To the man with a compressor, everything looks like an air tool.

Air Vise

So I've had a couple of vises for years that lacked screws. And my son brought me the air actuator from a dumpster a few years ago. But, yow! I have compressed air now. Bought the cute little two-way valve and some tubing. Zop! An air vise!

Full marks for proof of concept. A C- for engineering. I knew it wouldn't have clamping gumpties to match a big Acme screw and it doesn't. Closes dangerously fast. It would be much better with a little two-way hydraulic cylinder just stuck into the eye of the fixed jaw. But hey, I didn't have one of them. Wouldn't need a motorized pump, even, just one you could operate with a foot.

The reason for bothering with this at all [1] is:

  1. You can't close a screw vise with both hands full unless you have prehensile knees.
  2. You can't clamp flat things flat-ways in a screw vise.
  3. To clamp long things vertically in a screw vise, you have to do it in one side of the jaws. Then you may have to insert a spacer in the other side. (See #1, supra.)
If you convert a leg vise to air or hydraulic, controlled by a knee-operated valve and mount the the leg of the vise horizontally in a pipular Sproul Gazinta(tm), you can orient it to accommodate either #2 or #3 and lock it there with a pin or setscrew. The knee-operated valve takes care of #1.

Back to the dumpst... er, drawing board.


[1] Aside from Rube-Goldbergian Compulsive Disorder, that is.

Updated: Mike Spencer -- Fri 28 Apr 2006