Thought I would get some opinions about this vise.  Is is blacksmith made?  or some sort of field repair? for a complety broken jaw?  I thought a blacksmith replacment of one jaw but the good jaw seems to be made for a square nut rather than a standard jaw screw.   

Any comments are welcome. 

Cheers,

Ken

My humble opinion:  Old leg vise with replacement of the screwbox.

Thanks for the quick reply.  Have you seen a post vise with a opening that a square nut would fit in?  That's not a typical shape to me. 

Ken

Less than perfect repair of an older vise.  

What you see is a good repair of standard issue part as available. What are they? ACME threaded lead screw with a single thread instead of two or three parallel threads...with a store bought ACME nut that has been retrofitted to fit the "box".

 

The draw back for the repair is its slow operation. The good part though is it is quite strong in the gripping action...maybe even stronger than the jaws should allow. Be carefull when putting extreme tightening proceedures here...or you may have the vice jaws shatter or crack.

 

Enjoy. I have seen several of these done like this in the past...before I started blacksmithing. I even repaired one just like this myself 35 years ago...the same way except with hex nut!

 

Carry on

I think they beefed up an old skinny vise with some extra iron for heavy duty use.  You can see where they forge welded on some extra iron.  Probably the box and screw wore out and a frugal smith decided to resurrect it.  It is a testament to the ingenuity of craftsman working with whats at hand.  Its an 18th century vise and probably a 19th century repair.

Thanks for the very good opions.  I thought it to be interesting however it came to be this way. 

Ken