My engraver vice - bowl vise

[Christophe Mineau]

Hi there,
It's been a while I've not posted anything fresh here.
Here is my last tool, a serious one, it necessitated a lot of head scratching to solve all the technical problems to build a fully featured one.

Here it is :




It is entirely home made.

The bowl :
Do you know how this is called in French ? It is "un boulet de graveur" which means "engraver cannonball".
It is because back to the early times, this tool was made with a cannonball, cut in two halves..
Unfortunately, I couldn't find a cannonball, but I did found in my kitcheen a nice stainless steel bowl, with a pretty perfect half ball shape. I decided to sacrifice it, it was a heartbreak but I did it ... (I promised to my wife that I will buy another one, but so far, could not manage to find another one as good as this one )
So here is the cooking I did with it :




The base for the bowl
From firewood (could be a nice ashtray , but I don't smoke.


The rotating plate and vice
In the middle of the bowl, I sunk a 20mm shaft, on which I pushed a couple of big ball bearings. The bearings are inlaid into a turned wooden base, on top of which there is larger plywood plate.
Then I wanted to make a vise that opens symmetrically.
My fundamental research led me to this item, that I cut into several pieces .






The workpiece grip
I wanted a general purpose tool , but most of the pieces I'll have to grip will be flat metal pieces, so I decided to go to some holes , with little dogs, similar to the bench top dogs, but smaller.
As for the benchtop dogs, the issue is how to pull the dogs when you put them too dip in the hole.
Here is how I solved that :



and I also have four holes that are threaded to accept some screws that will allow some tigh clamping down.


The brake
Last but not least, I wanted a system to block the rotation, in order to be used when using a hammer and burin. Here again, a lot of
I came up with this nice drum braking system (Ken, if you need one for your red car, just tell me)


And here it is !!!
I'm preparing a little video, but not sure it will work, it's still in preparation