Quite some time ago I was at a home show at Pheasant Run Resort and there wan an infomercial style booth set up where a guy was selling a bench clamp. I got caught up in the sales pitch and shelled out about $100 bucks for this thing:
At the time, I was living in a townhouse, and believe it or not, the two car garage was bigger than the one in our current single family. I had a dedicated bench do clamp this thing on. When we moved into this house about 13 years ago, I lost the bench space and this clamp has been in a box since.
Well, I have a bench again, and yesterday I pulled out the clamp and started reevaluating it and rediscovered that it’s not worth anywhere near the amount I paid for it.
It’s cast aluminum which makes it light weight, but it also flexes quite a lot. In the above picture, the amount of force required to secure the block in the vise made me think the jaws were going to snap.
After some digging around, found that the brand name was Gripmaster, a clone of the Zyliss.
Here is a promotional video of the Zyliss on youtube. The quality is poor, but it is watchable.