MLMartin

I may be wrong but I don't think you need to change the oil in that anvil like you would a brand new car.....

har har

Haha the hardy looks just fine. But I shutter to think about forging such large stock by hand. A striker with a sledge is a wonderful thing!

Nice tape fingers 

I have seen a few historical photos of WW1 where that type of vise was bolted to the bumper of a truck. I wonder how many of them out there are as old as most people think?

Grand work Mr Dillon! 

Have you coated it with some clear sealer? Or will its weather?

Looks like the top hammer/die is a anvil too!  I am sure that power hammer was a "get it done" job. Very nifty hammer. I do think it is time for a new rubber belt to hold the hammer head. Maybe also a nice light cleaning and rub down with light oil to prevent any more rust. 

I love a well working old tool that is a nice red/brown from rust and oil. 

A great artist I worked for kept a clean shop. Although his shop is getting rather full of tools lately. Thanks everyone for the comments.

The temporary braces I used to hold the top Arc are some type of adjustable bracket for a house antenna. The arms slide in and out with set screw, and the ends pivot. I have one side clamped to the table and the other side has a large magnet screwed on it.

Hello again

      Here is a small table I finished up yesterday. I built this in free time between payed work. I just started drawing with soapstone on the shop table and decided I liked the sketch and started forging. The main frame is mild steel, and the sphere is copper. This was something new for me to solder and polish copper parts. There is black guilders paste painted on the steel then the entire piece is coated with matte lacquer. I tried out "Clear Guard, by Sculpt Nouveau" some one on this site mentioned it a while ago. The glass top is 24"

M Martin

Martin Forge Works

Depending on the size of the anvil and skill of some people it could be heated up in a forge, the hole patched then the face forged flat again! Then you would need to go about hardening and tempering. If it is less than 100lbs I would think 4 or 5 trained strikers could move it in and out of the forge and work it with sledge and flatters till it was true again.

It would be a pretty grand thing to document and share with the iron working world.

Good luck!

Alex Bealer is a great group! I started my forging off there. I miss the going to the meeting but I seem to always have work when they come up. I am out in Louisville Ga. A bit of a ways off but I am happy to open my shop up to people wanting to learn.

The hammer head is rail track! Some one put in a fair amount of time on that one. And probably very little money. Probably helped some one out a lot in there shop!

Cheers Martin, I'll keep that in mind before I start doing heavier work. I hadn't run into that problem yet as I've only been doing very light work & using the vices for cutting/filing/jigs & not done any hammering in them.

I have seen many people mount a vice just as you have. Seems to be a common thing. But it is easy to fix, just a block or wood or iron under the leg resting on the floor and your set!

I guess many people do not forge in there vices any more.

I am just happy to see the old tools still around!

Good luck

I have seen a smith shop that had the floors completely covered with clinker from the coal forge. It seemed pretty compact

If you want to use your leg vice correctly you need to make sure the leg is firmly sitting on something hard. The point of the leg is to take impact straight down. Just collaring the leg to keep is from swinging side to side is not enough.

Imagine having hot steel in the vice sticking straight up, and you want to hammer on it with a sledge hammer. All the force is driving the vice down. The leg should be on something like a heavy timber sank into the ground, or in a hole in the concrete floor, or steel plate.

If you only collar the leg shank in place all the downward force is placed on the mounting bracket. The force will cause the eye in the vice to jam into the mount caller and split it apart, and the force will pull on your bench, table, stand putting strain on it.

The leg is there for a reason. If your not going to mount it against the ground you might as well use a smaller cheaper cast iron bench vise.

Depending on how long you want the shank on the tool it may be possible to upset the area where the tool meets the hardy hole.

If you are starting with a long bar, say 2 to 4 feet you can heat up just the end and drive it into a steel plate sitting on the ground to upset the shank. Or if it is already short use a striker with a sledge hammer over a anvil.

You only need double walled pipe where the chimney pipe contacts the building/passes though the roof. 

