Adam Savage in Awe of This Fractal Vise! 

Speak of the devil. Lol.

as soon as adam mentioned your youtube i scrolled down to see if you commented and im happy you did. love seeing my favorite youtubers mention each other.

I don't know if you can find Adam Savages out there besides this one. If you do, please tell us where we can get them.

Just bought two of your wrenches thanks to the "hold your nuts" video. Great stuff

You have one don't you?

It's nice to see, country doesn't matter when humanity reaches beyond the ocean.

I saw a shot, of this vise on Adan's workbench there. steve

made me smile lol

@Kailinn92 I wish that were the case. The Chinese people are great, and very industrious. Their government, on the other hand, is a tyrannical monstrosity that is a threat to global peace.

The price is now nearly double... Yay.

i would hope so. that thing is $3,600usd

I saw the video.

Ok. Ya?

Just wanted to say that I appreciate your work also, and I have my kids watch your stuff because it's quality, entertaining, and educational. You're great.. So is Adam 😜

When I saw him use it for the first time after unboxing I knew Adam was going to do a one-day build for a better handle.

Chinese manufacturers are perfectly capable of extremely high precision fabrication, but just like anywhere else, you get what you pay for. If you only want to pay a couple hundred bucks for something like this, then the quality is going to suffer. Even at this price point, that is extremely cheap for the delivered product.

theres a myth the hole in the ozone wasnt made by man can u help! 90% of humans live north of the equator! why do aerosols migrate to the south pole to burn a hole there?

I also hope the resurgence of the fractal vice has made someone proud of his great-grandfather

Didnt he literally say he was going to do that? I mean, it's nice to confirm and validate his thoughts I guess. Maybe he wasn't sure he was right already?

​@@FalenirAdam did ask for advice towards the end of the video

@@Falenir there are various grit and if too aggressive roughness, can bind and make it work worse.

For better action, you would want to increase the number of points of contact. It would be difficult to do with the geometry. Probably some 20 micron or coarser diamond on a nylon or horse hair brush. Possibly a basswood stick in circles. Possibly a cone type brush in a dremel to make non-uniform scratches on the mating surfaces to break up the contact points. Finish with semicrome or blue rouge or similar to de burr cuts made by the diamond. If there was some way to adjust the tolerance, it would be easy. Also, a machinist here. Worked for 10 years in extrusion, making dies, slitters, and punches. Now, I'm doing maintenance for robotic welding and hot forming.

Question for the machinists. Are there preferred faces to try and remove material from? For example the surroundings of the dovetails over the dovetails themselves, or vice versa.

Or, is it patented...

@@memkiii Also true, unfortunately. I was thinking of the more generic stuff to be fair though.

​@@macupgradercheap labor == low overhead.

@@macupgrader There are some that probably find it fortunate at times.

Fractal vice was invented over 100 years ago@@memkiii

I've always had a disproportionate amount of luck getting Allen wrenches. No idea why

@@TransistorBased So have I. Or at least apparently so. It's probably just confirmation bias. And geez, OP, that's because of editing: notice a few seconds after 5:00.

Us tool users noticed.

that's a well-calibrated MK1 eyeball!

@@TransistorBased I'm a firm believer that luck is specialized. I've never won so much as a dollar in any lotto or raffle I've played but the amount of times i've come out of, let's say, less than OSHA level practices ending in critical failure, completely or nearly unscathed leads me to believe that's where the entirety of my luck has fallen lol (There's also a lot to be said for subconscious level thinking and the ADHD minds excellence at object and pattern recognition, both of which prolly lend themselves to "gauge guessing"...)

Seems like an opportunity for a trip to China to do a video with the maker...

Still too complex , they need to just sell the fractal grip parts , not hard to attach those to any bench vise , jaw surfaces on modern ones are screwed on , so you can easily remove those , as intended , put in a angle iron with a pin to put that fractal grip on .

One of the images on Alibaba is from Adam's video lol

i hope that person got a raise 😂

@@pete_lind sounds easy but what you are considering is more complex than what you have stated

#Truth

If only kids got this excited

@@tested 2 years old YT clip ... Morphing Fractal Engraving Vise Jaws ... its on some Nebraska company , no production . Only thing you need are those fractal grips , you could attach those to any bench vise , not hard to replace jaw surfaces with an angle iron with a pin welded on it . Both jaws do not need to move it to work , keep it simple 🙂

@@pete_lind Why is jerry rigging your own fractal vice by sourcing a bunch of diff parts simpler than just buying an actual fractal vice off ali?

