Vise Jaws for Soft materials

[jylong_away]

Hi all!

I've been using a standard bench vise with steel jaws for all of my recent work with fixed blades. With steel, surface marking of the workpiece by the vise jaws isn't so much a problem.

Will now be starting some projects in Ti and G10, and was wondering what kind of modifications makers here use when clamping these softer materials in their vises? Was thinking of just sandwiching the workpieces between some pieces of pine in the vise, but not sure how that would go...

Are there specialized jaws that can be replaced onto the steel ones?

 

[jameswood]

try glue some thick leather to the inside of jaws or making some liners from sheet steel and gluing some leather or wood to those.

 

[Robert Mayo]

I have a set of aluminum jaws with rubber on them and magnets that hold them onto the bench vice jaws.
They work great and i got them here. http://www.busybeetools.com/products/SAFE-MAG.-JAWS-4IN..html

Bob

 

[jylong_away]

That aluminum attachment looks like the exact thing! Must go to the local hardware barn and start digging!

 

[EdCaffreyMS]

I have three different vises on the bench in my finish shop. One 5" bench vise with steel jaws....I have rubber, copper, and leather inserts that I use for that vise. The second is a "knife" vise that I built myself, with hard rubber jaws, and the third is a 3" jawed Wilton vise....on this one I tool out the steel jaws and replaced them with micarta. If a situation arises where I need to place a softer material in the steel jawed vise, I have several pieces of 8-10oz leather that I will often wrap around the object going into the vise.

For my milling vises I replaced all the steel jaws with aluminum.....in the process, milling "steps" into the jaws to hold various sized items.