The Un-Vise

I recently blogged about a small band saw I was given after it was removed from service in another shop (link). I was able to repair its broken vise for holding the stock to be cut, but even in that post, I mentioned that I had plans to improve it. In fact, the inadequacies of the stock vise was the main reason it was replaced by the other shop. This photo of it trying to hold round stock makes it all clear - it is sort of a piece of junk:

You can see how the axis of the force applied by the horizontal screw is far too high, and the floppy clamp plate just sort of leans against the round stock. In use, the workpiece would often spin or tilt, ruining the cut.

I did a good bit of thinking about what I could replace it with, and decided to try something that isn't even a vise. It's a mill table with T-slots, available very reasonably from Little Machine Shop - only $28. I ordered one. In the next photo, the small inset at the top left shows one of the slots. It's obvious why it's called a T-slot, at least if you stand on your head:

A table like this is intended to be used with a clamp set like this, which I already owned:

All the bits in that carrier can be combined in multiple ways to make a very flexible clamping system. All I had to do was to figure out how to incorporate it into the saw. The first step was to make a small platform exactly the same height as the table, to give good support all the way to the blade. Its location was determined by an existing threaded hole that had previously mounted the old vise. I drilled a new hole for matching hardware for the other end:

Once that was in place, I could use my recently completed machinist's clamp (link) to hold the table in place to mark the holes to mount it:

The blue tape shows the location of ribs underneath the saw base, so I could avoid them. However, there were ribs running the other direction too, and I just had to hope, since the mounting holes in the table would determine the location. Inevitably, two of the holes scored a direct hit:

I used an angle grinder to smooth one of the two out so I could mount in that location. It all worked fine.

Once I had that squared away, I was able to make an initial test using some of the clamp hardware. It worked great!

While that could have been sufficient, I wanted a fence to make it easy to align stock, and also to make setting up the clamps easier. I started with some precise measurements of the table. The measurements to the right are the table itself, and those to the left were calculated for five holes - three for mounting, and two for clamp screws:

I laid out the hole locations on my fence stock using machinist's blue. This is a trick that Phil taught me: even though I was using the dials on the mill to precisely locate the holes, having marks too helped me ensure I wasn't making a mistake. Here's the process partway through:

Once that was made, I also needed some rectangular nuts to thread the mounting screws into - a regular hex nut wouldn't work. I cut some pieces from a heavy L-bracket in my scrap box, and squared them up, drilled them and tapped them:

I used a machinist's square to align the fence square to the table, and tightened it down. Then I could finally clamp a piece to the fence and test it:

That worked very well, so it was time to try round stock. For that, I used a long V-block I had previously made. The inset photo at the top left shows the "V":

This setup is extremely flexible. In this photo, I'm using an ordinary drafting triangle to set the cut to 45 degrees, and clamping from both sides to hold it securely:

Of course, I removed the triangle before cutting! A good test for a 45 degree cut is to flip one side and butt it to the other piece. It should make a perfect 90 degree angle. I'd say it worked out just fine:

All in all, this has transformed the usefulness of this saw! It's a little harder to set up, because you have to be aware of the swing of the saw and make sure the clamps aren't in the way. But I'd rather spend a minute setting up the cut and have real success, instead of using a vise that ruins the cut and forces me to scrap the piece and start over. I'm very pleased with my un-vise!