I attended an auction today and was able to pick up my first post vise :D . Its in great condition and has all the parts, minus 1 clip which will be replaced at the next open forge with my club. As I understand, the vise will work just fine without it. Its your average 5" jaw post vise, but I was like a kid on Christmas morn when the auctioneer yelled "SOLD" and pointed at me! $55, I feel, was a good price to pick it up as it is in great, working condition!

A note to my fellow newbies.... Join your local ABANA chapter! Not only did one of my fellow club members tell me about the auction, but he met me there, helped me look over the two vises they had there (and anything else of interest), picked the best one, then stayed out of the bidding, giving me a chance to win it! And he buys and sells these things on the side to turn a profit! I know next to nothing about a lot of the tools of this trade and the members of my local ABANA chapter have been great with teaching, suggesting, helping me locate what I need and warning me off of things to stay away from! If you are new to this great hobby and have not yet joined your local chapter...DO IT! It is worth every single cent of the dues and much, much more!

Ill post some picks of the new vise soon!

Congrats on the win and your new membership. This site is additional proof of your point that smith's are great resources and take the extra step to help newbies. Now mount that vise, post the pictures.

Sorry it took me so long to get thes up! Finally had a chance to get overe where it's being stored! I think I did alright. Any ID on this vise would be great!




This is the mounting plate, showing the "C" inside a triangle.






Small gouge in the jaw, should not be a problem to repair/clean up.

The "C" says it's "probably" a Columbian. It looks okay in the thumbnails, I didn't look at the full size because of the file sizes. If you reduce pic files to a few hundred k you'll get more lookers. I'm on a fair broadband connection but it still takes forever to load a number of pics over a mb.

Frosty The Lucky.

Ok. Ill have to figure out how to do that Frosty. Ill look into it and see if I can figure out how to do that.

The C plus the non-beveled legs is pretty good bet it's a Columbian; made in Ohio. The later ones tend to use the U bolt mounting bracket and some of them will also have the company info on the back of the back jaw

Threads look good!

Ok. Ill have to figure out how to do that Frosty. Ill look into it and see if I can figure out how to do that.

I'm using XP and I do a "Save As" on pic files XP lets me choose the file format and file size. I save re-sized pics to a different folder with a general category so they're easier to find. There are free photo editing programs online, some will re-size automatically, heck I believe some just got linked in another thread.

Anyway, I love pics and wish I had faster a connection. <sigh> Those of us slow pokes sure appreciate the effort required to re-size pic files so we can gawk too.

Frosty The Lucky.

I got fed up waiting for the download too :) so I haven't seen the blemish but don't be too hasty to repair small gouges.

Sometimes they can be just what you need to stop a piece of round rolling about when you need to touch it with a file or centre pop.

I often use a groove across the top of one of my vices as a mini swage e.g. when I am forging down copper tube for gas furnace jets.

Sorry about the pic size guys. I still cant figure out how to change them, but blackersmith gave me a few ideas in the thread I started about that issue, so thank you! And, thanks for the idea about the small gouge blackersmith! Took it to the open forge last night and forged out a new wedge so its all ready to be mounted and put to work!

Photo bucket has a application for cropping and resizing pictures. Also most any photo program like Kodak Easy Share will let you resize.

Looks very nice. Is it me, or is the mounting bracket missing the wedge and/or gib key? Either way, that's a very easy project for a beginning blacksmith to make.....