@@hahaepic4165 Sending plain fractal grip jaws is cheaper than sending the whole bench vice . People who are seeking these most likely have at least one bench vise . Then again there already are cheap vises that can handle holding chrome moly pipes , those can also clamp down other obscure objects , if the only thing you are seeking is to keep the object in place . Adams motivation is wanting to own weird things , nothing to do with practicality .

Same for me!!! He's really amazing.

Yep great show to bad it is no more.

His passion and excitement in making things and appreciating cool products is definitely contagious, inspiring and heartwarming. Regardless of age, this is the approach to life I mostly look for and admire. :)

Shenanigans like Genociding Uyghurs and doing gain of function research on coronaviruses

In my experience, in all my travels, I've found that everywhere you'll see the same basic mixture of people. Most people just want to live their lives, most people don't want to hurt or inconvenience anyone else. Most people want peace, safety, and independence. You'll get a few people who are greedy, a few who lust for power, and a few who just want to hurt people, but you'll find these everywhere. In our government, in yours, anywhere. Much love from Texas, partner.

@@Jack-og9ox Well spoken.

As anyone else who has spent some time working abroad, the people are like people are, very nice and friendly. The friction powder that grinds all our gears are sprinkled from above, if not by gov't directly its because gov't of past that may have tainted the culture... and it is annoying but given some time face to face working together one quickly finds out that we have 95% in common... and beer bridges the rest 😆

@@Jack-og9ox It's observational bias, really, isn't it? Apart from our effectively minute circle of close friends, most people we hear about are via the media. And they pick either the very, very good, or the very, very bad. After all; who wants to hear about countless people just doing normal things?* The bad side of people/things usually makes better news stories because of the shock value (and if you are in the UK the fact they you can moan about how dreadful everything is and tut a lot). Adam is to be utterly commended for the way he conveys a much closer-to-reality perspective in such a humble, insightful and selfless way. As other people have said; it's heart-warming and it's wholesome. * I had to think quite carefully after writing that about things like Facebook and RU-vid. My contention is that even there you will gravitate towards whichever side of the spectrum you prefer, and it will still be a very small slice of the entire picture. YMMV

first name basis? he's not gonna read your comment, i wonder why ego maniacs even bother, as if you're offering the guy advice..does it give u a sense of worth?

@@CleoKawisha-sy5xt are you okay bro, his names in the channel name its clearly fine to refer to him as Adam

@@CleoKawisha-sy5xt Whats he supposed to call him? Tested? Mythbusters guy? His name is Adam and his public image is the same...

Exactly. I think that's what I was trying to get at in my reply. Making a copy of something that was invented and perfected a hundred years ago or more isn't going to accurately represent the hand tuning and understanding they had back in a more hands on era.

*vise

@@TheGreatAtariothis is definitely adam’s vice

He's like a kid in a candy shop lol. I get this excited I guess when I order junk for my truck 😂

@@jasonostack9319 rofl I'm not changing it

It just depends on if he can get the mating surfaces to fit together smoothly.

It wouldn't hold it as still, though, since the rubber would compress and expand as you applied forces to the item being held.

You are on the right track!

cut 2 horizontal dovetail canals on the outer pieces of just one side(should be more than enough) and insert interchangeable teflon, pvc, rubber, wood, etc... depending on what material you need gripped

or just one vertical canal, on the near edge of the outermost pieces

@@ra3or I don't think it works to have it only on the outermost pieces. The whole point is that you can grip things of any shape, so the outermost pieces may not be the most critical.

That was my favorite part of the video. There are some obviously bad products coming out of China - lead paint covered toothbrushes come to mind - but people act like everything coming out of there is made poorly or is made for nefarious reasons. But there are human beings no different from us who want to create like anyone else. The entire idea that people need to be reminded of that is saddening but its nice to see someone so prominent not forgetting the human behind the scenes.

​​​​@@sierrasanders675China makes things to spec as requested. Shoddy products are almost always ordered by WESTERN companies wanting to sell a 200 dollar product for 10 and making 9.80 dollars in profit. Brands from China offer some of the highest quality and cost to value ratio or are simply cutting edge. Huawei, Hikvision etc. come to mind where they are so hypercompetitive or just crushing of competition that we need to activate the entire propaganda apparatus of a nation to try and defame and ban them. What I mean to say is that poor quality products is not a China reflection of China's manufacturing prowess or competence, but rather a function of the greed of western corporations who outsource there.

