$0.44 Knife Maker's Vise Tutorial

[Self Made Knives]

A knife maker's vise is probably already on your bench if you've been doing this for very long, but for my fellow newbies, I documented building mine. Maybe it'll help somebody or give you some ideas for your own design. I shot a lot of video too, so I'll post a link to a YouTube video when I'm finished editing it.

First off, this is how I've been doing it so far, and it kind of stunk! I'd clamp blades in a bench vise or add a little vise on top of that, but I was still very limited in work positions.


So, I started off with two pieces of stainless pipe, fairly thick walled. The tubes have about an 1/8" gap, which worked ok, but the tighter fit you get here, the better they'll clamp down without rocking.


My inner tube has an i.d. of 2.125", which should handle any knife I foresee myself making. Here's a typical smaller blade and a 2" wide blade inserted.


Using a piece of angle, scribe a straight line on your smaller tubing and drill and tap a hole on each end. I chose tapping my holes instead of welding nuts on the outside, in case I ever want to take it apart again.


Word of caution here on your design. I'm bad about designing on the fly and made my inner tube 4.75" long and the holes are tapped very close to the ends. I wish I'd made it at least 5" wide. As you'll see later, I made some T-bolts for my clamp screws and if I spin the vise all the way over upside down, the knobs on the T-bolts sometimes interfere with the base. Not a big deal, but just a little extra length would've prevented it.

I wrestled around with how I wanted the inner vise jaws to operate. I knew the top jaw would be fixed to the T-bolts and the same length as the inner tube, but the bottom jaw(s) could be fixed, floating, short, long, etc. I decided on a floating jaw, that would be captured in the vise with notches, but could be easily lifted out and flipped end for end.


Stay tuned, more to come.......

 

[smithy]

Great post...thank you. I'm going to start collecting materials today...

 

[Justin Presson]

Nice WIP I'm tuned in as I desperately need to make one.

 

[Melsdad]

I'm subscribed as well. What I have been using i'm not exactly happy with.

 

[Self Made Knives]

I cut a piece of the larger tubing at 2 1/2" long for the outer section. It has one hole drilled and tapped in the center. I used all 3/8"x16 bolts.


Here's my material for the jaws, both top and bottom. It's a piece of 1/4" mild steel from my scrap box, have no idea where I got it, but it's just right.


After cutting the bar in two, I ground a 45 degree angle on both edges of one end, leaving a tab at the end. This allows the bottom jaw or table to sit down in the tube and lock in place, yet still be able to rotate side to side to accommodate odd shapes. It's not bolted in at all, just free floating and is working great this way.


Not sure if that's making sense, maybe when I get the video finished, it'll be easier to see. Up to this point it's pretty straightforward. The top jaw, however, is where the action is. There's a lot of different ways to work it, but I'll show you the two I considered.

More tomorrow night....

 

[Self Made Knives]

Top jaw, the one you have to make some decisions about. I wanted mine to be able to come apart just in case I ever changed my mind about the design. If you have a milling machine, you may be interested in the way I did it, but first, here's an alternative idea.

Get a couple cupped washers, called Belleville washers, and a couple regular 3/8" washers. After you've threaded your bolt through the tube, slide the cupped washer on then plug weld the 3/8" washer on the end your bolt. Keep or grind the weld flat so it doesn't interfere. Then, tack weld it to the top jaw, on both sides of the cupped washers. This will capture the inner washer and you'll have a spinning stud.


I wanted mine to be removable, so here's "my" way. On my top jaw, I drilled two holes in line with the holes threaded in the inner tube. Seems like they were 1/4", but I don't remember exactly. Then, at the milling machine I milled a pocket about 1/8" deep with a 3/4" endmill.


I chucked my 3/8" bolts into the lathe and turned a shoulder on them, about a 1/4". I wanted them to have a little slop in them, so nothing binds up. A v-groove was turned in the end with a threading tool. I'm sure you could do this without a lathe, just might be a little more time consuming. A 1/4" snap ring and 1/4" washer finishes it off.


I put a 45 degree angle on both sides of top jaw to give it a little more travel. Since it can be taken apart, if I ever need to narrow it, I can take it out and grind it down some more. Wingnuts with a locknut could be your knobs, but they're king of ugly, so I made some better ones later on.


More tomorrow....

 

[Self Made Knives]

Now, you need to decide how you're going to mount this vise. You could just weld a piece of flat stock on the bottom of the outer tube and hold it in your bench vise. You could also weld a piece of heavy wall tubing onto the bottom and hold in your bench vise. But I think a bench mounted base is the way to go.

A short section of the larger tubing welded onto a 1/4" plate makes a good base. Again, drill and tap tubing for set screw. Drill base plate for mounting screws, I drilled for 1/4" bolts here.


Make a fish-mouthed piece of the smaller tubing to weld onto to your center section from earlier. Pick a height that will work well for your bench. I kept mine pretty short because my bench is kind of tall.


Next, I made my knobs a little nicer. I found a piece of round bar in scrap box, looked to be about 1/2" or so. Chopped it up into about 1.25" lengths and rounded the ends on the belt grinder. Then, just weld them on.


