First Custom bolt gun

Building your own barrel vice could present a challenge. The clamping force required to keep a grip on factory barrel while breaking the action free, is significant.
Not a problem if you have the ability to machine it; your take is spot-on.
I pull a lot of milsurp barrels for replacement- 2" aluminum stock, 3/4" Grade 8 all-thread/nuts. Crank on it with as long a cheater as I need.
It's all about surface area contact. If the barrel has a straight cylinder ahead of the receiver easy-peasy. Little or no straight cylinder, with a lot of taper (like Tikkas), are where custom bushings, tapered to match the barrel contour are desirable.

Mine:
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For a commercial vise, I'd go with the Brownell's. Every bit as stout as their action wrench which is indestructible.
 
Maybe I misunderstand the term, but to me a "pre-fit" barrel means a shouldered barrel that is precision machined with a finished chamber intended to Head-Space correctly the first time it is screwed into place. It is Pre-Fit to the action in question by any one of several methods and will head-space correctly if torqued to the gunsmith's spec. Not that any responsible person wouldn't check it anyway, but in theory and in practice the head-space shouldn't need to be checked.
It does not mean a barrel-nut barrel with a finished chamber.

I don't think that it's possible to overkill a home made action/barrel vise. I'd want at least 5/8" studs and would prefer 3/4" Most commercial vises appear to use UNC threads, but I'd use UNF threads.

I check my barrel nut builds with GO and NO-GO gauges first, then check function with a loaded round or one of my bullet seating depth dummys if I have one. The comment about using a stripped bolt kinda got buried, but it is important. No firing pin assembly or spring-loaded ejector should be in place while checking this.
 
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