Review on 🔧 Enhance Your Precision Work with Palmgren 30301 32 Cross Slide by Willie Midkiff

Handles drilled and cut down the middle - jiggle and stick. The lower table is excessively inclined - it can be moved more than 1/32 inch by hand. The table top handles on the Palmgren 32 cross vise come upside down so I took them off to rotate and found that the handles on the unit I received do not rotate very smoothly - wobble and stick when rotated. They attach to the handle stock with a machine screw that threads directly into the handle end. This means that the screw and screw head are the main bearing surfaces - even without a washer. Cheap! Screw removal revealed that the screw holes were drilled off-center and slightly off-parallel, which explains the wobble and binding. Very poor joinery and quality control! I have photos but didn't see the option to include them in this review. The movable vise jaw moves smoothly and appears very parallel to the fixed jaw. The top tier is difficult to move, but has a subtle drag and stays still when moved. However, the bottom stage has significant play - about a quarter turn backwards - and lots of play! You can manually move the bottom tier almost 1/32 of an inch. Normally I would disassemble the vise at this point to see if I could tighten the bottom stage and flatten the top. I could probably find a way to make the handles work better too. But at this point I reached my limits. I am returning this vise. I have a Chinese made Wilton cross vise that I have been using for several years. It's not particularly difficult or precise, but with a little patience you can get the job done. I bought Palmgren based on the rave reviews, expecting a much more accurate and precise tool that would require a lot less fuss and cross checking to get the job done. At a multiple price point for the Wilton I don't see much of an improvement - and the pens are at least far inferior to the Wilton. I can only assume that something terrible happened in Palmgren's manufacturing process. Maybe this is all done in China now?