"STARRETT Hold Downs are of improved design to firmly hold work flat on a machine bed or in a vise. They are particularly useful for holding small work or thin materials without distortion.

The contact edges are tapered to hold the work securely and to force it downward to the bed of the machine or against any parallel surface.

The hold downs are made of tool steel, hardened and ground."

Extract from Starrett catalogue – hope it helps.

They were (are?) commonly used in Shaper vices to hold work flat/down in the vice Peter.

I seem to recall someone wrote some articles in ME about using the Shaper, where his first 'project' was a pair of hold-downs for it.

Regards,

IanT.

Hi guys, when I did my training in the toolroom in the early sixties, we were supposed to do 6 months but I managed to weasel my way to 10 months as there was a lot to do as they say. This kickstarted my lifelong love affair with shaping machines, there being about 5 plus an equal number of horizontal & vertical mills. So I had as a mentor Mr. Frank Dudley, or Dank Frudley as he was known. He showed me the true way of machining flat surfaces & then I set was loose on a 10" butler shaper of truly Victorian vintage, not to worry it was extremely accurate & had a true shaper vice, also box table was capable in conjunction with swivelling vice of creating compound angles in 3 axes at once, Whoa! Being well equipt with parallels, I was then introduced to hold downs, or kicking strips as the old hands called them, there were quite a few about, some stamped with the names of men who retired before I was born. Now a pattern formed, 1 shaper, keen young lad, unlimited supply of gauge plate equals 15 sets of hardened & ground hold downs stamped with owners name, including my 2 sets.

Onward, the included angle when viewed from the end is about 92 degrees & the 2 long edges are ground parallel to each other at this angle, therefore when vice closes on them & the workpiece they tip up in such a way that although the large proportion of the clamping force is gripping across, a small percentage is forcing it downwards. Place a narrow parallel against each jaw, place hold downs on top of them, place 1 large parallel in between to raise job to your required height, tighten vice firmly, caress job once with a LEAD hammer, engage warp drive. I have never known a job to escape from them, still have mine over 50 years later.

About 1980 I finally managed to snaffle a Acorntools 7" shaper made legend in Ian Bradleys book "The Shaping Machine" robjon 44