this purpose. It would extend about 1/2" beyond the metal, all round, and the metal recessed into it so that there is no risk of edge tools coming in contact with the metal. It should be 1/2" thick, not including the recess, and the grain should be vertical.

Why vertical grain? I can see reason to prefer end grain, butcher block style, for the compressive load between the vise faces. I installed thick horizontal grain faces to extend the vise width. Racking so far isn't a problem. Why vertical grain?

It is the recommendation I read recently in some photocopies I made years ago of some pages from a book which, I think, must have been published by Record tools. (Now part of Irwin). The book has a lot of information about planes, vices, and building work benches etc.

However, if your vice cheeks extend above the metal work (as I described in my post) and you have to hold something like a piece of 2x1 flat, to work on it's broad face, it is held largely by the wood with little metal support behind it. If your grain is horizontal and you put a lot of pressure on, the vice cheeks themselves can split along the grain.

It happened to me a while back and it was only recently when I was looking at these pages, when they turned up in a draw I was going through, I realised why the grain should be vertical.

I can see your reasoning too if you are trying to increase the effective width of the vice and might possibly have something to hold that is held just by the wood.

On the new bench I am working on, the vice cheeks are of substantial plywood, for strength in both directions, faced with hardwood so the hardwood is fully supported.

"Stuart" wrote

Vertical grain, (i.e., "rift", "edge-grain", or "quarter sawn") is more dimensionally stable across the face, and is less like to warp or cup since most of dimensional instability is in thickness, important in a vise.

Oh. *That* vertical grain. Makes sense now.

Most old timers considered "grain" as the most important attribute when choosing wood for a particular purpose. You see evidence of this in most of the older, 19th/early 20th century, literature on woodworking and carpentry.

While not exactly a lost art, or rocket science, most folks today, when faced with choosing fence posts from a stack, would be hard pressed to pick the ideal ones for the job by just looking at the ends, or when siding a house, which grain direction would hold a paint job longer. :)

Are you kidding? They don't about grain anymore on finish carpentry. How many times have I walked through the Lowes or HD cabinet section and seen doors on which the rails and stiles look like different species?

Moot point. They'll all look the same... from the center of the log.