Tipton's Best Gun Vise 360

When it comes to “must have” tools for firearm cleaning, maintenance and gunsmithing; a quality bench top vise is the single most important tool you can possess. Without a stable device to hold the firearm, it’s very difficult to get an adequately clean barrel or mount a rifle optic, level to the bore. While using a rifle cradle or stand can be very effective for cleaning, I have found over the decades of working on rifles, a vise does a better job of securing the firearm and allows me to adjust the pitch or angle of the firearm to help get a more efficient position for each task.

Tipton has been a well-known name in the firearms maintenance market for quite a long time, with many great products to their credit. New for 2024 is the Tipton Best Gun Vise 360 offering recreational and professional firearm shooters the ability to clamp a rifle, shotgun or pistol into a padded vise jaw and rotate the firearm 360 degrees for the ultimate workstation. While traditional bench top vises spin 360 degrees on a single axis, the Best Gun Vise is built around a ball head with a tensioning lever to give the user a second axis to rotate the firearm for just about any practical purpose. The new Best Gun Vise 360s are currently available online or in your local sporting stores.

The main parts of the Best Gun Vise 360, including the jaws, are made of stainless steel to provide a long-lasting life, preventing corrosion and rust from destroying the vise. Each jaw has an integrated ARCA Swiss/ Picatinny rail slot machined into the top of the jaw, allowing the user to secure their rifle stock to the vise simply by clamping onto the rail. This is an incredibly useful feature not found in traditional vises used by most rifle hobbyists.

Tipton includes two styles of urethane jaw sets to prevent marring of any finishes applied to your rifle's barrel. One jaw pad set has a honeycomb pattern to hold rifle stocks and other parts of the firearm securely in place without crushing or damaging the finish. The other jaw set is a firmer jaw with relief slots cut horizontally across the jaw to hold barrels and other cylindrical objects in the jaws without the barrel slipping. These horizontal slots are cut to the ARCA Swiss and Picatinny rail slot dimensions to again offer another mounting solution not found in any traditional bench top vise jaws. Each jaw set can be changed quickly and effortlessly on the vise jaws to fit all your gunsmithing needs.

Setting up the Best Gun Vise 360 on my workbench I chose to clamp the vises base to the top of my rifle bench first to see how stable two large clamps could hold the vise in place. Being able to remove the vise when not in use allows for more room to work on other projects. The vise easily held a 15lb rifle setup by the barrel with just the two clamps, holding it in place, which was a great start not having to drill 4 holes in my workbench to test out the new product. Rotating the rifle around the ball head of the vise is quick and effortless using the tensioning lever on the side of the head. It allows you to spin the rifle to the proper angle then can't the rifle up or down depending on your specific needs.

Rifle Cleaning the Easy Way

When it comes to cleaning a rifle, I prefer to clamp my firearm by the barrel in a padded jaw vise to securely hold the firearm where I need it to give me the best position for running a long cleaning rod straight down the barrel without bending or flexing the rod. I can rotate the firearm to get the correct angle and position to efficiently scrub a bore without having to contort my body around a workbench. Mounting a vise on the corner of a workbench allows me the ability to place a bucket on the opposite side of the bench corner to catch all my patches while I work from the other side with plenty of room for me to move freely. I tilt the rifle's muzzle down slightly to help free the used patches and allow solvent to drop straight into the bucket. This system has worked perfectly for me over the years and makes cleaning firearms a much more comfortable task. We all know if a task is a consistent pain, we oftentimes are reluctant to finish it as often as we should, leaving our barrels overdue for a cleaning and sacrificing some performance.

With the vise securely clamped to my bench, I began cleaning a couple rifles I had been neglecting. Rotating the rifle around by the barrel made for a more comfortable cleaning station than my previously used hobby vise I picked up from a garage sale years ago. The metal jaws of the old vise required a leather pad to sandwich the barrel to prevent damaging the barrel and often would slip due to the jaws narrow surface area. The Best Gun Vise 360s included jaw sets help to maximize the jaws “bite” or grip on the firearm, holding both thin steel and wide carbon fiber wrapped barrels easily, plus won’t mar the finish of a Cerakote or blued barrel.

Rifle Optic Mounting and Leveling

After the rifles were all cleaned up and ready for the range, I needed to mount up some optics for reviews I had planned out, making for another great use of the new vise. I normally start by holding each rifle by the barrel in the vise, allowing me to get it level across the receiver to ensure I am getting the optic properly mounted. With the machined slots for Swiss Arca, I elected to hold the rifle by the Arca plates mounted to the front of my rifle stock to test out the different setup. Holding the rifle by the Arca worked very well and I discovered a better way of holding the rifle for the task as it was easy to balance the rifle out being closer to the middle.

