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At my local Harbor Freight they have this cross slide vice on sale for $19.99. I assume this is a nation wide sale. Great for bridge work. I wouldn't buy it for machining steel but for wood it is more that enough.



http://www.harborfreight.com/4-cross-sl ... -vise.html

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http://goatrockukulele.com

trust me , that cross vise is a piece of crap. It has way too much slop to use as a machining vise. You will soon see that you end up rebuying tools and this will be more expensive than buying a good one.

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John Hall
blues creek guitars
Authorized CF Martin Repair
Co President of ASIA
You Don't know what you don't know until you know it

I just made a couple of bridges and it worked well. It's not swedish engineering but for $19 well worth it for me.

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Sorry if this is a stupid question, but how would you use this tool to help make bridges? I guess for drilling bridge pin holes with a drill press it would be helpful, but there must be something else really obvious I'm missing.

Thanks,

Jonas

I use one like it to cut the saddle slot using my drill press. I chuck up a 1/8" straight router bit and set the angle of the bridge so that the slot can be cut in several passes by cranking the vise so that it slides sideways. I have to credit John Mayes for this technique as I saw it on one of his videos. Very simple.

Chuck

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"To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong"
- Joseph Chilton Pearce

I use it to cut the slots like the last poster. Make sure your drillpress is going as fast as it can. I'm making ukes and a strait slot. To make a corrected slot you would have to cut a few wood shims at the desired angle of your slot and clamp your bridge stock between the shims. This also works nicely for holding anything to be drilled accurately.

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