Beautiful vice. Hard to justify the $1500 price tag for most of us. My wife would kill me! Ha-ha! I have a 1940's Wilton vice I rebuilt, $50.00 at an estate sale. I bought/made some custom vice jaws for my gunsmithing needs. Works just fine for me. Cool review though. Thanks for sharing. Never hurts to know what is out there. I will put the Orange vice on the list for when I win the lottery! ;)
You got a better vice! Imagine swinging a hammer at a $1500 vice.....no thanks! I understand that this is a "precision vice" but at the end of the day it's just a vice.
@@unclebob540i3 a lot of the good wiltons pass $1000. Any of them that are cheaper are either small or made in China. Any Wilton that’s not made in the USA is about the same as a Chinese vice you’d get from harbor freight.
@@BryceKimball7.3 no kidding? Crazy. I feel lucky to have inherited a couple of starrett vises from my dad. I have an older snap-on I bought in the 90s that was basically a rebranded wilton, when they were american made. I'd hate to have to buy all those now!
I have 2 of these in my shop. One was an original Orange and the other was when Area 419 released with their jaws. I bought my first when they were $900, and I would buy again at current price. You really don’t realize the advantage until you make custom jaws. One of the jaws we use most is a steel set with a step machined for pistol slides or a bolt action v-block. You’ll find steel jaws with magnetic urethane soft jaws to be the most useful. Steel or aluminum jaws with no cushion (rubber, leather, felt, etc) don’t hold round or contoured parts very well. Also, we made a threaded boss for the rear female socket so we could attach a Noga arm and dial indicator to the vise since magnetic attachments won’t work. This allows us to check things like bolt play in bolt actions. I’ve mentioned to Orange about recessing a steel plate somewhere in the vise body so you can use magnetic bases. Interesting story: My first vise was an older design with a single smaller locking screw. When we got the second, we noticed the upgraded base with 2 larger locking screws. When I contacted Orange about purchasing an upgraded base for the old one, they instead sent me an upgraded base for free. Good company for sure!
The Orange is certainly a nice looking vise....but I recently bought a new cast iron vise from Yost. I think it cost me $110 in 2019 and is up to $160 today. The Yost has the same rotating base and a rotating jaw arbor. The Yost jaw arbor will rotate 360d, not just the 90d and 45d of the Orange. The steel Yost jaw pads come out and go in as quickly as the Orange, but I find that fitting magnetic soft jaws to the steel jaws lets me grip gun stocks and barrels and slides without marring and without removing the factory jaw pads. I don't understand the use of dovetails for the Orange jaw pads if they pull out the front when loosened. I may be senile....but I recall that dovetails are meant for sliding in from one end of the channel so that the two parts are interlocked along their entire length with out clamps. Seems like a lot of extra milling that provides little benefit. Also harder to make your own jaw pads in the shop on the fly. The Yost vise has a fairly coarse clamping screw....but that means fast open and close on items of various sizes. Also, being a cast iron vise I can still use them for tasks that require pounding and 'reefing', like flaring and peening pins, or torquing barrels.
Fireball Tool channel, check out the vise they have. 300 more and like 15,000 to 20,000 lbs clamping force! Now that’s a vise. Also check out the blacksmiths vise he made. About 4 foot tall and it will tip a forklift to pick it up. That’s my dream vise.
Just the fact that it's made in the U.S.A. makes it worth the price. Back in the 1960's there were about 15 U.S.A. vise manufacturers. Now, maybe three. Wilton is the best for a regular shop vise still. Crosby makes the best Shackles. (Made in U.S.A.) And also the best 'C' clamps are American made as well.
Wow. 1500 bucks. I definitely don't have need of that at this point in my tool-buying journey. I would probably buy a restored Emmert patternmaker's vise if I were spending that much.
This looks like a nice vice and definitely has it's place. I would use it for a basement workshop for very light duty stuff. But for a usable precision american made tough as can be and the new heavyweight champion of the world for best bench vise I would go with the new fireball vice. Like you said buy once cry once for the best of the best.
