Hand Vise

Here's a project that caught my eye as soon as I saw it in the Dec 2005/Jan 2006 issue of Machinist's Workshop. The article was "A Hand Vise for Small Parts" by Roy Rice. By the look of Roy's hands, he's got a few years on me. I hope I'm still out in the shop if I live to be his apparent age!
I've thought numerous times that one of these would be handy in the shop, so I set out to build one based on Roy's obvious experience. The only thing I changed was the total height of the jaws. I pushed the dimension from .68" to .75" believing that the extra bit might come in handy. I think Roy made it a little shorter so the jaws wouldn't bind under clamping pressure, but I didn't think of that until I had completed the project. I can always machine .062" off the top of the jaws if the extra distance from the guide pins and screw cause undo binding. All else is pretty close to Roy's design. I must admit, that I had considerable problem with the silver brazing. It's new to me and I finally just used a stainless steel solder that works at 450 degrees. Now I need to go out and practice silver brazing steel so I'm ready the next time I need the expertise for a project.
I haven't made a handle for it yet, but will pick up some maple stock and turn one just for this project. I'll probably use a brass ferrul, just looks better to my eye than the wound wire technique suggested by Roy.
It was a fun project spread out over about 3 days. I'm glad I took the time to build it. Thanks Roy!