I think it's good to remember that the dehumanization comes from the business. It isn't a human making things best they can in corporate lingo, it is outsourced labor making widgets with manufacturing efficiency and cost reduction as the optimizing factor. The business and consumer pressures are what creates chinesium, not the quality of the workers. The workers are just designing to the spec. Its why harbor freight drills made in China contain a significantly higher percentage of chinesium than the DeWalt ones also made in China.

@@phillyphakename1255 I have buddies who worked on multiple occasions in different industries with outsourced manufacturing in China. He had the same experience as nearly everyone else he and I spoke with. Chinese factories tended to cut corners. To get quality spec out of the country, the impression I got was that you need to play hardball and enforce standards yourself to a much higher degree then other countries. There are reasons for this, but the culture in general has a serious lack of construction and manufacturing standards, and it runs deeper then what can be explained by pressure to reduce costs. Obama released a documentary called A Chinese Factory that's worth watching on the subject. The high quality manufacturers in China are exceptional at what they do, in both HR and the craft itself, I have the utmost respect for them.

Well put. There's a correlation between Chinese(or any number of other countries) manufactured goods and poor quality, but not a causation. The goods aren't poor quality because they're from China - they're poor quality for the same reason they're from China. People want the lowest prices. Labor is cheap in China, and low quality materials/loose tolerances/low quality control/low quality engineering is cheap. So when consumers see both together over and over again, they assume causation.

I’d love to see this

It'd be wayyyy easier to talk to the folks that make the Titan Fractal Vise in the US. I literally found this in 10 seconds. Not sure how Adam missed it.

it was from china it was a copy of the original... lol there would be no interview

@@J.C... Except, of course, that this fractal vise is only available for pre-order - you can put a deposit down ($75-$150), but even *they* don't know the final price

@@J.C... He literally said he is on the preorder list for it

the law of supply and demand Adam has created a demand for these now, so the supply will need to catch up, lol

The problem is this takes very high manufacturing tolerances, and hand assembly. It is a high precision instrument masquerading as a dumb shop tool. $2500 may be high but probably not that high for such a construction.

As cool and satisfying as it is, it's actually kind of impractical,.. not sure what uses it had in mind without a hand crank bar

the way each piece connects to each other without the need of complicated components or tiny pieces like screws or being bolted or anything makes me think that it should be cheaper than other tools that need more complicated construction. as long as the pieces are accurately constructed it's relatively easy assembly should reduce it's cost. it's so expensive because it's an uncommon design

They'll get cheaper but they'll never be cheap,

Agreed! And more: the mark of a TRUE Maker: voiding ANY conceivable warranty on your $2500 new purchase within SECONDS of getting it out of the box because he can see how it can be improved and KNOWS what he's doing! (probably ;-) ) 👍👍

@@The_Scattered_Man With machining tools from overseas you kind of know what you're getting into: you are buying a project, but it often works out because you couldn't possibly make it for less and you have a great starting point. Some lathe chucks / tools from overseas are great, they just require some work. Hobbyists can afford to work a few hours on something they just bought Companies on the other hand that's another story they mostly need a warranty and a proper working product right out of the box, delivered, setup, within tolerance and repeatable. They know they can get the right tool and the right replacement at any time from whatever company they work with and that's a great insurance to have as a company. But of course it depends....

The solution I've usually seen is to add wood or metal wedges or blocks to "fill the gaps".

I never did this kind of work and i saw this tool before

A lot of jb weld works. Kinda expensive in the long run....

Sewing machine oil is perfect for lubricating moving parts, really fine and available all over the place

+1 on the lapping compound. Steel wool made me cringe.

2400 for such a specialized tool is actually pretty damn reasonable imo, even if it has some issues lol

Me too. hopefully he gets a few more subscribers from this publicity.

If I had this vice and Adam's tools and skills, I'd probably make half a dozen different sets of jaws, especially to do some testing before deciding the best way to modify the mating surface.

... or, perhaps, 3D print the jaws (?)

If I had one and the machines to do that, that would definitely be a very good idea! Set of, nylon, brass, wood and maybe rubber caps

Perhaps just make a duplicate set of clamps and somehow adhere rubber or some sort of soft grippy material to the faces rather than metal

@@johnherrmann7464 The issue with 3D printing, regardless of if it is plastic or metal, is going to be the lack of smoothness of the mating surfaces. At minimum the mating surfaces would need to be machined to achieve a nice smooth surface to allow proper low friction movement of the jaws.

