Here is a great little setup that will save you some cash and work for almost any project where you need to hold your work at various angles. I got the idea after pricing gun makers and pattern makers vise for the shop and found they ranged in cost from $150. to over $200. I might have gone with the cost but, neither style vise was maneuverable enough to get all the angles I wanted to work with. Mouthpieces are hard to hold without marking them up and need to be held very solidly when scraping and finishing the wind ways. Sooo...I had a swivel vise on hand that was adequate in size for a base and easy to mount and I decided to start there. Out in the wood shop there were two dozen Pony pipe clamps for gluing up wood that were just setting there waiting for something to do. By combining an eighteen inch Pony clamp with the vise, I had a really useful device.

When using this combination, you can clamp the pipe into the vise and get any angle up and down that you wish. You can swivel the vise 90° to move the vise out of your way or move it to directly in front so it is easy and convenient to work on. Open up the Pony clamp and you can hold wide pieces and shorten the clamp to hold small pieces securely. You can press parts together by using the clamp extended and turning the tightening clamp screw to push the parts together. I press the mouthpiece into the tuning slide with this method and it is really slick!

One of the great features of using this combination is the vise is mounted ready to use on its own. Just take out the Pony clamp, set it aside and you can go to work on a project that only requires the vise.

I had the vise and Pony clamp on hand in the shop but you can purchase a similar vise for about $30. and a Pony clamp with a two foot piece of pipe for about $16. at almost any hardware store. Oh, I forgot! you can hold very long pieces up to four feet or even longer by just putting a longer pipe in the Pony clamp.