BISLEY GUNSMITHING VISE Reviews & Ratings

Too big to hold most rifle barrels. The opposite vice laws don’t open very far. Not sure it’s that useful for me.

AFTER OWNING THIS FOR SEVERAL YEARS, I USE THIS VICE MORE THAN ALL MY OTHERS. IT'S EASILY MOVED TO WHERE I NEED IT ON MY BENCH AND THE 180 DEGREE JAWS LOCK AT THE BEST ANGLE FOR COMFORTABLE WORK. I ESPECIALLY LIKE THAT THERE ARE TWO CHOICES FOR HOLDING EITHER BARRELS OR SMALL PARTS. VERY WELL THOUGHT OUT AND USEFUL TOOL FOR ANY HAND WORK.

I have used and abused this vise since 2015. After 5 years and counting of use, it has held help very well. I use it strictly for gunsmithing. I use it to hold barrels, uppers, lowers, etc. I use vise blocks to adapt the vise. The cork lining on the barrel jaws are great and have held up. This is not a vise for heavy duty work. It is for gunsmithing When using it to hold vise blocks for uppers, lowers, it is at its limit in jaw size. I change barrels and torqued in a barrel nuts with this vise on an AR10. I wouldn't use it to change out an M14 barrel or hammer on or use big long wrenches on. Its a medium weight vise. It is great for holding Glock block, AR15 an AR10 blocks to do most all gunsmithing work. It is fantastic for cleaning and makes things very easy. The vise can rotate, pointing your weapon at an angle up, to look down the barrel or down to work on the buttstock. I find this very nice. I love it. It takes up little space as it quickly unclamps and gets moved to the corner of the bench and clamped there when not in use; staying out of the way when not needed. It has a easy to turn knob on the front of the vise to tighten up the jaws. Loosen this knob a little and you can tip the barrel up or down. It isn't obvious from the photo, but this vise spins 180 degrees and provides a regular jawed vise used to hold gun blocks or small parts. Nice removable steel jaws. Fantastic vise for mounting optics. it leaves the rest of the bench in front of you, free for tools and parts. I have not had any problem with wear or tear in the last 5 years and i have done an awful lot of gun work on it. This is one of those gunsmith tools that you buy once, buy right.

It is smaller than I thought it was, so far i have used it to clean the bores on rifles and it works on that. big jobs it would be to small to get the job done

First of all, I need to explain some of the mandatory boxes I had to check. I am not a gunsmith, but I am a pretty good engineer and handy with tools so I am learning to do a lot of that work myself. (not afraid to get into triggers, etc,) I also am not a gun collector in the pure sense, but I have accumulated about 10 very good quality rifles and handguns. I am also not a competition shooter, although I do consider myself to be a better than average shooter. I purchased this vise primarily because I wanted a portable vise for use with my guns in my office. I do not have any workbench inside the house that would allow bolting a vise to it. I use a 1/2" pull-out work surface from my computer desk. The vice clamps to this pull-out surface easily when using a 1/2" piece of wood as a shim. I am quite impressed with the precision quality of this vise -- I guess I better be what with the money I had to dole out. LOL It is actually half again as large as I was expecting it to be from the pictures and description. To give you a perspective, the adjusting knob is a full 3" in diameter. So it is very hefty and yet not too terribly heavy at only a little over 5 lbs. I knew ahead of time that I would want some cushioning for the flat steel jaws to work on smaller items where I don't want to leave scratching or marks. I purchased a pair of aluminum (with inserted magnets) soft rubber-padded 3 1/2"jaws. They overhang on each side but that is no problem. Because of the added thickness of these padded jaws, the working opening gets reduced down to 1/2" max. Beyond that, the whole vice mechanism gets too loose. However, for larger items like a slide for large pistols or even a pistol receiver, simply drape a thin mouse pad into the jaws and tighten to your desire. The curved cork lined jaws are fantastic -- they will hold the largest of revolvers that you can find. For example, in the picture posted here, that is a Ruger Redhawk dual 45 with a 6-chamber cylinder. I haven't tried it yet, but with just a quick adjustment on the cog adjuster, you can swing the jaws 90 degrees to a vertical hold for grabbling rifle barrels, I was able to justify the purchase of this vise by explaining to my wife that it will help me hold just about anything around the house that needs repairing, including her jewelry. That last item was the clincher. I gave the rating 4 stars as there is always some room for improvement maybe in this case just a lower price.

This is the only portable vise I have found that is strong enough to do real work, yet light enough to actually carry to the job site. The curved jaws don't close enough to hold barrels less than an inch or so in diameter, but they do open up enough to allow the use of barrel vise jaws. If portability is a requirement you have for your vise, you will be hard pressed to do better than this vise.

Re gun holding, vise is fantastic - purpose built and works as advertised. I don't need to re-iterate what other reviewers have already said. Other than that, I have had a serious problem with the side that attaches the vise to the workbench - see photo. I simply hand tightened the vise to a wood work surface, and... crack! Waiting on Brownell's customer service to see what they will do about it, and will update review when new information is available.