Baby bench vise - videos

**Jon** · Sep 1, 2021, 06:48 PM

Baby bench vise. By Go Create Hobby Machine Shop.

16:19 video:

15:39 video:

12:57 video:

**TheElderBrother** · Sep 1, 2021, 09:29 PM

I especially love watching the shaver work. I have to think that it would be good for meditation to just stare at it and let it keep all external distractions from your mind. And that polish of the interior of that piece at the lathe was an impressive bit of work, even though it was a simple approach. The fit was perfect.

Any chance you'd send me some shaver shavings so I could sink them in epoxy and make some knife scales? I'm a big fan of up-cycling swarf...

**wizard69** · Sep 2, 2021, 07:21 PM

Really nice work! I was thinking about doing something similar for adaptation onto a Panavise base. This however is a huge step above that.

**Jon** · Sep 6, 2021, 05:05 PM

11:10 video:

**Jon** · Sep 8, 2021, 07:15 PM

11:00 video:

**TheElderBrother** · Sep 9, 2021, 01:15 AM

I am George Oldroyd, and I wanted to let you all know how grateful I am to Nigel for taking up the cause of helping me put this workshop together. I started making knives in 2016 after spending three weeks in the hospital. I had lost a leg after a particularly miserable injury and illness. This is some of my story: bit.ly/HeroForgedbyFire.

So after three weeks of going down a YouTube rabbit hole watching every blacksmithing and knifemaking video I could find, I wanted to get started. I had been an egghead all my life, and had even taken sewing instead of metal shop in the eight grade, so I felt like it was time to start making things. I came home and bolted a janky old pipe vise to a tree stump in my driveway and making knives out of spring steel using an angle grinder and consuming my bodyweight in sandpaper, generally following this video:

From there I started haunting flea markets and Craig's List looking for any tools and machines I could get on the cheap, but in 2019 I saw a documentary about how we are losing twenty-two combat veterans a day to suicide. It is a hideous and appalling national shame that we ask these young people to go downrange carrying the burden of our security fighting against people who take a particular glee in violating the humanity of those they mean to oppress, and allow those young people to come home and lose the very hope they preserve for us. That number infuriated me.

22. Almost one an hour. And now that the Bat Stew Flu has done the job it's done on our country that number is only increasing.

So I looked at the little wheelchair accessible workshop I had cobbled together, and had a chat with my wife about offering knifemaking as art therapy. I saw the documentary on Thanksgiving in 2018, and the next day I filed for 501(c)3 status with the IRS, and started working one on one with disabled vets referred to me by the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the American Legion, and the Marine Corps League. Being a nonprofit allowed us to request donations of new and used workshop gear, so my friends started writing everyone they could think of. The owners of this forum discounted membership down to nothing so we could learn form all of you. We got help from Jimmy Diresta, who helped us get a grant from Lincoln Electric, and from This Old Tony who did the same with Home Depot. Bob at Making Stuff gave me plans for a stand for my Harbor Freight band saw, and sent me the Sharpie holder he made here:

I carry it everywhere now. It's very well made.

A lot of great manufacturers hooked us up with stuff, as did a lot of local Alabamians who had older used gear. Harbor Freight gave us a grant, and we were given an 8x12' conex container to move into as a workshop, and are about to buy a dual-fuel genny so we can run the shop on propane, thinking that if I don't waste any donor money on permanent wiring to the house, so we can take it all with us if my wife and I move. (I got that advice right here on this forum as well as some donor help!)

So last week I saw Nigel's video, and I thought, man, I would love to have a few vises that size to use for filing and so on, and it would be great to have three so we could have a few guys working at the same time and open classes up to groups.

And i knew that vise Nigel had made was too intricate to just bang out another one, but I figure, a shot on goal is never a bad play.

Or is it, you miss all the shots you don't take? One of those. I don't play hockey.

But I reached out to Nigel, and he barely hesitated before he wrote back and told me about his idea to gather several YouTube machinists and bang out three of these exquisite vises for me, and I was stunned.

So let me tell you, Nigel is The Man! Watch his video three or four times so we can get Google to pay him properly!

And tell your friends!

I love you, Nigel. You are a one of a kind gentleman and I can't wait to get those vises set up in the shop. I am asking around my local Scout district to se if any Eagle Scout candidate needs a project, and looking to get proper wheelchair accessible benches built, so we will have a solid wall of wood there to mount them to.

This forum is awesome. I have learned so much, and been so lucky to meet some exceptionally remarkable people.

So thank you all, but especially you, Nigel. Always count on Scotland!

All the best,

George Oldroyd
The Elder Brother's Forge