There is nothing cooler than a big old vintage vise for the bench in your garage or shop. Brands like Wilton bring big money at swap meets and garage sales, because people know they are ultra bad ass. Unfortunately so many newer vises, that are affordable enough for the guy at home, are just crap and they will break before you ever use them hard. There are truly awesome vises for sale in store or online, but some of them are serious money. So what if we were to do a test of a bunch of different vises? Would 12 be enough? From local and online sources, as well as a vintage heavy duty model? Well if this sounds like something you want to watch, then you are in luck, because the Fireball Tools crew has stepped up to perform the test and they’ve got all the results on video.
Yep, the good, the bad, the ugly, is all coming to light in this video as each vise is installed and put through a variety of tests to see if it will fail under normally abusive circumstances. If it lives through all of that, the vise is tested in an attempt to actually make it fail. It is brutal, and some of the results will be no surprise at all, others just might shock you.
Watch the video below.
Thanks for the post. Appreciate the effort that it takes to produce such an informative video!
As a retired iron worker for bridge construction, i never had a need to abuse a vise. Not even for heavy duty work. They are not made to beat on with sledge hammers. Neither should you ever have to clamp nearly that hard…ever. They are simply designed to hold things and they can do that without beating the shit out of them like a retard.
You are right, anthony. However, it is nice to see what the breaking point is for the weaker vises.
Those are destructive tests to see what goes first out of curiosity and for entertainment value, of-course no one had better expect to be able to treat a tool that way. In the real world all of those will probably have the screws wear out and bind up to send them into the scrap heap long before anything ever breaks as shown. Their “winner” with it’s near-useless shallow jaw depth and no pivoting feature is not one I’d ever want in any event.
At age 20 I bought a cheapo vise to get me by, then at 40 I ponied up like $300 for something that came from Europe which I still have nearly 20 years later but no, don’t pound on. Maybe my kids will bury it with me lol.
Dumb, largely click bait.
Shame to see a quality old Prentiss abused for yucks.