Vise destruction test

A local auto repair shop with three employees was going through more than one imported vise each year. The owner gives me his drain oil, which I use to heat my shop (150,000 BTU Reznor) and when I came across a 4" Morgan fixed base vise at a garage sale, I bought it and gave it to the shop. That was five years ago, and it still shows no damage!

There is nothing wrong with the Morgan design. Many old ones were made with ductile iron, instead of gray iron. New ones may be made out of different material.
 
Provincial said:
A local auto repair shop with three employees was going through more than one imported vise each year. The owner gives me his drain oil, which I use to heat my shop (150,000 BTU Reznor) and when I came across a 4" Morgan fixed base vise at a garage sale, I bought it and gave it to the shop. That was five years ago, and it still shows no damage!

There is nothing wrong with the Morgan design. Many old ones were made with ductile iron, instead of gray iron. New ones may be made out of different material.
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I was more appalled with the Morgan's backlash in that video, and how loosely the nut was installed! Also, it looks like they screwed up machining the socket and needed to put weld pads on, which seems wrong to me as well.

IMO, the Wilton's build quality/durability was miles ahead except for the swivel base. I'd spend money on the Wilton, but the Morgan in that video looks like it is of no better design/quality than the imports.
 
We had a guy where I work destroy a perfectly good Athol vise by pounding on it and also using it as a press. The shop I work in was built new in the mid-fifties after the old one burnt down. They salvaged all the old equipment they could from the old building and the vises were included in that. So that vise survived about a hundred years of daily use just to be ruined by a hammer monkey in the course of a year. Makes me sad when people don't respect shop tools.
 
Athol is the original brand name of the Starrett vise. Starrett is located in Athol, Mass. and so the name. In fact, the guy was destroying a Starrett vise. I wonder if he knew of the connection?
 
The only connection with him is his paycheck to his hand. I do not think he knows the difference between Harbor Freight and Snap-On to tell the truth.
 
I thought the testing to destruction was very interesting and enlightening.
My take aways are:
The Wilton vise should outlast generations of users if they apply anything close to good sense.
Why would anyone buy the Morgan vise? It's the most expensive, zero thrust bearings (so lowest effective clamping force), cheesy (weld) fitment, and least resistant to extreme abuse.
The Fireball Hardtail is the heaviest, largest capacity, strongest, most resistant to extreme abuse and least expensive of the three. If one breaks, I hope somebody gets the ID from the tank that did the damage.

I applaud Jason (Fireball Tool) for being a successful American entrepreneur. The video is a marketing communication, not a public service announcement. Good for Jason.

I'm too old (weak) and too intelligent to break even the least of the bench vises I own. I don't expect to purchase any more. However, If I wanted to buy a new monster bench vise, it would be the Hardtail.

Edit: One issue I didn't like about the testing procedure was the clamping of the workpiece at the end of the jaws rather than centrally located. The kindest interpretation, IMO, is that it simulates a long workpiece that would have to be so placed to clear. So why not use a long workpiece in the tests? A more probable explanation is that the FEA (Finite Element Analysis) he has previously performed predicted the dramatic failures. Jason is no dummy.
 
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A good vise can take a lot of abuse. This is more of how not to treat a vise. This is not about vises, but it is related to testing. One summer, I worked for Tektronix. A fine company that at the time put out the best oscilloscopes on the market. A few years later in order to beef up my electronics, I took a college course. At the time, I was running an electronics repair business. The instructor pointed to a Tek scope on the bench and said that it could be dropped on the floor and sustain no damage. I stood up and explain that the actual test is the instrument is placed on a platform and then dropped a certain distance, this is so that they can test for G forces. If one dropped it directly on the school's concrete floor, most likely something will break. Even if nothing broke, it will still have to be recalibrated. I also told him that anyone purposely drops any of my instruments on the floor in my shop will be fired and made to pay.
Using a 5-foot cheater bar or hitting the vise with a 16-sludge hammer is just nuts even if it is a so-called test.
 
