Shoutout to the guy who told me about using a sacrificial plate for thin material

I spent about 4 hours last Friday trying to hold down a 0.020 inch aluminum sheet in my vise. It kept bowing and vibrating no matter what I tried. Finally a old timer walked over and said just clamp a flat piece of scrap underneath it. I felt pretty dumb because it took me all that time to figure out something that simple. Now I keep a few pieces of 1/4 inch aluminum plate cut to size just for this purpose. Anybody else have a trick like this that took way too long to learn?

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1 Comment

miller.eva1mo ago

Jumped straight into that "well now I know" club with ya lol. I spent like 3 hours once trying to tap a 1/4-20 hole in a piece of stainless steel with a dull tap cause I was too cheap to buy a new one. Kept snapping them left and right, ended up having to drill out three broken taps from the same hole. My buddy handed me a new tap and it went in smooth in like 30 seconds. Now I just buy a fresh tap every time I work with stainless, lesson learned lmao.