Make a Woodworking Vise From a Barbell

I've been doing woodworking for a while know in a general capacity, and have added tools as I've gone along. One thing I've been missing is a larger wood vise. I have a couple of smaller ones, but for big chunks of wood with a large jack plane, they were just too small to properly clamp the wood. Larger vises can be quite expensive, so I've held off. I saw a YouTube video from creator Epic UpCycling on how to make one out of a 1" dumbbell, and I just knew I had to recreate it for my own purposes and share on Instructables for others to make!

Materials:

1. Wood - I used 4 feet of a 2x6 piece of fir that I had in my shop, you might look at a hard wood like maple as well
2. An old dumbbell or barbell of the threaded 1" variety
3. A few screws or lag bolts
4. Possibly some plywood, scraps of plastic, or an old caster wheel
5. Bolts - I used 5mm diameter, 25mm long bolts but 1/4-20 would work as well

Tools - this is what I used, you might be able to get away with fewer, more basic tools though:

1. A hacksaw or portable metal bandsaw
2. Bench vise
3. Sandpaper or a random orbit sander
4. Forstner bits
5. Brad point drill bits
6. Bench grinder
7. Drill press
8. Threaded tap
9. Oil (for drilling and tapping)
10. A router and 1/4" roundover bit
11. Chisel, the smaller the better
12. Circular saw or table saw
13. Drift punch
14. Drill guide
15. Clamps

The beauty of this project is in the availability and price of the materials - I did not spend a single penny to make my vise! I had an old 1" threaded barbell from a weight set that I'd replaced the barbell with a smooth one and quick clamps, and the wood was some scrap I had in the garage. It's important that it is a 1" threaded variety, and you have two of the threaded nuts that are used to attach the weights.

1" threaded weight sets are pretty common on craigslist, Facebook Marketplace and in thrift stores for very, very cheap - most people are looking to get rid of them either because they upgraded to a more common 2" variety or they gave up on their New Year's Resolution to lift weights. If you have a Buy Nothing Group in your region, that could also be a place to look for them. Ask around and I'm sure you can get one for very cheap or free.

I used a barbell - and will reference that throughout this Instructable - and cut it down a bit shorter because that is what I had, but you could easily get away with a single dumbbell for the whole project.

I was very lucky to finally come across a portable bandsaw for metal just days before doing this project. That made this part very, very quick and easy. It is doable with a hacksaw, you will just have to have a lot of patience.

Clamp your barbell in a bench vise - most vises that are 4" or larger typically have a bottom part that is meant to clamp round tubing, you will want to use that if it is part of your vise. Take your hacksaw or portaband and cut the barbell just behind where it flares out at the end of the threaded section - we will be using that flare to keep the threaded section from rotating when tightening the vise.

I cut my threaded section down to 7" in length, which resulted in about 4" of clamping distance - anything larger than that would likely need to be clamped to the surface of a table rather than in a vise like this anyways.

After cutting the barbell to length, I used my bench grinder to clean up the end of the threads a bit, and shape the flared part. You'll want to create two parallel flats on the flared section - we will shape the countersink in the rear of the clamp so that this part fits inside, and the piece cannot rotate during use.

I just ground one side flat, flipped it around and ground the other side roughly parallel with the first flat. It can be helpful when grinding this much material to have a cup of water near you to keep the piece from getting too hot.

Once you have cut and ground the threaded section, you are ready to move on to the rest of the project. If you are doing this part with a hacksaw and hand file, it will take a while but it is definitely doable with those basic hand tools.

I marked three of the little "ears" of the nuts to drill through so that they would attach to the weights - they contacted the weights perfectly at three different locations. I then used a punch to keep the drill bit from wandering, put them in the drill press vise and drilled a 3/16" hole, using some cutting oil and about 3000 rpm for the speed.

