Originally Posted on: Sat Jun 05, 2010
Hi people. I'm new to the forum and have been browsing over the last couple of days. There is a gold mine of info here. This jigs and fixture section of the forum has pricked my interest as it is one of my favorite parts of guitar building. I'm only on my 3rd build and already have a shed full of weird looking machines. A couple of common themes seem to pop up here which are close to my heart. 1- space consciousness (I have only a modest size workshop). 2- budget consciousness (wife and 4 kids). I thought I would start to throw up a few my versions of jigs and fixtures, starting with this low tec guitar vise.
In the stored position it looks like an ordinary under bench draw. Mainly because that basically what it is.
I have adapted a couple of clamps and fixed them to a cork faced piece of mdf. The mdf is only 6mm thick so it easily conforms to the arched top/ back of an instrument.
A couple of old toilet indicator latches (vacant/ engaged) lock the draw into various depth positions. One of the advantages of building (and demolishing) offices for a living, is there is always something getting thrown out that will get my jig brain ticking.
Some extra cork on the sides of the draw and a piece of foam on the bottom enable the guitar to sit down snug into the vise in virtually any orientation including vertical. I have added some external timber blocking to stabilize the draw and in practice it is quite strong. It is important that the draw runners are of good quality.
Some of the advantages I have found - The guitar is held a bit lower than most bench mounted vises which gives a very ergonomic position for most operations. -The draw can be locked into quite an extended position which means that the work piece is very easily accessed from the sides which makes operations such as side scraping a breeze. Alternatively the draw can be locked into a shallow position where an extra piece of padding folded over the bench gives an extra firm grip to guitar. Obviously the best feature I have found is that it instantly disappears from my valuable work space real estate.
Cheers, Pete
...and you still get time to build? 