Hi Guys,

I cut up a piece of aluminium plate the other day and was left with a 72 mm long by 40 mm wide off cut of 10 mm thick plate. I don't like just throwing material in the scrap bin, so I looked around for a use for it. Then it occurred to me that I'm always putting soft jaw covers on the 3" Parmo vise ! Why not make a set of replacement jaws out of this piece of aluminium. Ok they would be about three or four mm short, but that wont make a lot of difference.

So I cut the piece in half length ways on the bandsaw, clamped them in the mill vise and cleaned the two pieces up. I used one of the existing vise jaws as a template, by gluing all three pieces together with superglue and drilling both pieces of aluminium together with a 5.5 mm drill. After cracking them apart, actually I just banged them down hard on the top of the vise, I countersunk all the holes on one side to suit the screws. After fitting them to the vise this is the result. They are a bit taller than the original hard jaws but no matter.

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Before and after. My new vise soft jaws. You can see one of the old bits of aluminium angle that I was using before at the very top of the last picture.
Attached Images




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