It's a really nice vice and I'm waiting for a review with the area 419 jaws. It's not a vise for everyone. It fills a niche with the correct jaws for rifle building and maintenance. Are there more affordable vises sure. Sadly this vise has had two price hikes in the last year. Orange also makes killer cnc vises so they do know what they're doing.
I think my wife would benefit from owning one of those. As a dedicated husband, concerned, only for her happiness, how can I not obtain one for her this Christmas. Thanks.
The price of this is much lower compared to fireball tools vice!! Even though Jason at fireball tool has undoubtedly made the most robust heavy duty prescion vice in the universe and I stand by that statement proudly lol
They are not really dovetails as they don't need to be slid out of the channel along its length. They pull fully out the front without the clamps. They LOOK like dovetails....but they are not. Its like calling a screw a 'ring barbed nail' because you decided to use a hammer to drive it home.
What a dilemma; do I spend over $1k on a digital primer depth checker or $1.5k on a colourful vice? Or do I wait for the $2.5k Next Gen precision kinetic energy impact transfer tool (aka Hammer). My $3,750 left handed screwdriver was particularly disappointing; the right handed one was only $20 and it works just as well in my left hand. And the long weight I ordered ($5k) is way overdue. A case of Skyhooks and a pack of spirit level bubbles should use up the remainder of my $20k tool budget and I reckon I’m good to go.
A nice vice, keep the handle in prop mode to open and close. Use an o ring to capture if the vice doesn't come equipped! You won't go back to the unbalanced swinging handle!
I don't understand the point if this being so precision. Is it ridged enough to hold parts while milling them because there is no need for that level of precision just to hold something on your bench.
Will it hold lawnmower blades while I sharpen them with an angle grinder and a flap disk?? I'm gonna stick with my 1950's 9" Wilton vice for vice duties and find something else to spend $1500 on.
@@deaczorz fireball tool already did a video on it. This thing doesn’t really have a place on any work bench. It’s like using a micrometer to measure a 2x4. Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice and has some cleaver design features, but $1500 to clamp a barrel is excessive.
I've been looking for a vice.... I thought about the Orange but its too pretty. Thinking about the Fireball Tools Hardtail vice. I think Wilton has lost its way... they seem compromised.
Ya I could maybe see it for someone that really is serious in the gun business or a machinist with lathes and the whole set up the clamping force specs are why I say that but if you are just doing it as a hobby in my opinion this is a little excessive the asking price on this vice is 1500.00 you can get an Irwin vice with a double sided rotating head and anvil for 250.00 from Home Depot just saying.
For that price I think I would rather have the Fireball Hardtail vise. Much better specs and capabilities. You can see his videos for proof here on RU-vid.
Yeah, ok, sexy as hell, looks so cool. The screw mechanism seems to be the best executed part of the whole thing. But an aluminum body? And aluminum jaws bolted on those tiny dovetails? Come on. This is light duty construction. I think everyone can keep their Parker, Reed, Hollands, Athol, Columbian, Prentiss, Wilton, etc. and be happy. If the jaws and body were steel, you could sway me.
Only for a vise snob. A vice is to be used. Who could use one like that with out always worrying about scratching it? Sorry but the review of a product like that is lost on me. Gavin You lose some credibility when pushing a product like this.
Turns out they are the most expensive, hipster vises in the west. Btw, what do you mean by "Ultimate reloader bench system"? You mean the T-tracks? Those are not something that's unique to that bench. Lockheed had them in the 50yo bench I worked on when I started as a junior engineer there. I copied it in the 90s onto my reloading bench. I built 5-10 of the tops for people in the 90s and early 2000s. Did you invent it and sell it to Lockheed in the 1940s? If so, you look great for your age. I know they have used them for thousands of fixtures to test everything from submarine parts to missile parts, they even told me that those benches were copied from the P-38 lines. The inserts used to be shelf track turned backward, and in the 60s, they were used to inspire track lighting for home decor. Mine I made were cut apart 10/10 engineering extrusions. I do know my original ones were a window track I cut down. I'm not sure if you still extend the patent every few years from the 40s but I'm sure there are thousands of people that owe you royalties, like kreg, woodpeckers, rockler, etc because they use the same setup.
