Ultimate Vise

The welds are sloppy-looking, but that didn't really detract from the performance. What DID disappoint me was the urethane faces becoming partially detached almost immediately. I removed and re-glued them, and that's something every owner of this vise should do right away. The last thing you want to see is someone's guitar sitting on the floor in the morning because the vise faces couldn't grip it!

It's here now and works OK. The feature I like best is the ability to hold instruments at any angle, particularly while a touchup is drying.

To be honest, this particular purchase was "almost regretful".... it's a fine vise but, for the better part of $500, the money really could've been better spent elsewhere.

I have more than a few Stew-Mac tools. A certain amount of them go into the cabinet, never to be seen or heard from again. This vise is different. It truly is an ultimate vise. I have 2 of the swivel pattern makers vises from them that I will most likely seldom use again. The vise did require some adjustments to become functional, but they were cheap and easy.

As far as loosening up the mechanisms, I just greased everything with white lithium grease and cranked it around until everything worked smoothly. That was easy. The short 1/2" diameter bar that locks the swivel ball joint mechanism in place is useless. You need to put a cheater bar on it to get the leverage to lock it in place. The other option is to do as I did. I replaced the short bar with a 1' long bar. I tapped the ends of the bar to accept a 1/4-20 screw with a washer to keep the bar from sliding out. That was an easy $5.00 fix.

It's always fun to make a tool better. I also removed the spring and ball bearing that was used to keep the short bar from sliding out. No need for them anymore. I seldom recommend tools, but this one is a winner. The cost of the Ultimate Vise kept me from buying it for awhile, and I'm sorry I waited. As their info says, it holds your work at almost any height or angle you'll ever need. In just a few weeks it has completed revolutionized neck carving and fitting dovetails in my shop!

I received the vice last night, 2/1/2011 and was really excited to get it set up. As typically happens with a Fed Exp delivery, the vice was partially hanging out of the box when it was dropped off at my door. No damage but hate to get shipments from Fed Exp.

I was shocked at the quality of this vice for the price. The welds were the sloppiest I have ever seen and there was a sticker on the vice "made in Taiwan" it's really lousey workmanship. I expected a lot more from a stew mac product and I'm probably going to send this thing back. Really really disappointed! I also had a hard time getting the handle screwed in.

I intended to pass on this vice since I already have the Stew Mac guitar repair vice, but the owner of my luthier school and my instructor both told me to get it. I am glad that I did. The vice is well-made and has become my favorite for holding just about anything related to lutherie. My only complaint is that the hand wheel was sticky when the vice arrived. This has become better with use but is still not as smooth as the cost of the vice would indicate. I love the vice enough that I have chosen to overlook this slight issue and I suspect that it will go away completely as it breaks in fully. All in all, this is a very versatile tool for my shop.

After mine arrived and was set up to get to work with, had to take it apart and then have what was an unbelievably stubborn, sticky and downright unwieldy steel shaft turned down by a local professional machinist to a diameter which would allow it to glide back and forth in the locking ball joint. Needless to say, for the handsome price this baby commands plus the shipping I was not impressed when exploring the functionality of this touted marvel.

One other critical issue; the adhesive on my urethane jaw liners wasn't strong enough to resist creeping when holding a bolt-on guitar neck by the heel so beware of leaving anything like a bolt on guitar neck clamped in the original vise jaws, unattended.

I know because I found a bolt-on neck I was working on along with one of the jaw liners laying on the concrete floor beside a bench the next morning when I came in to go back to work on the same neck. I have replaced the original double sided tape that was holding the jaw liners in place with a far stronger tape. Now the steel shaft slides back and forth the way it should so the vise is a joy to use and nothing falls out of it anymore ever, even overnight. So, after dealing with one major and one minor quality of construction issue, it's now working, the way I anticipated it would, as advertised.