FWIS3

But those sort of tools!
Actual tools. I know some of you might appreciate this, geonuc and thumper maybe?

I've been looking around for a vise for months now.
Finally found one that suits my needs almost perfectly and got it for a bargain to boot.
I am soon to be the proud owner of a Yost 4inch forged steel vise.

http://www.yostvises.com/yost-heavy-dut ... -vise.html

I always was hesitant to use a vise and clamp it hard. I've broken a one too many in the past.
Usually because people buy cheaper vises so they look heavy duty but are poorly constructed and have issues with stress fractures.
I don't have to worry with this thing. If I can break it I'll be getting a red cape.

I'm slowly building up the workshop area in the boat.

Cool

Yeah, that's the vise I would have wanted. But when I put a vise on Xmas list, that price tag would have gagged the giver. I ended up with a regular Craftsman vise. It's fit most of my needs so far. If I ever got that beast, I'd have to reinforce the bench. It's not much more than a wood countertop with cabinets below.
But if I ever break mine.....

I've heard good things about Yost vises*.

I don't tend to do a lot of metal work that would require banging on a vise. My shop vise is a 3 1/2" Columbian 1035 that I've had for decades. I don't think I could break it if I tried.

* Not to be confused with Yost vices, which is a topic for a different section of this forum.

Are you four the Vice Squad?

Pretty sure This is the Craftsman vise I have without waiting to look at it at home. It's fairly cheap. It's done everything I needed of it. Wish I could mount it in a better location. I could probably break it if I tried (I've been pretty successful with pretty much everything else when I've apply myself) But like I said, I'd probably destroy the bench first.

Thumper wrote:Yeah, that's the vise I would have wanted. But when I put a vise on Xmas list, that price tag would have gagged the giver. I ended up with a regular Craftsman vise. It's fit most of my needs so far. If I ever got that beast, I'd have to reinforce the bench. It's not much more than a wood countertop with cabinets below.
But if I ever break mine.....

You know you can always tighten that bar a little too much by accidentally using a 8 foot pipe on it.

The reasons I went with this over others is weight and strength. We need a light weight vise on the boat. If we're out at sea and need the vise, then the last thing we need is for it to fail. It's one thing being able to go buy one with a short drive or online order, but out at sea you have to depend on what you have and that it won't break.

For the record, the forged vise we got is now about $130 delivered if you hunt around. I didn't see them at this price till now. Maybe I just missed it. I don't know.

I was looking at a Yost 4 inch made in all steel (that's their series name) going about $100 when I found this one.
I looked at the price difference and was like, in my shoes, I'd be crazy to go cheaper even though the other Yost is still a damned good vise. So we ponied up the difference and I no linger have to worry about breaking the thing.

geonuc wrote:I've heard good things about Yost vises*.

I don't tend to do a lot of metal work that would require banging on a vise. My shop vise is a 3 1/2" Columbian 1035 that I've had for decades. I don't think I could break it if I tried.

* Not to be confused with Yost vices, which is a topic for a different section of this forum.

Or confused with Yosh's vices. Typically of the Asian persuasion. lol

The older vise's I've found are of better quality. Before the days of the cheap Chinese import.

r.e. vise vs vice. It's vice in Australia so it was fun searching when I started down this road. Took me some time to realise the spelling difference.

Thumper wrote:Pretty sure This is the Craftsman vise I have without waiting to look at it at home. It's fairly cheap. It's done everything I needed of it. Wish I could mount it in a better location. I could probably break it if I tried (I've been pretty successful with pretty much everything else when I've apply myself) But like I said, I'd probably destroy the bench first.

I have that problem too.
People used to tell me to tighten things as hard as I could. Even when I questioned them they were like, you can't break it.
Ok...snap!
Breaking wheel nut studs is not what most people expect. Live and learn.
I just don't listen to people when they say tighten it as hard as you can.
I'll make it snug, you do the rest or give me a torque wrench if you need a specific amount done.