There is no need for leather or lead in the joint around the female screw box. 

A new spring can be made from mild steel, you could even harden it a little. Mild steel will not get very hard so simply forging a new spring from mild then quenching in water should be fine.

Or you could forge a new spring from spring steel and leave it normalized. You do not need a heavy amount of force pushing open.

Many springs in vices are overly tight. You should be able to screw in the vice with one hand easily.

Also remember to use a nice light oil on the screw and on the washers and the pivot joint on the front leg. Thick grease will hold lots of scale, and grit and form a abrasive paste that will slowly damage the screw.

The number on the front jaw is normally the weight like you questioned. Most company's sold a vice by jaw width and weight.  So a 35lb and a 70lb. This should be with in a few pounds accuracy. 

Many of my vices have very clean welds for the jaws. I can only see the steel on some of them by looking under the jaw were the weld line is still obvious. Also there is normally a iron patch under the bend of the jaw, I guess to reinforce the area.

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They can be repaired by re-brazing a new thread into the box if the old one is destroyed. I do not believe many people do this anymore. The cost in labor to repair a screw box is probably more than buying a new used vise.

However I would not through that one away! You can set the screw box aside and try to find another for now, or you can attempt to repair it yourself. There is a nice paper written be Peter Ross about making a new screw box of the same construction. It clearly shows how it could be repaired.

I am sorry but I have no advise about the screw if it has been cut short or broken. 

Mr Miller I would certainly back up your statement. With English leg vices the only ones I have seen without steel jaws are "New" vices that are made entirely from steel. I have seen a hand full of Colombian leg vices that would probably date to mid 1900s that are die forged from solid steel. But out of the hundreds I have seen in the USA most are older wrought iron vices with welded steel jaws. 

I actually think it is odd that I have only seen two vices that clearly had the steel jaw break off. I have seen a great number of anvils with part of the steel plate broken off. I guess vices are just not hammered on as hard.

PS 

I have repaired some vices that were badly damaged in the jaws from gas cutting. I have just cleaned the area well then mig welded the missing area to build up material then ground it back to the original jaw shape. I only did this repair because the vice screw and the vice body were in good shape but when the jaws were closed tight you could fit a 1/4 inch rod in between the gap in the middle of the jaws where material had been torched away. I am sure my welding would have softened the surrounding steel but I imagine the torch cutting had already done that for me.

I would only weld on a vice jaw with the damage was affecting the reasonable use of the tool, small file and saw cuts pose little trouble 

I used the TFS double horn 100 lb anvil for a few months at a shop I worked in. It seemed like a fine anvil. 

I do not like the hardy hole so close to the round horn on the larger TFS double horn. Some of your hardy tools can hang out over the horn and be unsupported. I plan to buy a Refflinghaus #57 220lb. There hardy hole is set farther into the face

Who made the stamp for you? It looks great

Handy little things token gifts can be. I probably need to make a hand full myself.

I believe having all the projects in the shop limited to 15 minutes would be terrible. There is pretty little that can be done in such a short time.

While the time period may be off for a 100 years or so I would very seriously look at Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. They have a wonderful forge shop and they have a large attendance. This shop has 3 or 4 people working every day. One smith takes a hour off and talks to the public as they come in and tells about all the work the others are doing in the back ground and the rest of them work away. So the smiths rotate though talking while a lot of work is being produced. Having one of the smiths speak is key, the smith know exactly what the other people are doing and can truly explain the work. Hiring just a actor to speak has worked poorly at other historic forge shops as they just read a script and know little about the actual work.

Having a few people truly working while one person speaks gives a accurate show of work done in the time period. When there is only one person in the shop there is no time for them to demonstrate the work because they spend the whole time speaking to the public. A person can not engage the audience and produce good quality works at the same time. 

Colonial Williamsburg produces wonderful highly accurate reproductions of many goods. The items are so well made that there is a large call from them in other historic parks in the US representing 1700 -1800

Good luck

I hope to see a great working historical shop!