Many people often use just the bipod to hold the rifle up on a table or workbench when mounting an optic, but you must be cautious of bumping the bipod or the rifle and throwing off your level even if the cant adjustment on the bipod is locked down. Keeping the optic level to the receiver is vital for long-range accuracy as any slight discrepancy between the optic and the rifle will dramatically show with left or right stringing at long ranges as the scope is tracking off of center, left or right depending on how it was installed. Securing the rifle by the barrel or Arca plate in the Best 360 Gun Vise allows you to lock the rifle in place once you fine-tune your level without worrying if it moved.

After getting the rifle leveled in the gun vise, I then go through my mounting process of securing the rings, leveling the optic and then finishing by torquing the ring caps down to the appropriate specifications. Having confidence in your rifle setup is crucial and it all starts with having your optic mounted properly. I recommend that everyone learn the proper scope mounting process and setting up their own rifles as I have seen some really bad setups come from “pro shops'  with optics and rings being damaged during installation. Many of the optics that have been brought to me to fix, were over a half to full bubble off of level which left the shooter unable to zero the rifle at 100 yards or even have enough windage to impact at 500 yards without wind. Mounting a rifle scope is not difficult to do if you follow a process and have the proper tools, including a quality gun vise to make the process that much easier.

Trigger Installation and Muzzle Brake Timing

With more aftermarket triggers on the market these days than ever before, more and more shooters are upgrading the trigger on their favorite rifle to help increase their accuracy potential. While many would pay a gunsmith to install a trigger, most triggers are very simple to install and include directions with step-by-step installation instructions. I recently installed three new triggers in some new rifles I am building up and once again used the Gun Vise 360 to hold each rifle by the barrel before installing each trigger. Having the rifle secured by the barrel in the gun vise allows me to move the receiver to any location I need for the most precise and comfortable position for me to work. I have seen people do trigger installation with the barreled action laying on a workbench and it makes me cringe knowing the round surfaces will rotate as soon as the punch is struck by the hammer, oftentimes resulting in a pin punch being driven into the side of the receiver leaving a nice gouge in the finish and removing a burr of steel as well. Save your rifle's finish and use a Gun Vise to secure the rifle before doing any work.

All of the popular Remington 700 clone receivers use the same two pin design to hold the trigger housing in place. These pins are easy to remove and install by simply using a pin punch and hammer to drive them out of the trigger and receiver. After driving out the pins and removing the old trigger, you simply install the new trigger, relocate the pins into the receiver and drive them back through the trigger housing carefully. Once installed, follow the safety checks provided by the manufacturer, and you're all set!

Lastly, installing a self-timing muzzle brake is a very simple and now, very common task that anyone can do at home with the help of a solid gun vise. After securing the rifle by the barrel in the Gun Vise 360, I again, level the receiver using a machinist level to get the rifle perfectly setup. Thread on the new self-timing muzzle brake and use the timing nut on the back of the brake to tighten the brake against the shoulder of the barrel when you have the ports in the proper position. Most self-timing brakes have a flat portion machined into the brake that you can place a level to get a perfect level, then tighten the brake in place by hand or use an appropriate wrench to snug the brake in place. This process, just like the others listed before, showcases the many common tasks you can complete at home using the Gun Vise 360 to expand your firearm maintenance skills and save some money doing simple tasks at your own workbench.

After working as a professional gunsmith and spending nearly most of my life working on all types of firearms in a traditional benchtop mounted vise, I can honestly say, I wish I had this Gun Vise 360, twenty years ago! It makes everything I do that much easier just by making it a more efficient process. Having the ability to swap out integral vise jaws and rotate the firearm to nearly any position is a huge benefit. Long gone are the days of punching out pins with the rifle rolling around on a benchtop, or fighting a sagging rifle held by a weak vise jaw with a leather pad or added polymer vise jaw liner that needs to be constantly adjusted. The Tipton Gun Vise 360 has earned a permanent place on my workbench for all my future rifle maintenance and gunsmithing needs and at $149.99 MSRP, you're not breaking the bank to get a quality vise setup on your bench. Head to tiptonclean.com or check out their Social Media pages on Facebook and Instagram for more information and videos on the Gun Vise 360 as well as Tipton’s full lineup of gun cleaning products.

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