Introduction: Wood Vise Quick Release Fix

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About: Woodsman and field tutor on a week day. Life long inventor, designer, engineer for the rest of the time. From items that make life easier to items with no reason to be....other than the idea popped into my hea…

I was given a wood working vise that was new unused but missing the return spring for the quick release handle.

How hard can it be to buy a replacement part? Very hard it turns out, I could not get a replacement spring anywhere.

I thought I could use the vise as is but if I am winding the handle with one hand and holding the work piece with the other I need another hand to hold the quick release lever over so that the vise will tighten, a fix needed to be found!

Video shows a vise not opening and closing properly because of the missing spring.

Step 1: The Design

The design was pretty much done on the band saw, I cut a piece of 18mm plywood out to fit around the narrowed part of the lead screw boss, radiusing both sides to fit snugly around the shaft.

This was followed by cutting out a semicircle offset from the first cut to create a cam.

I then put it in place on the vise to work out where the holding notch needed to be.

Step 2: Clamp

The clamp is simple enough, a piece of the metal strapping that is used to strap an item to a pallet, bent in a semicircle to fit the handle shaft and a flat with a hole drilled in it to join it to the wooden block.

This is held in place with a round head wood screw.

Step 3: All Fitted and Tested.

This device works in two ways, if left to its own devices when the handle is turned to do up the vice the cam turns under and holds the quick release handle out far enough to engage the nut on the lead screw and the vise closes and clamps.

Undoing the handle will release the vice jaws and the cam will turn away from the quick release handle allowing the quick release to operate.

The second way is to manually turn the cam until the end of the quick release handle drops onto the locking notch. now which ever way the handle is turned the nut on the lead screw will not be disengaged and the vise will open and close with the screw.

The video shows it in action.

I hope this instructable is of use to others as this is not the first vise with broken/missing spring I have come across.