How do they make this vise?

Your right Mac, they have right and left hand threads on them.

Have fun and take care Leo Van Der Loo

Hey Mac, think double thread turnbuckles. With guy wires used to support screen doors and sagging gates. Early 'universal chucks' used them in faceplate grooves to move & adjust dogs, aka jaws. Also for tightening mast shrouds on sailboats and to adjust some chainsaw chains, etc, etc. etc. :)

Turn to Safety, Arch Fortiter

I'm don't have an answer for you (though others do), but I question their claim that you can drill consistently on centre just because you can hold the workpiece under the centre of the bit. I find that the grain often deflects my annoyingly flexible bits after all my careful positioning. I wonder if there's a jig like this that comes with a sturdy drill guide, too.

- Owen -

A while back I thought I would save money and make some handscrew clamps. I allowed I would purchase some left hand thread rod and some regular thread rod and weld them together , fashion left and right dowel pins and have cheap handscrew clamps right? Wrong, the price of left hand allthread thru McMasterCarr and others is ridiculous. Not one of my better ideas. :-( FWIW I never did locate a source for a left hand tap. I know they are out there, I just couln't find them. For Mac, maybe Bill Noble can crank out a couple of left/right threaded rods for us. It looks to me like a center finder from Grainger or similiar would be in order to set it up quickly. I bet after it is set up, every hole would be dead on as long as there was no play in the threads or washers, regardless of diameter or squareness of stock. Bill Noble, I am putting my order in early.............if you make a rod for Mac make one for me also.:-) Leo, thanks for confirming what I beleived I knew about how this vise works! Good luck Lyndell

I got one of these vices. It works pretty well provided the blanks are pretty much square once you get it set up. It definitely makes drilling a bunch of them easier.

Brian

Hi Owen

Getting to start the drill in the center is not that hard, just get yourself a centering drill bit, they are not expensive, but you do have to change bits. Here's a link, so you can have a look.

Mac

maybe a light saber.. *g*

I find that I tend to put too much pressure on the drill and not back out to clear chips often enough... the best 2 ways that I know to make the bit wander...

It's bad enough having a 7mm bit wander, but I drill 6" long holes with an 1/8" bit and it's almost impossible to drill those suckers straight... (and drilling from both ends is worse..

Mac

I ordered a couple of left hand dies today, Lyndell... but I don't need them now, since I have a shopsmith.. lol

I was thinking that there must be an easy way to bring vise jaws toward center like a lathe or drill press chuck, and realized that I just bought a Morse taper with threads for my chuck on it..

Since I'm drilling the blanks on the shopsmith in horizonal DP mode, I just put the taper and chuck in the tailstock and moved the headstock unit down to that end.. works great!

Mac

That's a major thing I've learned in the couple of months that I've been doing pens... that the blanks have to be square.. I have a setup or the band saw to trim the blanks, even the "professional" ones... I run them through twice and their squared..

Mac

getting a good start with a center drill will help a lot with keeping the drill straight. it's a bit of a pain to change bits twice for each hole, but it does help.

especially on something like a 2" long hole that you're doing several of (pen blanks) and have to do one per shot, as opposed to a sliding row where you can drill the 1st hole in each and slide the row back for the 2nd hole.. Mac