That's why China worries our leaders. The bigger the population, the more people there will be to have ideas like this. Especially when China and other Asian economies seem to value education far more than we do in the West. It's been fascinating watching the way China's transitioned from being a relatively low-tech/cheap labour industry mass producing simple stuff, to more complex stuff, and increasingly innovating. It's also rapidly improving designs. Some early products were.. quirky to Western aesthetics, but have quickly adapted.

😂 caught that too haha. I think China’s culture/society/economy permits them to make stuff cheaper than a lot of places (like, you would struggle to be profitable making stuff as cheaply in the US or Germany as you can in China for a variety of reasons), and so that’s what they have become “famous” for. But ultimately, you get what you pay for, and they’ll be happy to take more money from you and give you a quality commensurate with that price if that’s what you want. The fact that for example Apple and DJI products just to name two are made in China should be sufficient proof that they absolutely *can* make high quality products for the right price.

Yeah that's exactly right and a great point. Many moons ago, I purchased a bunch of FiiO products (audiophile stuff), initially a little suspicious due to their relatively low price compared to their high announced specs, but once I got the products, it was an instant lesson that a company being Chinese doesn't mean anything these days (in terms of the products being inferior to Western products). Been using their headphone amp+desktop DAC every single day for probably a decade now, and I have nothing but high praise. Decades of hearing about "Chinese crap" has sort of forced the connection in people's brain that Chinese products are automatically bad, but that simply isn't the case these days. Maybe it never was, and the whole stereotype was just propaganda.

@@Peksisarvinen I think the stereotype is based in some fact like Adam says. For a number of reasons they can do the whole spectrum from ultracheap crap to very fine stuff, where a lot of other places (but not all) can only do one or the other. The cheap stuff gets more volume, so it gets more attention, and I think the fancy stuff hides under the radar because they get attached to (often non-Chinese) brand names, such as Apple. Places like Amazon and Alibaba and other mass online retailers have also caused a race to the bottom on price, which brings even more attention to the cheap stuff.

Stereotypes exist for a reason though. There's no stereotype that German engineering is garbage, it's the opposite. That's not to say that everything engineered in Germany is superb, that's categorically false. China's economy is based on quantity over quality and as such the average quality is brought much lower. Of course you can get really high quality products made in China, almost everything by every major brand is already made there. The the stereotype is valid because for every 1 good item there's hundreds of junk ones. I'd also like to add the fractal vice is not a Chinese idea, they took an idea that already existed (Patented by Mantle & Co in 1913) but was almost forgotten to time, and recreated it. A very common practice for Chinese manufacturers. Not an example of innovation.

This is exactly what i was thinking. Maybe a rubber pad made en masse to preserve the leading edge.

First place i worked at did that. They did furniture repair and had a vice like this with soft rubber caps over the teeth for holding finished wood and metal.

Good idea

Same thoughts here. Multiple sets of final crescents. Some might be doable with a good 3D printer. Or maybe the manufacturer sells them separate ? and they could be surface tooled or coated ?

Running a strip of cycle inner tube along each side would be a quick and dirty way to achieve this…

Unlikely given people there are not permitted basic freedoms such as watching RU-vid or having an independent thought or opinion.

Seeking permission for thought seems like a problem too many entertain, yet few actually are so inclined to follow.

They have already seen it, and updated their product pages (they seem to have two versions of it).

@@fredio54 You know what's really funny? RU-vid is censoring the name of the company over which these are sold, but they already have watched the video ...

The person who engineered this piece is long dead, the people who copied this piece speak Cantonese

... and now, after reading that comment, Adam's next project will be a walker. :^)

pull up his pants when youre done, would ya

Hand tool rescue’s video is absolutely fantastic, has a full breakdown and restoration and explanation.

the turninghandle killed it for me, positionfixing of the shaft aswell. It's the cheapest version they could do =( (sure, i can fix it myself but still)

yeah, although it looks like Adam modified the jaws a bit since they look different in the thumbnail

The flat gripping surfaces aren't part of the actual original; there's an opening to allow for more grip with finer points to grab. That's part of what he discussed in the video in altering the flat gripping area. If you look up the video in question, you can see that the grasping areas are actually like large serrations that end at an angle and not flat. He may alter it to do the exact thing you're talking about, just different because the points are just one each side of the semicircle; there's no flat area with multiple small serrations. Since it only gives two points of firm grip instead of a flat line of small serrated grips, it can swivel to hold more abnormally-shaped things.

