I'm going to make a portable vise for my son-in-law Matt, for Father's Day. This idea came from working at my daughters Escape Room and trying to find a place to cut some metal tubing or some other kind of metal. What Matt came up with temporarily was to use some hand clamps and an old wooden pallet and then start cutting. This works but you have to kneel on the ground while doing this and that's no fun.

That's when I had the idea of making some kind of portable vise stand that could be moved around as needed which would take the place of that old pallet. What I needed first was something to use as a base and thought an old steel rim would work good for this. The one that you see below was given to me by a small tire shop near my house so I took it home to clean it up. 
 

Building A Portable Vise

I also needed two other pieces that I could weld some tubing to and I remembered that I had this piece leftover from working on my 33 Ford Coupe. This piece below was used to help me install my five speed transmission many years ago and is 3/16" thick X 6 1/2" X 15" long. This piece of steel should work perfect for welding some tubing to once I cut it to the size I need.
 

Here is my old Craftsman vise that I bought new in the mid 70's while working on my 71 Camaro. This Sears vise has worked really well over the years but eventually I bought a larger one when I started working on my 33 Coupe. Anyways, I'll be using this old one for the portable vise on this project.
 

I'm cutting the steel plate with my metal chop saw which made quick work of it. I'll need two pieces, one that will go under the vise and the other will be bolted to the wheel.
 

The piece that will be bolted to the wheel is going to be just over six inch's in diameter. Here I'm cutting out some cardboard as a template, then I traced around the template with a marker for reference.
 

I've placed my round piece under the wheel, made sure it was level and then marked the five hole locations with a marker. To make sure the round piece was elevated I used some 1 X 2 X 3 blocks. The next picture will show the blocks.
 

Here are my 1 X 2 X 3 blocks sitting on my bench with the round piece on top of them. And then the wheel is sitting on the round piece keeping it in the correct position while I marked it. But these marks are for reference only.