Shop time was a bit scarce of late...
At least the fishing trip the previous weekend was fun; we had beautiful weather, and it was really nice to be out of the town for a change

:

Saturday I spent between fixing a neighbour's wife's treadmill (I tried to convince them to junk it so I could get the motor, but that didn't work out

) and upgrading my satellite TV installation as my receiver had packed up last week. At least the new receiver have some nice features that will allow me to record the few programs I like to watch; these are usually in shop time, so I'll most likely get more shop from now on and watch the programs later

Sunday dawned, and I didn't feel like precision machining, but wanted to make chips anyway. So I settled on making a vise back stop for my mill; something I've wanted to do for a long time. Material was scrounged from whatever I had around, and I pretty much followed
Bogs' build with some minor differences to adapt to my vise and the material I had on hand.
My vise has two 8mm threaded holes on the back of the fixed jaw, so I decided to mount the stop there rather than to drill and tap the vise:

I salvaged a bit of ~25mm hot-rolled round and some bits of 20x5mm hot-rolled flat bar from the odds 'n ends bin and set to work. The round was turned down bit to neaten it up , drilled and then threaded M6 before sawn off to length and the other side just faced to clean it up. I then milled a flat on the other end. A suitable bit of the flat bar was drilled to fit the mounting holes on the vise, and one end flat milled down slightly to get rid of the black scale and the end squared up to mate with the flat on the round bit. Four pop marks with a punch on the milled bit, and I ended up with this:

The clean-up and punch marks on the flat bar was so that I could silver solder the two together leaving a bit of a gap for the solder to wick into. Its easier than welding (well, at least
my stick welding

) or fitting screws to join the parts. After silver soldering and a couple of minutes with a wire wheel, I had this:

Fits nicely on the back of the vise

:

Then I milled a slot and poked a 12mm hole in another bit of 20x5mm flat bar:

Another bit of HRS round was turned down with a press-fit step on one end for the 12mm hole in the flat bar and drilled and reamed 6mm and the two pressed together after cleaning the mill scale from the flat bar with the wire wheel. I rounded over the ends of the flat bar by eye with a file - just to get a pleasing look, and cut a suitable bit of 6mm silver steel for the stop; this was faced and polished on both ends. All together so far:

And mocked up on the vise:

Had to stop there as some social commitments came up; I still need to make both the locking handles, as well as drill and tap for the adjusting bar locking handle. I can flip the stop over to work from the right-hand-side as well, but I don't think I'll do that too often, as I normally machine on the right-hand side of the vise (or from right to left) so that I don't have to do the blue-chip-dance all the time if I get cranking.

, Arnold