I've tried just about everything,small drilling vice, clamps, mutigrips, etc,
Using a small drilling vice requires the vice to be tipped on its side otherwise it is too high for the wheel but for anything that fits in such a vice I usually use the bandsaw, and for things that are small I use multi grips.
I found it you use the same principle as one would use on a WW TS to handle material that I don't need to use any thing other than my hands.
I have on the odd occasion with awkward shapes even lightly welded a piece of steel bar onto the workpiece so that I can hold that while cutting.
Here is an example of something I knocked up the other day where all the cutting was done with the little table saw.
I needed a 2 arm puller to remove a plastic fan from a motor shaft. I have several 3 arm pullers but no two arm.
I was going to use a couple of the arms from one of the 3 armed pullers but the pulling points on the fan were small holes that none of the 3 puller arms would fit through.
The paired brown-red coated arms were first ripped lengthwise from 25 x 3 mm flatbar that was about 300 mm long so my hands were well back from the wheel while that was being done.
The all rod like sections were cut with the mitre slide and squared off and tapped with a lathe.
The 5 mm thick wings and arms with the hooks on them, were cut free hand
Snip
Before I had the table saw I had used a circular with a cut off wheel a number of times and it just didn't feel right
- First thing is the noise, I might as well use and angle grinder
- It's just not safe on small pieces
- It's hard to see where you're cutting and the thin kerf wheels sometimes wander a bit so correction may be needed.
- To get around this I used the 2.5 mm thick wheels which reduced the wheel wander, these also came is larger sizes as well.
- Angle grinders are sort of made to handle a metal and wheel dust but I'm not sure circulars are the same.
I suppose if you only are going to do a few cuts it would be OK.