I have to make a decent bench too. Probably two 3/4 inch sheets of marine ply. If that breaks, we're in serious trouble.

tools don't like me

vendic wrote:

Thumper wrote:Pretty sure This is the Craftsman vise I have without waiting to look at it at home. It's fairly cheap. It's done everything I needed of it. Wish I could mount it in a better location. I could probably break it if I tried (I've been pretty successful with pretty much everything else when I've apply myself) But like I said, I'd probably destroy the bench first.

I have that problem too.
People used to tell me to tighten things as hard as I could. Even when I questioned them they were like, you can't break it.
Ok...snap!
Breaking wheel nut studs is not what most people expect. Live and learn.
I just don't listen to people when they say tighten it as hard as you can.
I'll make it snug, you do the rest or give me a torque wrench if you need a specific amount done.

I have to make a decent bench too. Probably two 3/4 inch sheets of marine ply. If that breaks, we're in serious trouble.

Yeah, why in the world would you tell me to tighten something as "tight as I can make it?" Because I can always get a longer bar. If we're worried about something coming loose I much prefer an accurate torque specification. And my Craftsman vise model is confirmed.
Ok, first person to break their vise wins?

And if people are worried about things going loose, use the proper tightening sequence that distributed the load resulting in a far better and stronger join than having it all warped, twisted and pre-loaded so much that it's ready to break far sooner than it is likely to go loose.

I think most people don't understand that the maximum structural strength occurs when the load on the bolt is always in tension but just above zero as the worst case minimum. IOW, it never reaches zero or lower. Anything tighter than that is simply to get friction on the threads to stop it undoing itself and it doesn't take much tension to achieve that. Tighter than that makes the system weaker. In critical applications with impulse loads, use spring washers, self retaining nuts or thread locking compounds. That's what they are made for.

I'm not going to try and break this vise as I'm pretty sure the handle is what will fail. Like my fathers old bench vise. The handle was in 5/8 steel and we bent it but it made no difference to the vise thread or body at all. Old vise, probably about 60 years old now I'd guess. Given the stuff I did to it, I wouldn't be surprised if it was forged. Next time I go back I'll have to check. Just for curiosity.

I reviewed this vise and have posted it here.

This is a quality vise.
The clearance can be set by two allen key screws so all the play can be taken out if required.
The machining isn't perfect. If I go for zero clearance there are a few tight spots through the travel but certainly nothing that most people would complain about. If you need better machining than this you really should be looking at a lathe vise not a bench vise.
The screw thread is heavy duty wide acme screw type with about 1/8 of a turn free play. For a bench vise this is good enough and rarely an issue.
The guides are semi rough milled rather than smooth which is a bonus. That hold lubricant better and extends the life of the tool. When I say rough milled, it's smooth enough to not be felt by finger tips but rough enough to see and hold grease.
The anvil has also been milled flat as is required with forged processing.
The vise jaws are replaceable as are the pipe jaws. Not sure why they limited the clamping of the pipe jaws to 1/2 inch when there is easily the room to make them go down to 1/4 inch. The pipe jaws are also in the middle so cutting small pipe might present problems.

The only complaint I have so far is that very rough finish on the base for rotating the vise. They machined both surfaces so they slide across each other very smoothly but didn't machine the lock down section. So the lock down levers have less than 180Deg rotation need to be rotated a couple of times to get past the roughness before it will turn. Even then, they sometimes bind.
Crazy since they could have machined one more surface and gotten a very smooth system. As it is the two surfaces they have machined are negated as it still feels very rough to turn.
The base to vise clearance is crazy high. It's got about 2mm (over 1/16th) play. For machined surfaces this makes no sense.
It's almost like someone couldn't work out why the rotation was so rough so they increased the clearance instead of fixing the real problem, and machining the clamping surface.
I've dropped one star because of that and another because of the roughness in rotation.
If you need the swivel feature of the vise, I'd drop another star as it will drive you nuts in no time. I can't comment if this is my particular sample or it is a common aspect of the vise.
If you have a lathe it's easy enough to machine it back and make it smooth. You can also machine back the base to get rid of that excess play and make it very smooth and workable. This is how it should have been made.
If you don't (like me) you'll be stuck with a hard to rotate vise that has wild clearance in the base to vise surfaces.