Does the weight have anything to do with the quality of the vice. I believe I read somewhere about some imports beeing light for the jaw width and these were cheaper. I see significant changes in weight amongst vises with the same width jaws. My 5.5 inch weights 67 pounds but have seen 5.5 inch vises advertised up to 90 pounds or so.

I've located an 8 Inch vice but it weighs in around 190 pounds and a 7" vise that weighs 175 pounds. This seemed light to me.

Anyhow, the hunt for tools is part of the fun.

 

Scott

News to me, who is selling/making lightweight vises?  Are these newly made vises, and/or of some non-iron material?

Echos of this debate arise in the "bigger is better" threads on anvils.  If you are doing work of a certain size, bigger (heavier) is better.  But while weight is often accompanied by quality, weight is not a requirement of quality.  Hobby smiths are generally not doing work of a size that requires huge tools, or if they are then the moderate inefficiency from tools that are too small are an annoyance rater than a problem.  If you are hitting something big held in a vise with a 10# sledge every day as your job then you can worry about an extra 50 pounds or so.  

But just like anvils, condition, quality, and tight mounting will make up for at least 100 pounds of tool weight.  I'm often shocked by youtube vids of guys working on jumpy anvils, wiggly vises, and vibrating power hammers.  Fasten down a 40# 4 inch good condition leg vise to a truly immovable object and you can work for the rest of your life without complaint.  

I think the focus on weight for post vises came from people thinking if it's a factor for anvils it must be true for vises as well. The only time I care is if I have to move it or the one time I air freighted one.

The reason modern vises are lighter than the old ones? They darned well should be, modern ones are made of steel not wrought iron. Using a stronger material manufacturers would be idiots to use more than necessary to produce a tool to specs.

Frosty The Lucky.

In general postvises come in both "gracile" and "robustus" forms: these are not a reflection of quality but for their intended use.  Wrestling with a large heavy vise when you are trying to do picky light work is a pain and using a 6# sledge on a lightly built postvise can be damaging indeed!  This is one reason that my work benches usually have *2* postvises mounted to them a light 4" and a heavy built 6+"  I use the one best suited for the work. Use a vise built for job and it's a quality vise!  (I have projects where a basic measurement is the length o the vise jaws as it's easy to make two right angle bends with the stock horizontal in the jaws, one at each end of the vise jaws...) My travel vise is quite light with a 4" jaw and I just mounted my heavy duty (leg is about 1.25" thick )  5" jaw vise so I could do some heavy work down here as well. My lightest vise is a 3" vise that was dated as being before 1800 and is amazing on the construction with the screw box all forge brazed together.  It gets used but *delicately*! Note too that the heavier built vises are often shorter than the light built one to allow for more striking on them and to put the lighter ones up at convenient filing height even for the same width of jaw!

Edited October 23, 201510 yr by ThomasPowers

Sounds good. Thanks for the responses. I know around here you see many more anvils than post vises so you cannot really gain the learning you get by actually seeing, holding touching... Of the mere eight or so I've seen I would not consider any of them to be poor quality. I know some have much nicer style in design. Some just look more art inspired while others just look like a tool.

Scott  

I want to resurrect this old thread to ask a related question. 

Obviously the size and weight of vises depends on their use and their construction. 

But is there a general consensus about the quality of the wrought iron they are made from? I somewhat frequently pick up old trashed vises without screws or boxes, just for the wrought if I can get it. I have yet to use them as "stock"; what grade wrought are they made from, if they were classed as such? 

Incidentally I have the same question about anvils. Did the quality of the wrought iron matter? Single, double, triple refined? 

Not really a simple answer, anvils in particular were welded together from billets that were in turn generally welded together from scrap iron. The more refined wrought iron would clearly be preferable, and generally, anything going through that much re-welding after having been worked for their original purposes should be pretty well refined.

That said, there were literally hundreds if not thousands of anvil and tool makers, so quality can vary wildly. One of my favorites for broken anvils is William Foster, who at one point was the third largest importer in the US...but the forge welds on the heels and horns on them break a lot - my first real, and favorite anvil, is a William Foster that's missing the heel. The texture in the back where it broke was much rougher than I would have thought and had so-so junctures on the welds. The sweet spot and horn though are 209 years old and still going strong.

If I were to consider cutting up tools for stock, I would strongly consider using broken anvils instead - there's a lot more bang for your buck and they're much more difficult and expensive to repair if it's worth doing at all, and it's fairly easy to make improvised anvils. Post vises on the other hand can be repaired or have parts remade fairly easily in comparison (although it's still a lot of work) - even the screw box can be repaired or replaced using acme screws and nuts, even if they don't close quite as fast. Franken-vises are also fairly common and when put together properly tend to work well - I've got two.

Of course, I haven't been able to bring myself to cut up anvils either - I want to take them home and love them and hug them and squeeze them and pet them and name them George.

