TLDR at bottom. Crazy old man review below. Not sure what "shearness" is in relation to a low profile vise... but it is sufficiently short and a great value for a 4 inch (101.6mm) wide, low profile drill press vise. Unusual for Wen (because this is really a white box item, but assembled/packaged by happy employees, apparently) this vise came with a little too much tension, but was otherwise easily workable out of the box! I did end up disassembling a few minor points like the jaw plates, then cleaning and lubricating everything that I could reach without completely taking it apart. It now glides smoothly, and bites down on my aluminum workpieces without messing up my angles (unlike a competitor's vise, which I had to buy 2 of when this one was out of stock... and those are bleh). I paid almost twenty bucks for my first Wen, and I'm about to pay under fifteen for another in a few seconds... and return two other "similar" products, that were made with much less care than I would have expected, for ten bucks more per item than these Wen vises. This Wen had (almost) all matching hardware, and didn't appear to be assembled by an amateur, unlike the competitor. The Wen also has an open mounting notch on either side, directly between the mounting slots... the others have nothing there. This may sound trivial, but those little extra mounting notches allow for so much more usage around my shop, while the other ones I am returning are basically useless for my various Wen shop tools. The Wen vise will not only fit my 8 inch, 5 speed Wen drill press, but I can also adapt two of these to fit on my Wen 15 amp 10 inch miter saw, instead of using the badly warped fence and useless clamps that came with that saw. Basically, two of these become a fence/clamp system, and will even allow me to go down in size on my saw blades, because my work will be raised 1.25 inches from the original saw table. This is advantageous for several reasons, and figures heavily into me giving these such a glowing review. First, I cut 6061 aluminum ranging from .125 inch thick bars, to 1.5 inch thick bars, and also 6063 t slot extrusion profiles, aluminum spacer tubes, etc. Basically, stuff that requires special blades, lubricant, good clamps, and lower saw RPMs... which my Wen saw is a bit too high on. As long as I am not cutting anything too thick (say, 1 inch x 2.5 inch bar) or using miter cuts/bevels, I could easily find a smaller blade that would effectively spin at lower RPMs than a ten inch blade would, and those smaller blades are often rated for higher RPMs than 10 inch ones are, AND they're cheaper, AAAAAND more widely available many times. So, these allow me to get good results even with a smaller blade than my saw normally takes. Big win. The clamping power of these is also sufficient to hold a thick bar that was being abused by a reciprocating saw, never once vibrating loose, even when I let my arm droop and got some chatter. TLDR; Great value, better than the ones that cost double. Adds great utility to multiple Wen bench tools, including mm1011 miter saw. Be prepared for minimal pre-use asjusting/cleaning/lubing, and enjoy for years (presumably, it's not made of painted cheese I'm pretty sure).