G-ManBart said:
In the last video on breaking vises I was laughing because he was testing mostly cheap vises but he didn't subject his Starrett bench vise (it was in the background) to the tests for some reason. Oh right, it's a really nice vise, they're worth a pretty good penny and you can't buy a new one. His test would have destroyed it, for no reason at all...sure, maybe it would have lasted longer, but it still would have been ruined.
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He did mention he was only testing vises that were currently available.
 
ErichKeane said:
Eh, I think the destructive tests are at least interesting. I definitely know shops where breaking a benchvise is pretty common, particularly welding shops (which is his intended market) and auto-shops. Its not at all uncommon for someone (whose employer bought the vise :) ) to go hog-wild smacking at things in order to get the job done. Of course a home-gamer that spent that much on a vise wouldn't abuse it like that, but in a job shop, its really not uncommon.

That said, "Bench vises aren't meant to be a press": I'm pretty sure MANY of us have used a vise as a press in the past, its pretty common to do so. And holding things we're hitting with a hammer is ALSO a very common thing to do with a vise. It might not be what they are generally 'meant' for, but its definitely what they are often eventually used for.

One thing I REALLY like about his vise building videos: He takes real-world common uses for a vise (despite not being what they are 'designed' for), and tests/builds around it. Because of that, I think the design criteria for his vise greatly exceed what many other manufactures design around.

Is his vise meant for a home-gamer? Of course not, he's designing for a shop that has a bunch of wrench-monkeys that'll beat it to heck and back. Same as the rest of his gear... he sells a 10k+ welding table/set. Are you or I going to buy that? No, but a big welding shop totally will if they are impressed with what he offers.
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I've been to so many welding, fabrication and machine shops over the years that I've lost count, and many times I was there buying bench vises. I stopped counting how many vises I've had when I got to 300. In all of those visits, I saw maybe a dozen 150+ pound vises. The typical welding and fab shop has vises in the 75lb range...something like a Wilton 450S or C1. Some of those shops will have one or two that are larger than that, but not always. The Army mounts Wilton C2s (5" jaw, 100lbs) on the trailers they build to service M1 tanks as a point of reference....if they thought something bigger was necessary they would have gone bigger.

We're literally talking about "machinist" vises. Machinists typically don't use the wrong tool for the job...what machine shop doesn't have a press? Like I said, just because many people abuse vises doesn't mean that's what they were designed for. Testing something in a way it wasn't intended to be used doesn't really prove anything other than that things being abused will break at some point.

What Jason is sort of recreating is similar to the old "railroad" vises, and there's a reason companies stopped making them....nobody was buying them. All of the discussion I have seen of the Fireball vise has been on hobby sites like here, Garage Journal, etc, where home-gamers with an obsession for large vises talk about them, and some claim to have purchased/ordered one. I can't imagine Jason would want to share market information, but I'd bet a paycheck he sells 20-1 in favor of home-gamers....guys with deep pockets.

In selling hundreds of vises, some as large as 250lbs, I only recall selling three 150+ pound vises to a company. One was a shop that serviced large agricultural equipment, one was a heavy equipment repair shop and another was a large farm operation that had their own repair shop. I sold dozens upon dozens of 75-100lb vises to welding/fab shops and machine shops. The overwhelming majority of the 100+ pound vises I sold were to guys with home shops who just had to have the biggest vise they could find/afford. They all claim they "need" a vise that big, so I guess they're working on stuff bigger than an M1 tank ;)

I have nothing against Jason/Fireball, and I hope everyone who buys one is thrilled with it. I still think the tests are largely PR to sell vises to home-gamers with deep pockets.

I've owned heavy equipment....backhoe, two bull dozers, tracked skid-steer, dump truck and in all that time I never got around to making a stand for the new 175lb 6" jaw Wilton C3 I have sitting on a furniture dolly. I guess that means I'm only semi-hypocritical. I own a big vise, I just don't need it.
 
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