This is the part of this whole project that I got a bit tripped up. I had planned (and you can see from the original photos of materials) to use some duplicate 2.5lb weights from the set that I did not need as the handles of the vise. You need something larger than the little nuts to get the mechanical advantage necessary to properly tighten the vise, so attaching some sort of round piece like shown in the inspiration video for this project seemed appropriate. Ultimately, the weights did not work out - cast iron weights like that are darn near impossible to drill through! I set my drill press on a very low speed and tried to drill a small pilot hole through them, but only made a small divot after about a minute of drilling. I do NOT recommend trying to drill your weights unless they are a mild steel rather than cast iron.

So, I looked around my garage for another material I might be able to use. Low and behold, I had replaced some broken casters on a piece of equipment (they were not the appropriate rating for how heavy it is) and had kept the casters. The nuts for the barbell fit perfectly inside of them, and the rubber outside is perfect for grip to be able to tighten the vise!

It would be easy to create this piece out of plywood with a jigsaw or router circle jig or large hole saw. Use what you have - in my case, it was the casters but you certainly don't need to go buy those specifically. I unbolted the wheels from the caster, and used a socket to pound the bearing out of the middle. I then used the 3/16" holes in the nuts as a template to drill through the casters. I enlarged the hole a bit to 7/32" for the 5mm bolt to easily slide through. After tapping the metal nuts, I just bolted the casters to them and had a really nice set of handles for my vise that ended up being better than using the weights.

After creating the handles, all of the metal working was done and it was time to move on to shaping the wood. I cut my 2x6 into two pieces that are 24" long. You might make your dimensions longer or shorter based on your needs, this just seemed a good length overall to serve my purposes.

I started by making the countersink shape in the back of one piece of wood about 2" on center from one long edge. I chose to put these at the bottom of the wood rather than in the center so there would be more clamping surface of wood overall for longer pieces. If you put the barbell threads centered in the wooden planks, there is a lot of wasted wood underneath that is not able to clamp horizontal pieces as easily.

I traced the shaped barbell flare 4" on center from each short edge of the wood, and then used a forstner bit to drill out a countersink shape. I used a 30mm bit at first, but switched to a 28mm instead - that let me make the second one much faster since I could clamp the drill guide in place and drill a countersink right next to the first one.

It was really helpful here and for the other drilling procedures to use my drill guide - I recently got one and don't know how I lived without it! It vastly improves all of your holes, and combined with brad point drill bits and a set of forstner bits it makes your woodworking so, so much more professional.

After drilling out the countersink, I took a small chisel and created the flats and cleaned out the hole until the barbell piece fit into it perfectly flush.

The threaded piece has to go through both pieces of wood in the vise, and it's important that they are lined up and parallel or else it will bind up. I clamped both pieces together, matching the edges as best as possible all the way around. I then marked off the center of the countersink holes that I created, keeping in mind that the divots from the forstner bits were not centered on the hole.

I then took a 25mm forstner bit, put it in the drill guide, and drilled through the back board into the front board. My bit was not long enough to drill all the way through both, but registering the hole on the front board was sufficient to get them parallel. I did the same for the other countersink before unclamping so that there were two holes started in the front board of the vise. Then, I just drilled the rest of the way through with the same bit. I tested the vise to see if it would work and bind up before moving to the next step, and managed to get it all lined up and drilled perfectly in one go!

Since I will be using this as a tool, I just did some light finish work. I didn't want to put polyurethane on the wood since that would make it too slippery, and oil would transfer to other woods when they are clamped. I took my trim router with a 1/4" roundover bit and routed the edges and the holes (except for the rear custom countersink hole - you do not want to route that!). This helped significantly to keep the threaded rods from binding up when tightening or loosening.

I sanded with 180 grit sandpaper to make the wood uniform. I wanted it to have some roughness, again so that it could have good clamping friction - too smooth a finish might make it less effective as a tool.

At this point, I just created three countersunk holes with a forstner bit and drilled through the wood to add some 5/16" lag bolts. Doing this in the same centerline as the threaded pieces means that when it is mounted, those pieces have nowhere to go. This attached the vise to my bench very securely. I tested how it worked with a piece of maple flooring, and it holds things very, very well. I foresee using this quite often in the future.

I hope you are inspired to make your own woodworking vise like this one out of reclaimed materials - be sure to post a photo of your version if you do!