I find myself setting up smallish parts in the mill vice where I'm drilling through or slotting through and therefore cant have the parallel contacting the underside of part in the break-through area. I'm talking narrow-ish width parts with a single parallel setup or using 2 parallels on either jaw but insufficient clearance for drill to clear between them. If I use my standard 6" parallels with a gap in the middle, it works, but they usually overhang my (4-5" width) vice bed on either side quite a bit kind of want to cantilever the part upward under their own weight until the jaws are secured.
What I thought would be a good thing is a 6" set lopped in half. Of course they don't make them & doing this on hardened steel is probably not fun. Which tells me I must be thinking about this problem wrong! I though about just getting some ground rectangular tooling stock but for the price of a 18" stick of a specific size, I can buy an entire set of Asian parallels. Thoughts or recommendations?
What I thought would be a good thing is a 6" set lopped in half. Of course they don't make them & doing this on hardened steel is probably not fun. Which tells me I must be thinking about this problem wrong! I though about just getting some ground rectangular tooling stock but for the price of a 18" stick of a specific size, I can buy an entire set of Asian parallels. Thoughts or recommendations?