If you want to improve your workbench’s vises in an hour, just add Crubber. These thin sheets of cork and rubber add a good deal of grip to your vise’s jaws, and they also protect the workpiece.
After becoming a Crubber Lover, we began replacing the other options I’ve tried over the years with this great material. On many of our benches we have suede, which has survived fine, and adhesive cork sheets, which have not.
I prefer to use epoxy to stick my Crubber to wood and metal. Other adhesives I’ve tried have creeped a bit. (The Horror of Creeping Crubber – this stuff writes itself.)
It’s not bulletproof – nothing is. I’ve torn out a chunk or two of the stuff on my leg vise. But it does hold well and it takes a good beating.
Two sheets (5” x 9”) are only $9. Available from Benchcrafted.
— Christopher Schwarz
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Thank you for these posts. Great ideas!
Crubber is really great. It kicks suede’s ass.
I’ll sing you to sleep, after the crubbin’
Not sure if it’s exactly the same, but I use gasket material from the local auto parts store and it has always worked great.
I started using the gasket material a few months ago. I’ve used it on my Moxon vise, hand screws, and the bottoms of my diamond plate holders
It certainly looks like the same stuff, I worked at auto parts warehouses in the 70’s and 80’s, In 1979 I had a tour of the McCord Gasket plant. All cork sheets are made of ground cork held together with rubber. The stuff for bulletin boards has just enough binder to hold together. for gaskets there is a higher percentage of rubber, and the better quality of gaskets even more. The good quality stuff looked just like Crubber. which I suspect is just a contraction of Cork rUBBER gasket material. As you say, check out your local auto parts store, you should get the same stuff, cheaper, and no shipping. 😉
You could probably just make your own with some old tires and wine corks.
Wish I could. I’m too busy making my own tack rags.
I was going to suggest this, but David beat me to it. I’ve been using gasket material to line vise jaws for several years now.
Pro Tip: Asking the person behind the counter for gasket material is much easier than trying to look for it in the store.
I’ve generally used barge cement (gluing outside) for adhesive. Makes great backing for sanding blocks, etc.
Your PopWood article on October 10/04/17 had good feedback from Jennie Alexander where she said she used 3M Safety Walk tape for many years. The current Amazon price for 1″ x 30′ for the 3M safety tape looks to be more cost effective, plus the recommendation by Jennie = ++++ rating.