Anyone have a DIY or substitute for the lower bench block? I am not going to pay $40 for a piece of plastic. It would be cheaper to just get an aluminum magazine and use it for that. Any comments?

Just what you said, a magazine.That's what I used.

If you have some scrap wood around, you can make a pretty good block without the need to sacrifice a mag in the vise. It can be straight.

If it were me I would find a mag that doesnt feed anymore or is bent/beat up, making sure it will fit /lock in place ok and use that. You could probably find one of those for free if you ask on here or you can find some new ones for no more than 8-9 bucks .

Yea I thought of using wood, but using a MAgazine sounds like a good idea too. Less work....Anyone have a **** aluminum mag?

I took an otherwise useless 30-round aluminum GI mag, and filled it with a fiberglass chop/resin mixture. It's solid, and locks the rifle to the vise.

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*Aim small, miss small...

I use a solid block of scrap aluminum I got from a local machine shop scrap bin. It was slightly larger and I could have worked it down to size by hand in about a half hour max but the guy at the machine shop offerered to trim it down and shape it up a little for free, took him 30 seconds.

Price = 100% free, and its a lot more durable than using a magazine.

I use one of the old Bushmaster 10 rd mags I had, it is a 20 rd mag but the bottom half has a block of some type pinned in so it only holds 10.