“Bother!” said Pooh as he failed to consider basic fundamental requirements.

I have a ring roller. It is used to roll long bits of metal into circles, well, rings. Reasonably large forces are involved and it could do with a secure mounting. I don’t use it often enough to warrant screwing it to a bench. I want a mounting plate where I can drop it into a vice and it will be sturdy enough to use.

All does not go to plan.

The roller has a detachable plate already. I guess this is so you can easily screw it down to a workbench. I thought I’d reuse the mounting holes and make a bracket to attach to them from an old piece of angle iron.

I marked out, centre punched and drilled a couple of 8mm holes.

Somehow, I managed to get the hole distance wrong by about 6mm. Grumble.

No worries, I can drill another hole and end up with a shorter bracket, it might even make the roller easier to store.

Now just cut the end off and it’s all finished. A quick simple job.

It is a pity the bracket doesn’t cover the whole base, but I’m sure it is stiff enough and it’s fine, just a bit ugly. Let’s take the money shot with it in the big leg vice.

Looks great, doesn’t it… Except… How Do I Turn the Handle. The leg vice is in the way. Damn.

Well, previously I had it in my engineers vice, I wanted it in the leg vise, but we can’t have everything. It doesn’t fit there either.

Then I remembered that the last time I used it, I had to grip it lengthwise in the vice – I didn’t like doing this because the forces meant that it wasn’t securely gripped and a good grunt might cause it to pop out of the vice in a rather scary way.

So I can do the same thing and have it sticking out the side of the leg vise, maybe that’ll feel more secure.

No, that’s even more scary. Precarious even.

So, I got my clamping plate in the wrong direction. I need to make one which is shifted round by 90 degrees. I need a plate which is the length of the roller with two countersunk holes the correct distance apart. In between I need to weld on a stout piece of bar (or angle iron) that can be firmly gripped in the leg vise.

So.. What did I learn from this… Mainly that I need to examine things closely before I start making the solution. The slightest effort to look and see how it would fit would have saved this waste of effort. I’m giving myself a free pass on this one. I had two vaccinations at the weekend so I’m a bit off colour and rather tired. Maybe I should just mount it on a bench after all…