Soft jaws for the vice

Darren Wright

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I saw on one of the gun smith sites the use of the rubber impregnated cork (car gasket material) being used for vise jaws, said it holds up much longer than regular cork, so thought I'd give it a try with my new vice.

Ordered some from Amazon
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Cut some 1/2" mdf to fit my vise
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Used some 3M 77 spray adhesive to attach the cork and then trimmed to size.
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In the future you might consider some nice thick, soft leather. It is strong, cushiony (is that English), smoothly faced and holds very well. I gave some to Glenn for his vises.

Enjoy,
JimB

Actually, I have a bunch of scraps. A friend that makes prosthetics gave me a bunch of scraps a few years back. I'll make a set up using it too...Thanks! :thumb:
 
That should just work just fine. Gasket material is great stuff.

I use it for a few different things from inlay material for fly rod handles and I always use it for the seal MDF tops on my glass jars to seal the vacuum for stabilizing.
 
One minor caveat on the leather, watch out for the dyed stuff as it can bleed out into some woods more than might be strictly desirable. Usually settles down to non-annoying levels eventually but if you can choose non-dyed pieces that would be somewhat preferred.

I've also used 80 durometer neoprene for some clamping jaws. Its a bit grippier than leather (not sure how it compares to the gasket material?) and is more or less indestructible. Its a fair bit more expensive though, unless you happen to live somewhere where there is a lot of windsurfing and you can somehow get scraps from the folks who use it as a non-skid surface on their surfboards :rolleyes:
 
I like the gasket material idea because of availability. These days, at least where I live, it's gotten harder and harder to just run down to the store to buy scrap leather (if you don't have some already). On the other hand, gasket material is much easier to find.
 
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