I have one of the Veritas twin screws. It would be theoretically possible but difficult to make yourself, not sure if there are close enough parts you could jimmy up but I think it would be hard to make it work well. I do have a few things I’m not in love with about it and I’m not sure I’d put it on my next bench.
The good:
– its wide, its deep. You have a lot of holding room
– its pretty well made. Lots of heavy hunks of cast iron and steel so the main pieces aren’t going anywhere.
The grumpy:
– You have to really torque down the set screws that keep the adjustable sprocket in place otherwise it slips (and gouges the shaft – no real harm there I suppose, but the slipping it annoying).
– Getting it aligned and setup is .. fussy. Its pretty exacting on the alignment of all of the parts so its worth spending a fair bit of quality time laying it out.
– its kind of slow. Not a problem for repeatedly clamping something like panels, but if you need to screw it in/out a long ways its annoying. Paired with a quick release vice for stuff you can fit in the narrower vice nicely its not to bad.
I’ve been eyeballing the patternmaker clone vise for a while, very tempting :D It would make some things much easier.
