Leveling small work piece in a vice

[garage nut]

Hopefully with age some experience becomes habit...

I always used to be in a hurry and when it came to drilling small pieces I would usually just hold it with my fingers and suffer the consequence. Burnt fingers, bruised fingers and even loosing a nail or two when the work piece decides to bite.

So clamping in a drill press vice is the solution. but it can be very difficult to line up a 10 x 10 square bar that is 15mm long. My fingers will never fit there. When I used to place the work piece on the drill press table and put the vice over it from the top, clamp it and then turn it the right way up and drill the little hole. Also do not have such small and tall parallels.

This worked fine till I had 20 blocks to drill and tap. Could have kept it one piece and cut the separate pieces once all drilled and tapped, but the initial idea was to CLAMP the vice in the correct position so I did not have to mark out every little piece. Needless to say then I could not put the vice over the work piece to clamp it.

Next solution... Use a magnet to hold and align the work piece before clamping.
1) Attach the work piece to the magnet,
2) Place the magnet onto the vice with the work piece inside the jaws,
3) Clamp it... No hammering needed.

I know we all hate magnets in out work areas. Swarf gets stuck to every thing, scriber, center punch, drills ect.

I hope the pictures tell the story.

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