I use a Bald Eagle vise that I got from Grizzly Industrial. Probably not the best but it works must of the time.  I gave up last week on a round barrel on a Winder high wall round barrel since I didn’t want to damage anything. The top clamp can be turned upside down so the flat portion bears on the octagon flat making octagon barrels easier than round.  I have seen some others here that are better but this one is fairly inexpensive. 

Jack

I made my own out of a couple pieces of scrap steel.  I make my own bushings out of aluminum round stock to fit the barrel then split the bushing.  The steel was free, and small sections of 1-1/4” diameter aluminum are easy to come by for the bushings.

I have a gunsmith friend who built his own using a 5 ton bottle jack. His jack is bolted to a frame above a base so the jack moves down when pumping the handle. His base plate is the bottom half, and he has two large lead blocks that trap the barrel and he puts some rosin on the lead before clamping the barrel. 
I watched him spin a barrel off that was mangled from a guy trying to get it off and got nowhere. Once he clamped down his jack he broke it free easily with his action wrench.

marlinguy wrote on Jan 15^th, 2025 at 11:30am:


I made mine with a 20 ton jack and a heavy frame mounted on a piece of 5" pipe that is welded to an old truck rim. I have a drawer full of aluminum blocks machine to fit many barrel sizes, including two "V" blocks for octagon barrels. There is also an 8 pound hammer for some of those old military rifles that are hard to get off.