FORGEAbove
A hand vice makes
it easy to hold small
parts safely on a drill-
press. You can use a
pair of pliers, some
string or wire, and a
lollipop stick or long
nail to do the same
job, but make sure
it’s secure enoughStandard holdfasts are around 18 mm in diameter,
but a nail will be considerably smaller. If you
find the holdfast slips too easily, try roughing
the sides with some coarse sandpaper.
If that all sounds like too much effort, or you
don’t have access to a workbench that you can
drill holes into, bench grippers make an excellent
alternative. Bench grippers (also commonly called
cookies) are plastic discs coated in a non-slip
rubber material, and they are great for holding flat
materials in place for planing, sanding, or carving.
If you need to drill into the end of a bolt or a
short piece of bar, you can use a spare drill-chuck
to hold the work perpendicular to the bed of your
drill-press. This is also a great way to keep hold of
short pieces that need to be polished or worked on a
grinder. The drill-chuck makes a comfortable, weighty
handle that makes it less likely you’ll inadvertently
launch the part you’re working on across the room.
For light machining, you can hold small parts in
wax to make them more manageable. The wax won’t
last very long if the part starts to heat up, but for light
engraving or scribing, the wax (or low-temperature
plastic) should give even the most irregularly
shaped object enough support to work with.
It might sound strange if you’ve never tried
it, but masking tape and superglue can hold flat
sheets like brass or PCB blanks in place for light
milling or engraving. Apply the masking tape
to the bed of the machine and to the back of
the sheet material, then apply superglue to the
tape, and join both tape surfaces together. As
an aside to this, double-sided tape on cardboard
or plywood can be very useful for holding small
parts in place for spray painting or fine detail
work. Having the parts fixed on an easily movable
surface really speeds up the process of painting.IF ALL ELSE FAILS, GLUE IT
The topic of work-holding is huge, and there simply
isn’t room to write about all of the techniques
out there for clamping and fixing objects to
work on. For some projects, the vast majority of
the work can be creating an appropriate tool to
hold the thing you need to cut, drill, mill, or turn.
Whether it’s bulldog clips or custom-made jigs,
there is always a tool or method that will solve
the problem. Hopefully, you will be able to use
some of the tips in this article to save some time,
and also make your workshop a safer place.Parallel jaw pliers
close equally,
leaving a parallel
gap along the entire
jaw. This makes
them good for
holding delicate
parts without
leaving marks.QUICK TIP