New Mill vice. Did I Screw up?

[matthewsx]

I have a 6” vise I bought by mistake back when I bought my 3 in 1 (also a mistake). You might find the cost of shipping it back will make returning it unprofitable. Rest assured you will find a use for it on your bench.

John

 

[C-Bag]

Good choice Ed. Bigger isn't always better. All good, it happens to all of us!

I wanted the next size up Cobra pliers. Since there was only 2 more sizes larger than my largest I figured I'd just buy the largest size since it didn't cost much more than the size I originally wanted. Well the damn thing ended up being too big & is useless for me.

I'll probably just give it to my buddy after I buy the size I originally wanted.


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I dunno Will but I have a Channelock plier at least that big and I don't use them everyday, but when I do it justifies the amount of space it takes up in my tool box. One thing that makes them more useful to me is the Channelocks have more parallel jaws so I can use them on huge nuts and bolts and not chew them up. More than once I've had my 16" crescent wrench on one side and those pliers on the other and I'm not even working on heavy equipment.

 

[darkzero]

I dunno Will but I have a Channelock plier at least that big and I don't use them everyday, but when I do it justifies the amount of space it takes up in my tool box. One thing that makes them more useful to me is the Channelocks have more parallel jaws so I can use them on huge nuts and bolts and not chew them up. More than once I've had my 16" crescent wrench on one side and those pliers on the other and I'm not even working on heavy equipment.

Good point. I thought about keeping them. I've had em for 6 months now & have never really needed to use it. The one time it did save the day was to loosen an oil filter, wonder what people what have thought seeing me do that! Haha. I normally don't need a tool to remove my oil filters but I changed to a different brand & I wasn't able to get the last one off. I've since bought a oil filter wrench in case that happens again.

I don't work in industrial or on heavy machinery, mostly automotive. I can't think of any scenerio where I might need them. They're just too big & cumbersome for me. Next size down that I originally wanted is 6" smaller (22" vs 16"), still big but easier to handle.

I think I'll buy the next size down then decide whether to sell the big one. Who knows, being the tool nut that I am, I might just end up keeping both. Then I'll literally have every single size Cobra pliers that Knipex makes.

 

[mmcmdl]

I use those every day ( night ) in here Will taking off and installing hot air pipes on the dies . If I can't get it done with those , I break out the aluminum pipe wrenches . I can hardly lift the steel ones these days !

 

[C-Bag]

You talking about what you used them for jogged my recent memories of using those pliers. One was to hold the hitch ball base I put on my truck while I used the crescent on the nut.

.And before that it was the big nut on the top of the quill of my RF30.

I've also used it to take off a huge hydraulic filter. It is frustrating to have what I think is every size filter wrench and still get stumped. My '15 Nissan truck has such a small filter that I had to resort one that I'd modded 25yrs ago to pull cartridge type fuel filters and hadn't used it since. You just can't have too many tools.

 

[epanzella]

Good choice Ed. Bigger isn't always better. All good, it happens to all of us!

I've been milling on my lathe for years and I'm often faced with too big a part in too small a fixture. I decided I wasn't going to have that problem anymore so I caused a new problem and went in the other direction! I was flaberghasted when I saw this vise in the flesh. The base is 12 inches across and I can barely lift it. Looks like it will kill a good amount of my Y travel. Even with the swivel base removed it's still to big. Live & Learn.

 

[BGHansen]

I bought a 4" Enco swivel base vise for my Jet JVM830 mill. It's got an 8" x 30" table and the 4" vise is a good fit. I ended up with a spare 6" Kurt vise which is not on the mill and seems huge, but works fine. I do run into a problem when the table is moved so the vise is close to the knee crank, knee crank hits the vise so no quick spins of the handle.

Not adding anything here, but if you can afford both, hang onto the 6" vise. You'll end up doing a job with 4 1/2" wide stock some day and wished you had the bigger vise.

Bruce

 

[Eddyde]

I bought the huge Channel-lock pliers for one job but since found them useful for all sorts of tasks. One was to straighten squirrelly 2 by lumber when I was building an addition. Another was to make an over-dramatic removal of a stuck pickle jar lid, but the woman was impressed.

As far as selling hand tools and machine accessories, I say its bad karma, unless you have multiples. You just never know...

 

[epanzella]

I bought a 4" Enco swivel base vise for my Jet JVM830 mill. It's got an 8" x 30" table and the 4" vise is a good fit. I ended up with a spare 6" Kurt vise which is not on the mill and seems huge, but works fine. I do run into a problem when the table is moved so the vise is close to the knee crank, knee crank hits the vise so no quick spins of the handle.
Not adding anything here, but if you can afford both, hang onto the 6" vise. You'll end up doing a job with 4 1/2" wide stock some day and wished you had the bigger vise.
Bruce

Thanks but I just bought the mill, collets, endmill holders and the steel to build the table. I can't justify having this nearly useless 6 inch vice hanging around when I still need a 4 inch. I know I'll take a hit on the shipping but the price diff on the vices will take the curse off it. I don't even want to store this monsoon!
Ed P

 

[C-Bag]

I gave the old 6" Palmgren to my brother and never missed it once. So far I've been totally happy with my choice because I also don't seem to ever need a rotating base which also eats up Z. Not to mention extra expense and storage. I like having all my bases covered and I obviously can't know what I'm going to run into but it's been way more productive to invest in toe clamps and cast iron angle as a backstop/jig to clamp stuff directly to the table instead of a bigger vise. But that's just me.