Just about done. I had a mix of stainless and mild steel parts, so I sand blasted everything, painted the mild steel parts and buffed the stainless.


Just about done... stay tuned.

 

[Self Made Knives]

One thing I figured out after I finished, the set screw bolts on the outer ring and the base, need to have their ends rounded. If you leave them flat, they walk all over when you tighten them. Make them like the one on the left.


Next, I glued rubber to the insides of both jaws with construction adhesive. The rubber is from a freebie treadmill that I made a tumbler with, and I kept the belt for other projects. It's pretty tough stuff. I cut clearance holes on the top piece to clear the pockets with a 3/4" forstner bit.


That's pretty much it, it's built. Now you have to decide how/where you're going to mount it. I used 1/4" T-nuts, the ones with the spikes on them. After drilling holes in my bench, I pulled them into the backside of the bench where they'll stay.


I'm holding the vise down with a couple of brass thumb screws I found in my parts bin. Just using two of them, finger tight on opposite corners is more than enough to hold it down.


I made 3 places on my bench that the vise can be mounted. The one on top will probably be the most used. Another is on the face of the bench, in case I need to work on the pommel of a long knife. And a third, down low on one of the bench legs. This one is low enough I can sit in a regular chair instead of a stool and it'll probably be where the vise is stored when not in use.


I'll post one more, tomorrow, showing the vise in use and a neat trick I discovered for drilling holes in handle material.

 

[murphda2]

Nice design and very well put together tutorial.

 

[Self Made Knives]

My idea with the bottom jaw being removable works pretty well, you can lift it out and swap it end for end. You could also just loosen the knob on the base and spin the whole thing around just as easily. But, the advantage of being able to swap the bottom jaw is that you can control which side the knobs are on. I've noticed when I use a file, since I'm right handed, I tend to prefer the knobs to be on the left side so they don't interfere with the file. If you had to spin the whole thing, the knobs might be in your way sometimes.


Here's another use for the vise I discovered right after putting it in service. The knife I'm currently working on is going to have bone scales. Before this, I've used micarta and wood for scales, but since they were so flat it wasn't a problem to drill holes. The bone, however, is round on one side. I disc sanded the inside perfectly flat, but I couldn't think of a way to get the outsides flat and parallel to the insides.


So, after clamping one of the scales in position in the vise, just take it from the bench over to the drill press. Assuming your drill press table is level, or in my case I used my milling machine, you can use the vise and it's adjustments to level the knife blank for drilling your pins. I've got a floor model import drill press too, but when I'm after precision, I turn to the mill. It's an old JET, smaller machine, but is 1000% more accurate than the drill press.


After I drilled through for one scale, I repeated for the other. I won't say it was dead nuts perfect, but it was pretty darn close. I was able to put three 1/8" pins through pretty easily.

I'll post a YouTube link on here in the next day or two that will follow this post pretty closely, maybe if something wasn't clear on here, it'll be better on the video. I'll also give you peek into a building a freebie blasting cabinet on the video. So, to wrap it up, I guess I lied to you with the title of the thread. I called it the $0.44 vise, but in reality, it actually cost me $0.46 to build it.
The only thing I bought new, were two snap rings. I had a few in my junk box, but they just weren't small enough. Every other single thing in this project was from my scrap box, except the tubing. I found that in my brother in law's scrap box! Good luck with yours.

 

[Justin Presson]

Nice job!

 

[Self Made Knives]

Finally took the time to stitch together a video of this project. Seems like it came out kind of long, maybe I need to talk faster, or talk less? Anyway, maybe it'll you out.
[video=youtube_share;GHPRIOgFw68]http://youtu.be/GHPRIOgFw68[/video]

 

[Self Made Knives]

Hey, guys, wanted to update you on the knife vise tutorial/video I put out a last month. In full disclosure, after using it for a while, I have found one design decision that I would recommend against. Not a big deal, especially if your tubes nest tightly with each other, but mine are a little loose.

In the video mainly, I discussed putting the outer tube clamping T-bolt over at 45 degrees, instead of centering it on the top. While it does feel very convenient at this location, I see now why everyone puts it in the center. If your tubes have a little play, gravity keeps the inner tube centered in the bottom. When you bring a clamp in at 45 degrees, the tube has a tendency to lift and rock over a little until it meets the opposite wall.

Again, not a big deal, just want to warn you that you might rather keep it at top dead center. It doesn't bug me enough to change mine, but if I were to do it again, I'd change.

 

[coldsteelburns]

Great tutorial man, thanks for taking the time to share it! I actually just watched your vid on YT yesterday and now I happen come across it all nicely laid out on here, this will be a great reference :thumbup1:

~Paul

---

My YT Channel Lsubslimed

 

[Self Made Knives]

Thanks for the comment. This little vice has turned out to be the center of my knife making, I've already spent quite a few hours sitting in front of it. At first, I would take it off the bench and stow it out of the way, but lately, seems like I need it so often, I don't ever take it off the bench.