In the "Scribe a Line" section of MEW Number 100, Jim Whetren described a means of clamping a drilling vice to the table of a drilling machine that was new to me. There were no drawings, but the description was clear enough. I made a version of this "Clamp" to suit my kit, photo 1, and this has transformed my use of my drilling machine. Previously I had often used the drilling machine with some apprehension, caused mostly by my failure to clamp the vice down properly because "it was only one little hole," and I sometimes ended up with triangular holes or broken drills, and the whole process felt unsafe and unsure.Conventional clamping of the drilling vice seems to me to have two unsatisfactory aspects. Firstly, it is slow, requiring the slackening and tightening of two bolts, which in turn requires finding the spanner. Secondly, the very action of tightening the bolts often shifts the vice from its carefully aligned position, requiring everything to be done several times over until everything is both tight and in the right place, and then the whole nonsense starts again for the next hole.
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