On Wed, 25 Aug 2004 23:48:55 +0000, Walter Harley wrote:

"Jim" wrote in message
...
In article ,
says...
The keys are held in with bolts,
but they also appear to be held in by punching the join between the key
and
the casting. When I remove the bolts, the keys still won't come out,
even
if I whack them laterally with a mallet (using a piece of wood to avoid
denting anything). I didn't try whacking with all my might.

What's the right way to remove these, without damaging anything?


If these key are accurate, they may be a good way to line up your vise
with your table.


Unfortunately, they're aligned along an axis that is perpendicular to the
flanges for the tee slots; so, if I have the vise mounted to the tee slots,
the keys are sitting up on top of the table, keeping the vise from lying
flat. If I mounted the vise parallel to the X axis of the table I might be
able to use them, but I think that then the tee slots wouldn't line up with
the flanges (plus, I wouldn't be able to clamp long pieces).

When I got my cheap Palmgren vise it had no locating keys. One of the first
things I did was to go out and get some key stock at the hardware store to
mill up some keys. I milled my keys to be square rather than rectangular so
they would fit into the t-slot either way.

If you are a daring individual, what you could do is to bolt a chunk of steel
down directly to the milling table and then clamp your vise onto that, only
upside down, and then mill those keys to be square, in situ. You should only
need to mill the keys flush with the bottom of the vise, and you should be
sire that the vise is square and plumb with the table during set-up.

In fact, the whole process could be summed up into several steps:

1: get a piece of steel stock that will just fit into the vise.
2: bore two holes in the stock, one near each end, and large enough
to clear your t-bolts.
3: clamp the stock to the table using t-bolts
4: take truing cuts in the stock. Mill the faces of the stock that
the jaws of the vise will be clamping to so that they are parallel
to the x-axis of the table
5: clamp your vise upside down onto the stock. Do not remove the stock
from the table, as this will disturb your alignment. Also make sure that
the vise, when clamped in place, is level with the surface of the table.
6: Finally, mill down each key to make its "top" face square.

P.S. Of course, make sure that the bolts are reinstalled in the keys before
milling them.