Extremism in the Pursuit of Manliness is no Vise

April 18th, 2016

Apologies to Whomever

I’ve been fiddling around with the Moxon-style vise I made for my workbench.

A Moxon vise is, of course, named after Mr. Moxon, and it’s just a board with two holes, two threaded rods, and two handwheels. The rods go through the board, the wheels go on the rods outside the board, and when you tighten them on the rods, the board squeezes stuff against your workbench.

The photo will make it obvious.

You can buy a kit to make a Moxon vise, but that would be lame, so I had to make one from scratch. That meant buying rod with Acme threads on it, and it meant putting inside threads on a couple of cast-iron wheels. I blogged about that already.

I was not all that happy with the threading. I made my own tool to do it, and it worked, but I was learning, so I did not do a great job. The wheels functioned, but not like they should have. I resolved to do it over, and I got new wheels.

One day I saw a good deal on an Acme 3/4-6 tap on Ebay, and I got weak and bought it. Tapping is much easier than single-point threading. Instead of using a lathe to do a million spiral cuts inside your work, you drill a big bore and tighten the tap into it. Threads done.

I got the tap and bored it out to about 0.590″, which–I cannot stress this enough–is the bore size I got after looking in numerous places.

Later I found out the correct figure is 0.610″, unless my current sources are also wrong. This would explain why my first two wheels weren’t right. I was starting with a bore that was too small, so even if the raised threads were right, the valleys between them would not want to go through the wheels.

But to get back to the tap, I stuck the wheel on the lathe and turned everything by hand, and it was a horror. The tap just did not want to turn. It was horrendous labor.

I got it partway in and decided to move the work to the drill press, and I rigged it up so I could turn the tap with two wrenches.

When I was finally done, I pulled the tap out and found that I had created a really big bore with no threading inside it.

Here is the funny part. The Ebay ad said the tap was a “stub Acme” tap. I figured, “Okay, that means it’s not a long tap.”

The 0.001% of my readers who know what stub Acme means are laughing really hard right now. The rest will Google the term and pretend they knew. Stub Acme is a type of thread used on hollow tubes. The threads are shallow. That means you have to start with a way-bigger hole. If not…smooth bore.

There is one nice thing about stub Acme. A stub Acme internal thread will work okay with a regular Acme external thread. You can thread a stub Acme nut on an Acme screw. Just don’t apply too much pressure, because there isn’t a whole lot of contact.

It works okay for a Moxon vise, so I was able to do another wheel and combine it with the better of my single-point wheels and come up with a vise that works. My plan for the future is to get two more wheels, bore them to 0.610″, and single-point thread them. But that can wait.

My vise is a little weird. Typically, a Moxon vise doesn’t open far, and the rods are fixed in place. Because they don’t go in and out of the bench, you don’t want them to stick out too far. They get in your way. I thought that was silly, so I fixed my screws so they could be screwed in and out of the bench. That means I can get an object maybe a foot wide into the vise, and when I’m done, the screws go back in.

The big problem with this is that turning the oily screws in and out by hand is not fun.

Today I fixed that. My original plan was to mill hex ends on the screws and use wrenches to turn them, but I decided to try something easier. I drilled two holes in the ends of the screws, perpendicular to their axes. Now when I want to move the screws in or out, I pop an Allen wrench in the holes and use it as a tommy bar. Simple and relatively cool.

If you really want a superior wood vise, get a Record or something similar. For a hundred-odd bucks you can get something really nice. But the Moxon is fun, and it has a very long jaw, which can be a plus.

I will put up a photo of the vise so you can see what I did.

04 18 16 moxon vise screw with hole for tommy bar reduced

One day I will get out of denial and do another project: a woodworking bench with a welded metal base. Woodworkers love wooden benches, but the reality is that metal is better. It’s way lighter. You can put a wooden top on a metal frame and save tons of work and weight.

My current bench probably weighs 300 pounds with the mechanic’s vise removed. It has a pleasantly solid feel, but hey, there’s a reason mankind started building things out of steel. If I make a steel base, it will be easy to put wheels on it. There will be more room under it to store stuff. I can simply replace the wooden top whenever it falls apart.

Woodworkers will excommunicate me. You know how people are.

Here’s a video of a surprisingly calm and likable Jamie Hyneman making the case for metal. He seems less irritable without his partner. That makes sense. I can see how dealing with Adam Savage would be like having a live squirrel turned loose inside your clothes.

2 Responses to “Extremism in the Pursuit of Manliness is no Vise”

  1. WB Says:

    I like the idea of the metal tables. Especially the part where it expands into a wider table when you need it. Having the square metal tubes stockpiled is a great idea. I’m guessing that his welders were mostly 220v, but I don’t think he ever said–except for the battery portable one.

    So much to do and so little time.

  2. WB Says:

    So since your vice actually screws into the table instead of remaining outside of the bench, wouldn’t that make it an Oxymoxon?

    I crack myself up. . .