Vice jaws

Vice jaws are a clamping part that grips a key, a lock cylinder or another part firmly while it is being worked on. In locksmithing the term is used in two senses.

On the one hand there are the jaws of the key cutting machine, which hold the original key and the new one perfectly aligned so that the copy comes out exact. On the other, the jaws of the bench vice, where a cylinder or a lock is held so that it can be dismantled, inspected or a part filed down without it moving.

Bench vice jaws usually have soft covers so as not to mark the parts. They are the ones used, for example, when an old lock is taken apart to see what is wrong, in jobs such as lock repair. Key copies, on the other hand, are something we do not do.