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The DIY Gun Vise Project

March 8th, 2010 by Blogging Farmer

One of the hobbies that I took up after moving out to the countryside was
firearms. Many people living in cities don’t like the idea of guns, and I agree to
an extent. A packed, stressful environment like the city is probably not the best
place for people to have guns. Out on the farm, things are different.

An important piece of equipment for any gun owner is a stable gun vise to enable
you to clean or tinker with your firearms safely, easily and without damaging
them. You can buy one, of course, but frankly most of the products out there are
either made out of flimsy plastic or over-priced. With the help of this guide, you
can build a nice wooden vise in just a few hours.

I got my inspiration from this page (scroll down until you see the heading “Gun & Gear Review”). My version
has one or two extra features. The materials I used were:

4-foot length of 2×10… not great quality, just a piece of wood I had in the
garage.
A few wood scraps.
Woodworker’s clamp. At $15.98, this was the single most expensive
component of the vise.
Leather scraps to pad the surfaces that will be in contact with the gun.
Wood glue, to attach the wood parts together
Contact cement, to attach the leather to the wood

You can see how it all comes together on the schematic to the right. Here is an
overall view of the end result:
An overall view from another angle:

All the wood parts are just glued together. It would be stronger to use screws together with the glue, but frankly,
wood glue dries tougher than the wood it’s bonding. It’s plenty strong for these purposes. Here’s a close-up of
the forend:

It might have been smarter to put the support on the opposite side of the forend to give the gun more clearance.
For the purposes of cleaning, I haven’t found this to be a problem.
Here is a close-up of the padding on the wood worker’s clamp.

This is a feature I didn’t draw on the schematic: a 3″ well for holding solvent bottles. While it’s a little large for
the small 8 oz bottles (though it will still prevent spills), it fits the 16 oz bottles perfectly as you can see on the
picture below.

Here’s another view of the Marlin, securely clamped in place and ready for cleaning:

Posted in DIY, Guns, How To | 7 Comments »