Fireball releases a giant vise - the Hardtail

[Talon2006]

If you were local, I'd bring the stock to you. I have a scrap yard here where I can buy drops or whatever they have laying around for .50/lb.

I actually found someone on FB yesterday that says in can plasma 1". He's a few hours away in TN, but I plan on grabbing the stock and will send it his way with a friend of mine that lives near him the next time he's here.

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Email these guys, I know they have some 1” siting around:

 

[PAToyota]

Maybe anyone buying parts should show proof that they paid for a set of plans??


Technically you could watch his build video and pull all the pertinent info out of it, but I don't mind shelling out $5 for the files.

Talking to someone else about the vise, I went to get them a link and see he raised the price to $25!

Does anyone know if he redid the plans or anything? I know the ones I have had a few things I needed to figure out on my own and I've seen some similar reviews from others.

 

[Bacho]

My China special vice let go with the boom this morning. I’m gonna get serious about making some of these if there is still interest.

 

[Grendel]

Still worth every penny.

 

[billybob_81067]

I don't understand why anyone would need plans... It's a square tube sliding inside another square tube and some jaws made to fit whatever size square tube you are using. Oh and a nut and pipe welded in the back of the rear tube and a matching tpi thread screw in the front dynamic jaw... throw a thrust bearing in there on the front if you wanna get fancy n' shit.

 

[Pony_Driver]

How much for a kit?

 

[Duc]

I don't understand why anyone would need plans... It's a square tube sliding inside another square tube and some jaws made to fit whatever size square tube you are using. Oh and a nut and pipe welded in the back of the rear tube and a matching tpi thread screw in the front dynamic jaw... throw a thrust bearing in there on the front if you wanna get fancy n' shit.

The plans used to be 5 dollars versus the 25 dollars now. Not even worth opening solidworks if I can purchase plan set for 5 dollars.

Plus it was a big fuck off project by the forum.

 

[billybob_81067]

The plans used to be 5 dollars versus the 25 dollars now. Not even worth opening solidworks if I can purchase plan set for 5 dollars.

I don't even understand why you would "need" to open solidworks. Get two pieces of square tubing that will slide together and start building. No plans necessary! Do you own a tape measure? Figure it out as you go.

 

[Duc]

I don't even understand why you would "need" to open solidworks. Get two pieces of square tubing that will slide together and start building. No plans necessary! Do you own a tape measure? Figure it out as you go.

Dont need but might as well use a tool I paid for.

 

[Clemson13]

I don't even understand why you would "need" to open solidworks. Get two pieces of square tubing that will slide together and start building. No plans necessary! Do you own a tape measure? Figure it out as you go.

Dont need but might as well use a tool I paid for.

Much faster. Model it in solid works and fix any issues before your spend 30min fabbing something that doesn't fit.

Most things are worth modelling in Solidworks first since it's so fast.

But for $5 it was worth buying the plans

 

[Java230]

I don't understand why anyone would need plans... It's a square tube sliding inside another square tube and some jaws made to fit whatever size square tube you are using. Oh and a nut and pipe welded in the back of the rear tube and a matching tpi thread screw in the front dynamic jaw... throw a thrust bearing in there on the front if you wanna get fancy n' shit.

The idea was if your using the parts cut from his plans to throw the $5 to the designer....

 

[bgaidan]

I don't even understand why you would "need" to open solidworks. Get two pieces of square tubing that will slide together and start building. No plans necessary! Do you own a tape measure? Figure it out as you go.

Show us how it's done and post some pics.

 

[SomeGuyFromOlympia]

I don't understand why anyone would need plans... It's a square tube sliding inside another square tube and some jaws made to fit whatever size square tube you are using. Oh and a nut and pipe welded in the back of the rear tube and a matching tpi thread screw in the front dynamic jaw... throw a thrust bearing in there on the front if you wanna get fancy n' shit.

what you described is outside the skillset boundary of a lot of people

 

[PAToyota]

The plans used to be 5 dollars versus the 25 dollars now.

At $5, the plans were a deal. I have to say I'd think twice at $25 as the "plans" aren't really that great. They give you what you need, but you have to have a certain level of understanding to use them. For $25 I'd want more detail.

 

[billybob_81067]

Show us how it's done and post some pics.

Look at you being a smug bastard, thinking there's no way a guy like me with too many vises is going to waste an afternoon building a fireball style vise from scratch out of spite...

And to make it a bit more of a challenge it's the Sunday afternoon "no parts run" edition, where I scavenged up everything I needed within rock throwing distance of my shop.

What I scavenged up off the bat thinking I would need. Telescoping square tubing, an acme thread, thrust washer, and nut off an old farmhand 5 wheel rake that I converted over to hydraulics, and a bunch of scrap plate I cut off an old loader bucket that I converted into to a skid steer bucket. Oh and some old jaws from my 6" Wiltons that were rounded over real bad and got replaced. I ended up not using any of that thinner plate on this project.

acme thread and nut with tube cleaned up and end caps made for the square tube.

Those two thick plates that were who knows what from a previous owner of the loader bucket. Tack welded them together and started cutting away everything that wasn't vise jaws in the bandsaw.

Unfortunately my online plans and CAD files didn't say what to do with this giant raggedy ass hole in these plates... So I holesawed them out to 2" to clean them up.

A few other steps happened, and now I'm cutting off the tail to length on the bandsaw. Cut through both tubes at the same time then took the inner front jaw tube out and shortened it up by 3/8" or so...

Yo Dawg I hear you like vises...

Yes I still need to make a handle for it and weld it up. Will probably plate across the jaws on the front and back and extend that plate up to the vise jaw backing plate to beef it up more. I started around 3 this afternoon and after cleaning everything up and putting everything away I got home around 10 to eat some supper. It started raining cats and dogs on my way home so I'm not heading back up there tonight to finish it.

Ready for the scrap bin...

 

[AlxJ64]

^Standing on business... or whatever the kids say these days.

 

[budget76]

this is the shit you don't get on youtube. get called full of shit. spend 7hrs making a point 2 posts later


send me a copy of your plans when you're done

 

[billybob_81067]

Did some more work to it this afternoon/evening. Since the front jaws already had a hole I added more speed holes to the vise. Gonna be the fastest vise around!

Ground down these welds while I still had access to make them look better. Before I added my Jaw support plates across the side plates.

Oh and my fuckhuge retarded welds on the rear jaws pulled the square tubing and made it squeeze down, so I had to cut the upper jaw backing plate off and then put it in the press and unfuck that. So don't do what I did. I think if the jaws went all the way to the bottom of the square tube it wouldn't have been so bad, but when you're working with scraps you gotta do what you gotta do. Anyways with that all fixed I addressed some sloppage in the tubing fitup since they were kinda a loose fit. I added some steel strips to the bottom of the slide. Plug welded them and welded the side too. Got it fitting real nice now!

Pro tip, Leave one of your jaw backing plates off get your jaw side plates welded on and your tubes fit up real good and then match them together to get a nice straight jaw mesh.

It's like a Tesla cypertruck with speed holes.

Just gotta make the handle part and a base. I did find a 3/8" thick flange off of something that I can probably use for the base. Probably won't make a swiveling base, but with the base being round a person could always adapt one later if wanted.