Bench vise for cleaning?

8

838nole

Inactive
I have used a bench vise for years to clean and work on my hunting rifles. Of course I use pads for the jaws of the vise with a channel cut in them to hold the barrel and I only tighten it enough to hold it.

Does anyone see any danger in this for the barrel? I cannot imagine that this could hurt the barrel, but just got to thinking about it and thought I would put it out to the great minds here ;). Thanks for you input.
 
It would have to be a very thin barrel and you would have to really crank the vise down hard. I would not worry about it. Put a piece of pipe in your vise and see how hard it is to collapse it. Using some sort of jaw liners (rubber, plastic, leather, etc. will give the jaws more grip with less pressure.
 
I use the same set-up for my rifles. I cut a very large copper pipe in half and made pads for my vice. Once I had the pieces fitted to the vice so I could open and close it with out the copper falling off, I took a large file and clamped it in the vice to imprint the file ridges into the copper. It gave the copper a little extra hold. When the ridges disappear, just stick the file back in and apple pressure.

We used this method in a machine shop I worked in as a kid. It does not mar the rifle barrel, or anything else you are working on.
 
common deal!

i use aluminum pads over then jaws of the vice, made from 3/4" thick aluminum with a 'v' cut into each pad to hold a barrel with needed. or just solid aluminum pads for a receiver. an aluminum pads covered in leather for stocks
 
I've used the same thing for a long time and no, there's nothing wrong so long as you don't go bezerk with the clamping force. One thing I did do a little differently is machine a pair of jaws from Delrin to replace the steel ones. I machined a pair of holes in them that allows me to clamp around the barrel better.

It's lasted a long, long time.

Good luck.
 
I'll just add that if you're holding your rifle/barreled action parallel to the floor- make sure you don't apply any directional force.
 
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