Glide Crisscross Acetal Bushing--Modification

If you are retrofitting a Glide leg vise with a Crisscross, you may need the latest version of our acetal bushing.

We began shipping ALL Glide leg vises with this new bushing some months ago. If you have a Glide from about mid-summer 2012, you should already have the new bushing. You're good to go if retrofitting a Crisscross.

But for those of you with older Glides (before summer 2012) you will have the original acetal bushing.

Here's how to tell the difference:

This is an original acetal bushing. The central hole is a true circle, just a few thousandths larger than the vise's acme screw.

This is the new, current version of the acetal bushing. We've kept the hole the same width as the original, but enlarged the height of the hole equally above and below the screw. When designing the Crisscross Glide we found that a bit of extra clearance above and below the screw allowed the vise to work more smoothly. You should realize that we always shoot for "ultimate" smoothness with our vises. With the new version bushing installed the Glide Crisscross works even smoother than the original Glide. We can give the handwheel a hearty spin and it will keep going for up to 15 revolutions. This is a neat parlor trick, but its also a good barometer for what's possible when you get your Glide Crisscross installed to its potential. We have customers who have experienced the same.

If you have an original acetal bushing and would like to modify it like the new version, its easy. Here's how:

Take your original bushing and remove material from the upper and lower half of the hole (the areas in red). Do not remove any material from the width of the hole, keeping about 5/16" in the middle area untouched. This middle area is all that's necessary to stabilize the screw. The areas where you remove material should never touch the screw, once installed. The ideal tool for this job is a spindle sander. You can also use a rat tail rasp or file, or sandpaper wrapped around a dowel. Acetal works easily.

This is the quickest and cheapest way to get yourself the new bushing. We will sell you a new bushing if you like (even though we think it'd be silly), they are $20 including shipping. But right now all our bushing inventory is earmarked for Glides, so your best bet would be to modify.