I suppose you could disassemble the vise, like Adam did, and sandblast the gripping surfaces. BE SURE to CLEAN all the parts thoroughly before reassembly!!!!

The original ones do not have smooth gripping surfaces.

What about putting on small Laser Cut Rubber Grip Strips that have a Adhesive backing. This would avoid marring the work object with the metal teeth

patented in 1920 ...

The chances of them speaking english are pretty slim. But great job on them for sure.

Paulin Karl Kunze patented this in 1913.

Since it's based off an old US patent (early 1900s), and there's been increased interest in them lately due to Hand Tools Rescue finding and restoring one, the thought process was probably "this is popular in the US maker space right now, let's make some and sell them."

If Adam wanted to do that, his best bet would be to get ahold of @Naomi-Wu , she is a major maker/builder in Shenzhen, China. I bet if anyone could put them it touch it would be her.

Thanks to Adam, I am no longer afraid to modify something to better fit my needs.

I'm impressed that he always grabbed the correct screwdriver (Alan wrench, Torx bit? I can't see from here) on the first try.

Invented by an African man

​@jamesjameson4566 not true at all

@@Liv1nMohawk don't suppress the truth, the cats out of the bag, people are beginning to learn.

​@@jamesjameson4566Do you have a link with the story? What I found was Paulin Karl Kunze of Austria invented it, who may have been of African descent, but his name, country, and the time period (1920's), make it seem less likely.

@@DavZell that's the name "they" use, to suppress the truth.

the Black and Decker Pecker Wrecker...

It did not seem that functional, as we could see with that hammer handle, those small holders need to be manually adjusted, plus they are not holding that handle tight.

Looks great. Shows that Chinese really doesn't always mean straight to landfill. Price reflects!

Someone finally gets it. People buy from $1 stores, AliExpress, Walmart, etc and complain about the quality. Like what did they expect?

yes the cheap stuff from china is usually low quality. but i think he expected nicer then harbor freight quality for 2500$

Some of it is also likely trend chasing and start up manufacturing tends to be common. It doesn't matter if you have quality materials, good machinist, with good tools, if you don't have a technical package or a strong understanding of the product needs you're basically guaranteed to put out junk because the fit and finish wont be right. A good non Chinese example is the L85a1 versus the L85a2 where fundamentally they are the same design, it's just the l85a1 was made by people who didn't understand how to make guns and the L85a2 was made by people who did.

@@FrickingLunatic I don't think you have any idea how much work a vise like this is compared to a normal vise. I'm a CNC machinist, but the operations and setups required to make all those fitting curved dovetails is not to be underestimated. It also seems, and probably is, a steel vise, very likely heat treated, while the cheap harbor freight vises are cast iron with nearly no machined surfaces. There is also a very small market compared to a normal vise for something like this, this means small production, and lots of setup and programming time. 2500 dollar does not suprise me.

@@slome815 i think you misunderstand me. i am very physics minded in engineering. i was stating the chinese tools are usually crap. that was my statement. that it the general mindset of most people today. adam himself says this. i agree with him and you. and if i paid 2500$ for a vise i would expect it to be well engineering and built. by a person such as you.

lapping compound works great on other fine fitments like 1911 slides. I wouldn't hesitate to use it on this too.

Look at the thumbnail. It already has chunks taken out of every crescent. It's too late to suggest anything, because he already made the follow-up video.

​@@veronicavaes4581here I am coming to the comments to suggest clamping on parallels and using an indicator to square it up and check jaw alignment, and I totally missed the thumbnail where he's already drilled out the middle of each set lol. Wonder why he didn't edit out the request for advice...

A valve lapping compound wouldn't work very well imo, but a non imbedding lapping compound that gunsmiths use like JBs would work wonders on that thing. I use it on all my rifles and trigger packs. It's just a PITA to clean all the paste off the parts once it's lapped in.

@@ericbrooks2819 it's definitely an odd choice. I'm guessing this video sat on the back burner longer than planned, and by the time the channel's editor wanted to publish, they realized there are no usable-as-thumbnail stills of the unmodified vice in action.

i think it needs a bit of an addition before you could do that, since the clamping surfaces are only held on to the vice by gravity

Why is it so hard to find a fractal vise?

You're not wrong, but PTFE is one of the "forever chemical" family that we're barely starting to grasp the long-term evils of. We can do better, and for the sake of future generations, we should try.

"now I have to have one!!" At 2500?

The same here. As soon as I saw it I wanted one even though I don’t need it.