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I Forge Iron

Look what I found!


Gergely

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Hi Guys!

 

I got this little baby just yesterday. It was a story kinda showing things start to work around here as I have hoped: 

 

I made friends with the local turner. He is the only person in this small town who shares my craziness for steel and steelworking, scrapyards etc.

So yesterday morning he said he saw a legvise the day before in the scrapyard next town. I called the scrapyard - and they somehow have remembered me torturing them repeatedly for blacksmithing tools. So the big man told the smaller man to put the vise aside for me. Later I drove there to pick up the vise. The only information was though that it's a not too big vise in unknown condition. 

When I arrived and find the right guy he said that actually there are two vises there - good start.

So I looked to those vises and found that one of them is this:

 

post-48601-0-39791700-1411024164_thumb.j post-48601-0-14259000-1411024171_thumb.j post-48601-0-65896700-1411024177_thumb.j post-48601-0-27033200-1411024184_thumb.j

 

 

I don't know much about leg vises but I remembered something about tenoned mounting bracket ones being quite old. It is also very intact - except the "leglessness" which is very typical here in Hungary, and it needs a new spring. 003 picture shows the screw box being welded/soldered to pipe from plate stock. As I lightly wirebrushed it with a handbrush copper colored shine has appeared on it. It may be because of the soldering, isn't it? And the inner thread in the box looks like it was welded/soldered, too.

It has a nice heart shaped mounting bracket which doesn't show well on the pics.

 

So I'm very happy with it.

 

(The other one was a bigger "modern" one. Its screw box was welded in the screw eye and the moveable arm didn't move. I decided to take only the screw with its washers. The whole package costed 4$, hehe)

 

Bests to all and thanks for watching!

 

Gergely

 

 

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Third the suggestion; as you may want to repair another vise with parts, (good idea to grab the screw but they are often not interchangeable so you need the screwbox as well)

Yes the "copper" on the screwbox is indicative of it having been forge brazed together; please use reasonable force when tightening it down as excessive force can strip out the brazed in screw thread.

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These little bench vises were fairly common at one time, but are not shown in my large 1894 catalog. If you zap my photo, you'll see me holding a traditional, tenoned English made vise. It has a 52 mm jaw width and I made a little spring for it, 45 mm long.

 

Sayings and Cornpone

Son of a gun                Son of a gun

Chile con pan              Chile with bread

Todos comen              Everyone eats

Ya mi no me dan         But I get none

 

Old New Mexican poem

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Yes the "copper" on the screwbox is indicative of it having been forge brazed together; please use reasonable force when tightening it down as excessive force can strip out the brazed in screw thread.

 

Hi Thomas!

 

I don't understand what does "tightening it down" mean. (I understand the words but the down part is confusing.) Is it when you are closing the jaws by rotating the arm?

 

Thanks

 

Greetings

 

Gergely

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Thomas is on the road for a week or two.

 

Yes, "tightening it down" is an English language idiom similar to "dogging the hatch" on a ship. It means putting extreme force on a threaded connection, in this case using the handle in order to keep something secure in the jaws. An older brazed thread is not as strong as a modern one piece unit of the same size. Braze will stretch and give before breaking, but it has a lower yield strength than a homogeneous steel thread.

 

A standard handle and a brawny arm will seldom hurt a modern quality vise, but add a length of pipe or the use of a sledge hammer to the equation, and disaster is guaranteed.

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