Making your own tools is one of the coolest things you can do in your garage or shop. I say this because there is a satisfaction that you get each and every time you use that tool, knowing that you built it yourself. The other thing that makes home-built tools cool is the fact that they are often custom to something you need them for but that everyone else might not. In other words, you get to make them do what you need them to do, without caring if that is something other folks need or not. Like hot rods, custom tools can be very unique to their owners.

In this video we are going to see one of my favorite tool builders, Jason from Fireball Tool, making a cool pivoting mount for his vice. To be fair, Jason is using some really fun tools to make this thing, some of which none of us have, but that doesn’t mean you couldn’t make it with stuff you do have at home pretty easily. Or adapt the idea to make it work for what you need.

I used to mount my vice to my tables using receiver tubes so that I could remove the vice and keep it out of the way, and then mount it to the table in a variety of locations based on what I was doing. Using this method you could also make some of those receiver tubes sit at an angle instead of being straight so that you can use your vice in a different position. But this method here is infinitely adjustable from horizontal to vertical, and when you combine that with a swiveling vice it makes for a pretty adaptable tool.

Check it out and be inspired.