Vice

[Bcone1381]

I will need to get a vice in the near future. I recently began scratch building a Patrol, and wondering what a resonable home workshop set up for EAB aircraft ought to have. I don't even know how big of a vice I should get. Four inch jaws? Is four inch opening big enough?

Should it swivel?
New or Used?

I have looked at Wilton's website, and see too many choices. If you have some advice, I would be grateful.

[N3UW]

For a vice I got the same one that DesertBearhawk suggested. If you go back to the fall of 2013 or so on his facebook page he talks about it

http://www.facebook.com/desertbearhawk/

Beyond that this is what I used the most so far. I am only doing aluminum work so I do not have ANY steel working tools listed.

- A good router that you can fit into a table. I built my own table. You will also need a good solid carbide spiral router bit. Search this site for good suggestions. Amazon.com is a good place to buy.
- A good pair of heavy tin snips for the aluminum
- I good set of files and deburring tools. Sources like Avery tools, Cleavland Aircraft Tools, Aircraft Tool supply, Panamerican tool, Yardstore etc are good sources.
- A good 1/4" air drill. I personally like the small Sioux but other less expensive will work.
- Drill press
- Hole cutter (fly cutter version)
-
- harbor freight dead blow hammer for forming ribs
- harbor freight C clamps to clamp spars for assembly
- misc wood working tools to make forms
- rivet guns and sets. I like a 2X and 4X. Some do everything with a 3x. Again I like Sioux but they are pricey
- auto center punch
- pin punches to drive out bad rivets (No.....I never have any of those!!!!
- Hand riven squeezer with rivet sets
- Bucking bars. I use a tungsten bar (something like 3/4" x 1" x 3") for almost everything but a few steel bars are also good.
- Drill bits (Bunch of #40,41,30,31,20,21. ALso some 12" #40 and #30 bits). I get these by the pack from Pan American tools
- boelube to extend drill bit life.
- some type of sheet metal brake. I have a 48" boxbreak but benchtop units can work for some stuff. For the spars I had a sheet metal shop bend them.
- A good air compressor. I would spend some money for a good one here. I located mine outside my shop so it is not so loud all the time. Look at the air flow you will need. Painting will take a lot. Die grinders and sand blasting take a lot. Drills are medium users. Rivet guns do not use much.
- Clecos lots and lots of silver a bunch of copper and a few blacks. A few long reach clecos are nice. I would HIGHLY recommend the air cleco gun from Pan American along with the manual pliers. See if you can borrow the clecos for a fellow builder when he is finished.
- C frame or DRDT2 for dimpling skins. You can make a C frame. I REALLY like the DRDT2.

Nice to have items
- stationary sanders
- band saws
- angle air drills
- metal cutting band saw.


A lot of the tools depend on what you want to build, how much you are willing to spend and how much your time is worth. I love tools so I go a bit overboard sometimes. I like to be very efficient with my time. I do love building but I do not want it to go on for ever.

[Battson]

Drinking is a pretty common vice. I suggest you start there, and work your way up.

[sjt]

I also followed desert bearhawk suggestion. I purchased it last year

http://www.sears.com/craftsman-6-in-bench-vise/p-00951856000P?redirectType=SKIP_LEVEL

at the time it was on sale for $60

[S Lathrop]

Buy the biggest and heaviest one you can afford. 6 inch should be considered minimum. I would recommend 8". Expect $300 min and more like $500.

You are going to use the vise to form a lot of parts and it will serve as a press.

When you get to the fuselage, you will really be glad you have a proper vise.

I would recommend that you build a stout stand and bolt it down to the garage floor.

[Bcone1381]

Is this the Craftsman others are happy with?

I also uploaded two vises Yost has available. Give me some feed back on them. The Yost Vises are both made of Ductile Iron. The Craftsman is Cast Iron.

[jaredyates]

In the hangar I used a very similar vice to the red one, though mine was an Irwin brand and is painted blue. The flat anvil section proved useful for several tasks, and in one instance I drilled a 3/16" hole in it so that I could insert a rivet set. I used a hammer to form the shop head while the round head sat in the set. I put a radius on the top edges of the jaws with a file, and also dulled the vertical surface of the jaws with a file, to make them less damaging to parts. They still have plenty of holding power.

In my home workshop I have an imported "wilton" branded copy of the other style that you posted. It has the lower jaws for clamping pipe, though I wonder if they would be much use on our thin wall 4130. I would think the tubing would be too easy to crush and/or dent with those type of jaws. They would be most handy for dealing with something heavy like black pipe, and there may be cases where being able to rotate the main jaws could be useful, though the vice is larger and heavier overall. I got both of my vices from the local big box store and paid around $80 each if I remember correctly. The blue coating is coming off of the home vice, but it still works just fine. The Irwin gets surface rust on the anvil, but when that matters I just knock it off with a scotch brite disk in the die grinder and wipe on some oil.

I never have gotten much value from the "buy as much as you can afford" tool advice. The same advice comes about compressors, paint guns, drills, and everything else. There are tools that can get the job done, and there are always nicer tools. With a fixed total budget, the more you spend on tools, the less you'll spend on materials, parts, and gas. I didn't mind investing more if the extra cost was going to greatly expedite a task, make a task much safer, or much more comfortable; but in many cases you can spend lots more and not see gains in those areas. I have to wonder if a vice is a case where there is little to gain from the expensive options. Generally, if you buy the really expensive tools, you might be able to pass them along to your heirs, assuming the tools aren't stolen, damaged by natural disaster, or discarded by your uninterested heirs at a yard sale. If you'd like to spend time instead of money, the sweet spot seems to be shopping for used, high-end tools from the uninterested heirs of elder craftsmen at yard sales.