I've tried multiple times to buy "scrap" anvils to forge smaller, better stump anvils from. But every time I get close they are either sold from underneath of me or are too expensive. Same with a post vise that was supposed to go home with me. 

I know frankenvises can be had, but I have some very good vises mounted in my shop, and an old 5" vise that is missing everything but the jaws in my resource pile. I have often thought that it would not be worth trying to find the accoutremonts for it, as the time and money spent would rival waiting for a good one. Not that I need any more now.... 

There was a pretty good fabricated post vise link posted here a few years ago.. Were I to buy a new post vise I'd get a modern steel one provided I was satisfied with it's construction. 

Frosty The Lucky.

I think post vises are becoming more common these days; I never see a shortage on FB marketplace. Few know how to check if they are good, though. 

I took apart one of my larger ones the other day and found two flat spots on the threads, no other wear or tear on the vise, the whole thing looks new - even has the cross-hatching. 

I have an idea for taking my old vise and forging it into a stake anvil. One of the legs looks like the upright already - gives me a travel anvil. 

There are easier ways to make a stake anvil depending on how large you want it. A long time ago when I was still drilling for Ak DOT bridges and foundations I found an truck axle along the Resurrection River outside of Seward buried in debris from the 64 Good Friday quake. The fishing and shipping port of Seward was almost obliterated by the quake and tsunamis. Anyway, for a long time folks would haul the debris to the river and dump it. 

Sorry, side track. We were camped on a dry sand bar by the river a bt upstream from the bridge location we were drilling. I dragged the axel back to camp and tossed the shaft in the campfire and made a funnel kind of thing to provide air blast in the prevailing breeze blowing down the river. Once I got the axel shaft to a cheerful orange I used one of our sledges and cut it using a piece of large angle iron for a hack. Would've been nice if it were sharp but we didn't have power so I beat it into submission.

Anyway, I filed the top of the flange smooth-ish, set the axel in the sand to a comfortable working height stacked some rocks around it and drove rebar in to sort of anchor it. It fit the definition of a stake anvil sort of but it had a tremendous depth of rebound and turned out to be really effective. The air funnel was applied with some scrounged pipe, long stakes, rocks, etc. to make a wind blown wood forge. The blast was adjusted by partially blocking the air intake funnel.

Word got around and folks would come by and watch, maybe talk. I've never been much of a drinker and this was a better way to spend time afterwork than knocking off a half rack of beer. The geologist read and racked out early, he almost never "drank."

Anyway, one day a guy watches a while and introduces himself as the owner of the Seward Machine Shop and I might want to check out what he had before the auction date. Maybe an early off the books cash sale thing you know.

I picked up some stuff but it was actually a century old ship's chandlery and was scaled for old sail and steam ships. I just looked UP at the 1,000lb and 5,000lb steam hammers, the main forge was about 8' in diameter and blown by a 6' blower. Flat belt driven everything, the line drive still hanging from the rafters. 

The one thing I really would've liked to buy and could've afforded was the 1,200lb Fisher anvil. I just didn't have a way to haul it and by time I got back with my pickup and trailer after our job the auction would've been history. I have no idea what I would've done with it, I lived in a trailer court, on the other had it didn't need a stand flat on the floor the face was just above knuckle high.

I did pick up a number of hammers, top tools, bottom tools and such, too many people knew what tongs were so they were too valuable for my blood. I didn't want the boiler or steam engine that drove the line shaft either though I could've had it for scrap. Went for less at the auction as scrap. 

Sorry, thinking about making a stake anvil opened a Kodak chapter from Frosty's drilling days. 

My suggestion if you just want a stake anvil to use is find of buy a piece of steel and weld a spike to it. Round bar mounted on end works a treat, the side can act like a wide fuller remember to radius the edge where you want to set down steps, maybe sharpen one edge as a hot cut. 

Square shaft has other advantages but decent sizes say larger than 2" sq. is harder to find and more expensive than say a length of 4" round bar from a machine shop's scrap or drop bin. 

Frosty The Lucky.

Frosty, 

Anyone ever tell you that your true gift is storytelling? Every post has me hooked and waiting for the next installment of "Frosty's Kodak Adventures". I deeply appreciate it, and now have anvil envy over an anvil I have only read about... 

You're quite right that there are easier ways. No question there. But I have had the opportunity to work real wrought iron a dozen or more times and I absolutely love it. I have a stack that I have welded into a block, which would be the main component to the anvil. The stake I figure would be the leg from just above and just below the chamfer of the post vise. Easier ways? Yes. But think of the acid etch I could get! Maybe a Damascus faceplate? hmmm? Something to scratch the itch. 

 

Yeah, being an almost compulsive story teller is more curse than gift, I've lived with that Chinese curse  since I learned to talk. But thank you, an appreciative audience is a treasure.

I'll be looking forward to your progress pics and keeping my fingers crossed. It's INSMHO that resurrecting a new one is way better than scraping. 

In my experience the best way to scratch the anvil itch is with a corner rather than the horn.

Frosty The Lucky.