Advise on a Vise

[Dan Kirkland]

I have been working on a small vise of sorts to hold tiny guitar/instrument wooden parts. I go to assemble it and I realize I drilled the holes at a slight upward angle of a few degrees compared to the flat base.

My question is, should I scrap it or is it ok for a vise to have some tilt? It's quite narrow and the parts go together fine I just don't want to waste my time on a project if it's better to start over.

[Jim Ritter]

A photo would really help here.
Jim

[Dan Kirkland]

It would indeed. You can see how it's off a bit on the threaded portion. The jaws do close tightly as the angle is through both pieces.

[Bill Houghton]

Can you plane one jaw to bring things parallel again?

[Dan Kirkland]

I could, but they close parallel when they are tightened, wouldn't that mess it up? Or perhaps I'm not understanding what you're getting at Bill?

[Jim Koepke]

Your answer will be evident if the vise works or doesn't work. To me that seems to be the best advice to advise you.

jtk

[Patrick Chase]

I could, but they close parallel when they are tightened, wouldn't that mess it up? Or perhaps I'm not understanding what you're getting at Bill?

The last time I had a situation like this I bored the holes out vertically (using a drill press) to the outer diameter of a threaded insert, then put threaded inserts in the outer face of each piece and drill bushings (standard McMaster Carr parts) in the inner faces to "rebuild" vertical bores at the desired diameter. 1/4-20 threaded inserts typically have 11/32 or 3/8" barrel diameters, so doing so will allow you to "cancel out" 1/8" of tilt, or more if you counterbore and use large bushings on the inner faces. Not neander by a longshot, though.

It looks to me like the back piece is just there to constrain rotation, so I'd just expand those holes to slots and optionally replace the dowell with a bar. It'll be stronger that way :-).

[Robert Engel]

I would take it apart and joint the jaw face square to the sides.

If you don't have a jointer, you can use either a hand plane or trim a little off on a tablesaw.

Reassemble and check fit. Any discrepancy between the faces can be fine tuned with a hand plane.

[Dan Kirkland]

Thanks for the advice gentleman. I'll give it a shot from the methods advised here and go from there.

[Jim Ritter]

Dan what is the size of those pieces? I know you said it was for holding small guitar parts. Jointing might be good, too bad the top of the jaws don't touch first, that is what you want. Is that just a dowel in the bottom holes? Most likely that will not keep the jaws parallel. That my take from what I see.
Jim

[Dan Kirkland]

Jim, they're about 1 1/2" x 1 1/2". I planed the faces of them to mate properly and replaced the dowel with a bar