[Chewie]

Totally agree Jared... looking around my garage most of the equipment is 2nd hand. Only exceptions are a tool chest from a Sears markdown and a new Harbor Freight press. Big vice... $10. Router... $50. 16spd Drill press... $175. band saw $40. Grinder $15. Jig Saw (i.e. poor man's band saw) $12. Gas weld setup (sans torch) $100. Rivet kit with 4xgun, tons of bucking bars, sets, clecos, cutter, squeezer, arbor... guess. My advice for good affordable equipment is to be patient and know what you're in the market for, so when a deal comes along and it specs to your requirement you don't have to hesitate.

Fast - Cheap - Good (pick two)

Mark

[bestbearhawk1231]

Bcone, my shop vice is a 4 or 5" imported cast iron one from Menards that I bought around 15 years ago. I have beat the hell out of it and it just keeps going. If I could do it again I would get an 8" that was built heavier. I think I paid around $40-50 for it. Make sure you have a sturdy stand for it since you will really be wailing on the 4130 once you start bending the brackets for the wings. If you are living in or near farm country, hit some of the farm auctions. You can score some pretty heavy duty stuff for pretty cheap. You don't need brand new stuff to build. I am using a $20 toolshop brand bench grinder for all of my deburring and shaping. I am pretty sure it has 9 lives since I have had smoke rolling from the case 5 or 6 times now and it just keeps going once it cools off.

If I were making a living with the tools I would spend the money on a $300-500 wilton vice and a good grinder. I did spend a bunch of money on a sioux palm drill knowing that there was going to be a bunch of holes to drill, I have not regretted that purchase. Just remember, the money you spend on tools is less you will have to spend on material. You can buy a quite a few $50-80 vices and $20 grinders for the price of the pro quality ones. I am not saying that you should buy the cheapest junk you can find, but rather be smart with your purchases. If I remember right, $500 was close to the first aluminum order from Aircraft Spruce and that covered all of the ribs and most of the stiffening angles.

[bestbearhawk1231]

Mine is very similar to the red one in the picture, most likely came out of the same Chinese factory with a different paint job. Mine has (or had) a hammer tone gray finish. I would get one that the entire vice rotates 360 degrees, I am pretty sure most do that though. You will be using the flat surface to straighten and form metal so I would make sure the surface is reasonably well finished although this can be cleaned up with a scotch brite in a die grinder. I now use a short section of RR rail that cleaned up and I chuck into the vice upside down and beat on the flat bottom when I need to straighten and form metal.

[James]

Hi there Bcone,

yeah, when it comes to vices, bigger is certainly better. I haven't started making my patrol yet, but all the years I've been woodworking and metalworking, I'd say go for two set-ups. The first is a huge (8 inch) off-set engineer's vice (the top and bottom jaws are gathered on a 45 angle, so you can hold a long bit of metal vertically without fouling the vice body). Bolt it directly to the metal frame of your workbench, not the wooden / tin top. You can swing off this with all your might.

The next bit of gear I'd get a wood vice, a 10 inch jaw is handy. This is good for holding wood (making jigs?), and soft or broad, flat objects (aluminum). Make sure you you mount it so the inner jaw is flush with the edge of your bench. Then - and this is the genius - buy a cheap, small upright engineer's vice (4"), and bolt it to a lump of angle iron, and hold it in the big vice for doing fiddly work. I'd never buy a new vice, they are all made cheap now. Look for second-hand ones on ebay. Dawn is the best I know, but maybe they are only found in Australia.

And definitely, good quality second-hand tools are the way to go for everything.

BTW, old mate above mentioned buying a sioux drill - those good quality sioux and CP drills are rare as hen's teeth down my way, so if anyone has finished their project and sworn never to drill a single hole ever again, let me know :-)

Hope some of this helps,

James

[Bcone1381]

Everyone's life situation is different. I think time spent building is what I have to protect., rather than finances to buy carefully researched tools. Example... Before staring 9 days off in a row, I was away five straight.days, so no progress, only reading and making plans to getting back to the build.

Yet I have not yet even drilled a hole since getting home last weekend. Spent four days on a Boy Scout canoe outing, one day catching up on necessities of owning a house and being gone (mowing grass) one day helping on an Eagle Scout project, then my wife says " this is going to be a busy week, maybe you better plan on giving the building of the plan a break." Tomorrow is my 27 anniversary. It's been almost two weeks. Since I've done anything.

I make enough to buy a new vice. I don't have enough time to go to auctions to find a nice old vice, Or chase down something off Craig's list. Yet, I have researched both craigslist in my area, and farm auctions. If I wasn't n the river with my youngest son I could have made it to a couple. I am even considering skipping Oshkosh so I can make some progress on my build. An alternative is to bring it with me and work on it out of the van in the Camp Ground.

Anyway, what I take away from this discussion is that a cast iron vice sounds is fine, and the ductile iron vices that are better made but more expensive is probably not necessary.

[Matt K.]

Is this the Craftsman others are happy with?

I also uploaded two vises Yost has available. Give me some feed back on them. The Yost Vises are both made of Ductile Iron. The Craftsman is Cast Iron.

That is the craftsman I bought for way less dough. Sears' website changes prices daily/hourly and coupons pop up often. If you Google around a bit that craftsman pro is the only Chinese vice of any quality out there. Compare clamp strength... Apparently using some old Irwin castings.

I followed advice elsewhere and did a full teardown, clean, and repack with quality grease. Buttery smooth now. Don't forget jaw pads. I like the bessey multipurpose at HD.

[jaredyates]

I like the idea of bringing your parts to the campground at Oshkosh! I don't think you'd have any trouble finding help.