Vise invention

Marrinan: OK Fred, here is one of the actual inventions of mine. This is a vise I built from scratch from bed rails and some wood and a trailer hitch ball with two plumbing floor flanges from the hardware store. I made if for wood carving but it could be used or modified for engraving large objects. The jaws slide on the bed rails like the tailstock on a lathe. The vise can be tilted by loosening a couple of the nuts on the top flange.
Wing nuts could be substituted for the nuts or even handles could be welded or soldered to the nuts. A half turn on several of them and the vise can be tilted quite a bit in any direction. I do not have plans for this I just built it like I do most things. From a piece of scratch paper. Mack

Way to go Mack. I used to have a home made checkering cradle for gun stocks that was very similar to this. The main difference being that mine was built on the end of a bench. The trailer ball was mounted on the end of the bench and I could swivel the work in any position I wanted. Like everything else I had, it went with the fire.
Carl

Mack, Thanks for sharing your inventiveness with me. I had seen a checkering vice that was very simalar and have a printout of how to rig large size trailer ball with a machinists vise. I had a friend who built me a standup vise and stand that work very well for h/c work and large items-haven't done enought that won't fit the mega ball to figure out the microscope setup yet-I also designed a fixture which clamps in the ball and allows complete movement on the y and x axis so you can easily stay centered-works great for knives and flat work etc. also designed a coin vise for the coin carvers-the coin sets in one side exactly half way so you can dress down a silver quarter, fifty cent piece, nickle or copper penny allowing the creation of 2 headed coins-very popular with kids. I will get some pics together and post real shortly. Have new digital camera comming-Fred

I have to say that's very clever, Mac!

Mack you are doing great and a true inventor...
You are stilled invited to come over to my shop in Tavares anytime you have a questions or if you need help with anything...
Jerry

I am not familiar with a Checkering Vise. I would assume it is for checkering gunstocks. You see, when you think you came up with an idea someone already thought of it. I have done that numerous times. After doing a patent search I find a bunch of others that are similar. People pay a lot of money to get a patent done, and some of them are really funny. I saw one of a walking cane with a roll of toilet paper and a rear view mirror on it. The cost right now to have a lawyer do it for you is about fifteen thousand or more. You can do it yourself but man it is complicated. Right down to the type of paper you use and the kind of printer. They will reject it for even a margin being wrong. Anyway I thought the vise was a good idea. Not really origional enough for a patent or anything but a nice novelty. Give you an example. Back in the late seventies I put what is now called a thumb bob for opening a pocket knife blade, on a couple of knives. I just drilled a hole and put a piece of brass rod in and peened and checkered the ends. Shortly after that I saw some more. Then I heard a guy had patened it. He wasen't the first, just the first to be smart enough to do a patent search and go for it. Trouble is, now everyone is doing it and you can't sue even one of the big companies. They have too much money and all they have to do is to change one little thing like make theirs out of a different material or design. Besides you would need an International patent to protect it.I am not saying I invented it, just that I had never seen one before mine. Which brings to mind there are a lot of different kinds of patents depending on whether you are patenting the way it is made or the way it looks or what catagory it fits into. For now there is a short term patent that protects your patent for one year. It is less expensive, less technical and gives you a chance to get the idea on paper better and get the money together. It is called a Provisional Patent and I have a pic of mine here. Even that is a bit complicated to get. If you get the Non Provisional now, your patent is protected for seventy five years after your death. That just went into effect a few years ago. Copyrights are not near as complicated. Actually when you make a drawing it is protected as soon as it is done. As long as you can prove you did it first. I have had several good ideas taken from me because I didn’t jump on it quick enough. That’s life
P.S. Sam,I couldn't get the pic to go full size so I had to shrink it. The system kept refusing it.

Mac: What kind of file was it that was being refused? JPG, GIF, etc? So far it's seemed to take any size image we could throw at it.

It is stored as a Microsoft picture it 1175 x 1500 3.79MB. Maybe I should have stored it as a document instead?

Mack: The forum software only recognizes JPG and GIF formats, so you'll need to load that image in whatever software you're using and save it as a JPG, then upload it. Maybe that's what you did, but as you say, the size is very small.

OK I got it. Next time I will make sure of that. It wouldn't scan very well either Kept not wanting to center. I put a black cover over it and it still didn't help.