My "Knife" Vise

EdCaffreyMS

EdCaffreyMS

"The Montana Bladesmith"
I decided to start a new thread on this subject, hoping that more folks would see it and possibly benefit from it.

This is the "Knife" Vise that I built, and have been using for many years. I never liked the typical "knife" vises because the only portion of the blade that would fit in them was the tang or blade....with no room for any support material to keep the blade from chattering or flexing.

I built this vise from a piece of 3x3" square tubing, which gives me enough room to work on many different sized items. Often times I need to touch up things after handles are installed, and the extra size of the jaw opening allows me to put a knife handle in, and have it held steady while I do the detailed cleanup.
The jaws are lined with rubber stamping pad from Tandy. The vise rotates both horizontally and vertically (the main body rotates, as well as the base) I also built two other versions of this design....both are in the "hot" shop, and are used to hold blade while I'm using the angle grinder to remove forge scale (NO rubber in those jaws!)

KnifeVise1.jpg


KnifeVise2.jpg


KnifeVise3.jpg


KnifeVise4.jpg

In this pic notice the blade is supported by another piece of steel, which is covered in leather...this keeps the blade from flexing/chattering while I work.

KnifeVise5.jpg

Same thing as above, just a bigger blade and a bigger support
 
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That looks good. Definitely on my short list of equipment to build. What did you use for the bolt that attaches to the two inner plates? It looks like that joint pivots some, great idea.

Charlie
 
The "bolt" is a 1/2" piece of acme threaded rod, the handle is a piece of rebar. I put the acme thread in my lathe, radiused the end of it, the cut a groove about 3/8" from the end.

The upper jaw has a depression drilled about 2/3 the thickness of the material. then I took a heavy 1/2" flat washer and cut it out so that I could compress the washer so that it fit into the groove in the acme thread. Once that was done I screwed the top jaw down tight, then tack welded the edges of the washer to the top jaw....that allows the top jaw to move, and with the rubber jaw pads in place, the jaw will "skew" to hold down odd shapes that are not parallel.

This is about the best pic that I could get of that part....

KnifeViseJaw.jpg
 
Well isnt that the cats meow!!!

Thanks for sharing. I am planning on building a knife vise real soon.
One like this would work very well!!
 
I was always wondering how the jaw attached to the threaded rod.

As a newbie to knife making, this is the one tool I could use the most as the majority of my work is with a file. Looking at them online, they are very pricey and don't have nearly the articulation that your model does.

I'm thinking about building one that has a tab I can clamp in my heavy vise since I don't have a lot of bench space for a dedicated mount.

Thanks for the ideas.
 
Ed,

That looks really cool. It looks like it would solve the flexing issues. My issue is I'm not much of a fabricator, I wonder how much someone would charge me to fabricate something like that? Thanks for helping me visualize this Ed.

Jeff
 
Jeff,

I have never thought about what it would take for me to build one for someone else. I just got the idea one day, when out to the scrap pile, and found what I thought I would need. I did have to make a trip to the store for the acme thread and nut, but otherwise it was about 3 hours of work, and then just letting the paint dry. :)

If your serious about having someone (me) build you one, let me know, and I'll get some figures together for you.
 
Ed,

I am serious, but I think I should wait until I get the workbench in here to see what I have for clearance and workaround space. I don't know for sure if where I need to put it would impact the measurements you would need to come up with. But that vise is a serious consideration on my part because of the manual work I will be doing.

Thanks Ed,

Jeff
 
The captured swivel on the plate is excellent, I have seen so many that just fall free and would tick me off completely.

What made you use acme thread instead of SAE threads?
 
Acme thread is usually much faster than SAE, but the main thing is is is far less apt to gall, or bind form a little grit or gunk. An old C clamp would be a good source for a ready to go piece for this.

Nice clamp Ed. WAY simpler then how I made mine and I like that you can open it way up. Thanks
 
At first I did use an old 1/2"-13 bolt, but the threads wore quickly, and as Slaver mentioned, things started to gall, and wear way too much. I purchased a piece of the acme thread and a few acme nuts at the local farm/ranch store, and things have been good ever since. I also found other good uses for the acme thread in the shop.
 
Necessity is the mother of all inventions, yours is inspired and looks to be just great. I love seeing new tools and hearing how they came about. Congratulations on a job well done.
BTW: I like it!!
Jim
 
Ed, have you considered (I'm sure you have) putting rubber pieces on the "jaws" for putting a finished blade in for handle work? Perhaps they are there and I cant see them...
 
EdCaffreyMS said:
The "bolt" is a 1/2" piece of acme threaded rod, the handle is a piece of rebar. I put the acme thread in my lathe, radiused the end of it, the cut a groove about 3/8" from the end.

The upper jaw has a depression drilled about 2/3 the thickness of the material. then I took a heavy 1/2" flat washer and cut it out so that I could compress the washer so that it fit into the groove in the acme thread. Once that was done I screwed the top jaw down tight, then tack welded the edges of the washer to the top jaw....that allows the top jaw to move, and with the rubber jaw pads in place, the jaw will "skew" to hold down odd shapes that are not parallel.

This is about the best pic that I could get of that part....

KnifeViseJaw.jpg
Click to expand...

Hope this helps,
Jim
 
Hi Dennis!

There are rubber on both top and bottom jaws. What I used was pieces of the black rubber "stamping pad", from Tandy/Leather Factory. It just a 12"x12" piece of hard black rubber that they sell as a pad for stamping leather. At first I applied 3M 77 adhesive to both the steel jaw and the pad....but for whatever reason that just wouldn't work...the pads would come loose after just a few times of clamping something in the vise. I cleaned all the stuff off with acetone and then just used the contact cement that I use for leather....the pads have stayed put ever since. At one time I did try using leather as jaw pads....not a good idea. The leather gets grit and such embedded in it, and sooner or later you scar up a blade or handle.

You hit on the main reason I built the vise like I did....I can insert the blade and work on a handle/guard, or I can insert a knife that already has a handle on it and work on the blade end...it works equally well either way.

I never did like the commercially available "knife vises", simply because they limit you to only inserting a flat piece of steel (the jaws don't haven enough span for me). Most of the ones offered by private parties have the same drawback...which I believe is because most folks look at the commercially available ones, and then try to replicate them.
 
Well that's just plumb neat. Look's like the next, that's right made the top of the list, rainy day project. I think that I even have a donor C clamp with out the pivot pad to use.

The 3M 77 is made to be removable. I use it for attaching patterns for scroll sawing and then use mineral spirits to remove them. There use to be 3 different 3M sprays: 77,88,99 but they call them something else now. I think what you would need here would be the Super Trim Adhesive, aka99, but not as good as contact cement;)
 
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