Wilton Vise Balls or Any Vise Balls

[jjr2001]

My vise needed some balls for holding non parallel pieces. I saw this somewhere on the net along with using copper wire or aluminum wire at the moveable jaw to allow clamping to a flat side when dealing with rough parts.
Both work but I keep loosing my wire! Any how, since I just finished my tool and cutter universal grinder I thought I would try it out.

Chucked up the 1" ball bearing in a 5C collet, mounted that on the grinder table and went to work. Here is the result. The flat is visible on the ball on top of the piece of brass.

Cheers, JR

[Paul Jones]

JR,

I often wondered if a universal tool grinder would work for holding the ball bearing for grinding. There is a YouTube channel by Chuck Bommarito and I think these were for sale as "Screwyballs" on eBay. Looks like an interesting project with the right tooling in the shop. You could even chuck the 5C collet in the lathe and perhaps use a QCTP tool post grinder to grind off an edge? Great job!

Thanks, Paul

[DIYer]

Thanks jjr2001! We've added your Vise Balls to our Vises category,
as well as to your builder page: jjr2001's Homemade Tools. Your receipt:

Vise Balls by jjr2001

tags: vise

[jjr2001]

Hi Paul,
I just used a square 5c collet holder with the stop installed to keep the ball in the collet with about 40% of the ball exposed.
Just clamped that to an angle block and proceeded to grind. My grinder is not that powerful so I saved 70% of the time on the second one by using my belt sander first (ball chucked up in the 5C with stop) and just finished it on my "universal" grinder.
Much faster.

Cheers, John