Lining metal vise jaws

[Patrick Kane]

For the life of me, i cannot find an affordable source of leather to line the jaws of my vise. I searched through a few threads here over the last decade and they all lauded the merits of vises lined with leather, but sadly none had a source for the material. Anyone have a source they would like to share? I have two emmert's i need to line. I could do poplar or cedar faces, but i want to see what all the hub hub is about with leather.

[Mike Gresham]

I'm not sure there is such a thing as affordable source of leather. If I were going to try that, I'd probably chop up a leather belt.

[Howard Pollack]

I bought a used woman's handbag at a garage sale and cut it up. -Howard

[Paul F Franklin]

Not leather, but I like rubberized cork, which you can get from McMaster. It's very durable and very grippy.

McMaster calls it: Water-Resistant Low-Pressure Rubber/Cork Gasket Material. 1/8 works for me, but various thicknesses are available.

[Chuck Nickerson]

It depends on your definition of affordable. At my local leathercraft store the owner also does custom leatherwork.
As a result he has a bin of scrap leather for sale where $5 will buy enough to line vise jaws.

[Patrick Kane]

Chuck, $5 is downright free. Not 'affordable' is $125+

Guess im reaching out to some upholstery shops for scraps.

[John K Jordan]

Have an Amish or Mennonite community nearby? I've bought leather scraps here in TN for very cheap, thick, thin, flexible, whatever. Once I bought a big box full for $8. They also had larger "scraps" priced affordably by the piece.

And they would cut leather to any size and shape I wanted for ridiculous prices. I once had a girt strap made for a mini donkey: three pieces, two ends with buckles to sew onto a blanket, the girth strap shaped nicely with belt-like ends with holes to fit the buckles, trimmed nicely and dyed black. Took him 5 minutes and he charged me $3 which included the leather and hardware.

Where in Western PA are you? I grew up south of Pittsburgh on the banks of the Monongahela River, left in the late '60s to go south.

[Dan Schocke]

If you have the Hobby Lobby chain near you they usually stock bags of leather scraps that are useful for this sort of thing. I think I paid somewhere around $5 or $10 for the last bag I purchased there. I've also purchased cheap (<$20) leather welding aprons in the past -- they're basically big pieces of soft leather.

--Dan

[Gary Ragatz]

If you have the Hobby Lobby chain near you they usually stock bags of leather scraps that are useful for this sort of thing. I think I paid somewhere around $5 or $10 for the last bag I purchased there. I've also purchased cheap (<$20) leather welding aprons in the past -- they're basically big pieces of soft leather.


Tandy Leather is another option for remnants. They have stores near Cleveland and near Pittsburgh, and also sell on-line.

[Bruce Page]

I lined my vise with this last year. They're about 5/32 thick and holding up well so far.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0716RH292/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

[Dick Mahany]

I lined my vise with this last year. They're about 5/32 thick and holding up well so far.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0716RH292/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Looks great. Nice looking vise as well !

[Dave Mount]

I ordered a veg tanned strap belly from Weaver Leather. It's an offcut from the bottom (belly) side of a hide and is very economical. They vary in exact dimension, but average 5-8" wide (mine had wider parts) and they are 7 to 8 feet long. They estimate them at 5-7 square feet total and it's $20.50 plus shipping, so less than $6/sq ft including the shipping. Nice leather. I had enough for two front vises with large wood chops, plus smaller leftovers to make sheaths for my timberframing chisels. I ordered the 7-8 oz thickness and felt I made the right choice.

https://www.weaverleathersupply.com/catalog/item-detail/15-950/veg-tanned-strap-bellies/pr_4340

Dave

416522

[Bill Dufour]

I use some cork flooring craps in my milling vise.

[Wayne Cannon]

I was able to get a 2' X 4' piece from my local shoe repair shop. It's probably 3/16" thick for leather shoe soles.

It's been so long, I don't recall the price, but I would not have paid much.

[Keith Outten]

Several years ago I was able to purchase about 6 pieces of leather from a local shop. They were about 24" by 18" each and cost me about ten bucks each. I use the leather for laser engraving.

Another option for vise jaws is 1/4" thick PVC sheet. It's pretty soft much like leather and scraps are available for cheap. I can get PVC scraps by the truck load from a local company, sometimes for free other times for just a few bucks.

I also pick up clear acrylic from a local frame shop, off-cuts cost about ten bucks, enough to fill up a large car trunk. I generally look for other companies cast-off materials in my local area and purchase in large quantities when its available.

[Frederick Skelly]

Not leather, but I like rubberized cork, which you can get from McMaster. It's very durable and very grippy.

McMaster calls it: Water-Resistant Low-Pressure Rubber/Cork Gasket Material. 1/8 works for me, but various thicknesses are available.

Derek Cohen just flagged something similar in a different post, from Benchcrafted, called Crubber (https://www.benchcrafted.com/crubber). Good to know MMC has it too. Thanks.

[Patrick Kane]

I didnt know of Tandy until it was mentioned here, but they do in fact have a store on the east side of Pittsburgh. I ended up sending note to the local upholster thati used a year ago for my Morris chairs and ottomans. Probably didnt hurt i spent $2500+ on the leather upholstery back then, but he told me to come down and take what i wanted. i have a piece that should give me enough to line both Emmerts and then some leftover that i may apply to my wooden vise chops. Not sure if that helps anyone in the future, but its worth reaching out to an upholster to see if they have "scraps".

Aside from spraying adhesive directly on to the metal jaws, whats everyone's preferred method of applying it? I was thinking of using spray adhesive for the leather to a wood substrate, and then bolt the wood to the jaw. Im thinking about trying the magnet sheet idea i read somewhere as well. Glue to the magnet, and then stick the magnet to the metal jaws. Wood might just be simpler than trying to source magnet sheeting.

[Tom M King]

If you could have used Purple, I could have hooked you up. A lady near us, that made custom handbags, was moving away, and going out of that business. Pam bought maybe 150 pounds of leather from her for next to nothing.

I bought some magnet sheets, off ebay I think, for making movable covers for the blade tilt slot in my old Unisaw for dust collection. I hadn't thought about it before, but that material, by itself, looks like it would be good for vise faces. It's some sort of synthetic "rubber" that has a very little bit of give to it.

[Osvaldo Cristo]

For the life of me, i cannot find an affordable source of leather to line the jaws of my vise. I searched through a few threads here over the last decade and they all lauded the merits of vises lined with leather, but sadly none had a source for the material. Anyone have a source they would like to share? I have two emmert's i need to line. I could do poplar or cedar faces, but i want to see what all the hub hub is about with leather.

I simply use a pair of pieces made of soft pine with three strong rare earth magnets each in it's back to fix onto the vise metal jaws.

The pine exposed surface was hand planned with a toothed iron to increase grip.

It works to me.