Vise spring for a Nazi vise?!

[Johannes]

hey guys,

Yesterday i bought a post vise for my new shop, its not the biggest one, but its one of the best made I'v ever seen, it's entirely made out of forged steel.
I bought it for 15€ from a guy who collects WW2 militaria.
He told me it used to belong to a field smithy from the german army , when the nazi's fled, they left it all behind, and localers raided the camp, a local carpenter used the vise for years, and then he sold it together with allot of war stuf to the collecter, i believe this story to to be true, because it has an old german stamp in it. I was surprised of its weight! its just lacking a spring, does annybody got anny sugestions how to put on in, and what to make it from?

kind regards,
Johannes

[Ten Hammers]

You can get a piece of leaf spring ( look for buggy seat spring perhaps or light car spring selection ). I replaced the spring in the trailer shop vise with a light buggy spring. Look for a spring that is roughly the same width as the vise ( hinge area ). You can then saw to remove some of the spring so you can then jam it down in the hinge area ( holding the bottom of the spring in place ). The upper part then ( leaf ) acts as the vise spring. The spring becomes captive in the vise. May take some looking but worked fine for me. Will see if I can get a pic.

[HWooldridge]

I use mild steel for vise springs - they are initially bent about an inch past the contact point and then quenched from a bright cherry red in brine and not tempered. This will take some set over time but it works quite well and you don't have to worry about breaking that nice high carbon spring you just made. I've done this on at least 15 vises and the ones I still own are in service and functioning fine.

BTW, the German Army used horses throughout the war so it makes sense that a lot of blacksmithing equipment would have been available afterwards.

[ThomasPowers]

Making the spring and mounting bracket is probably the most common repair done for post vises---there is probably a BP on various ways to do it. Columbian brand vises oftne used a sort of U bolt to hold the spring and fasten the vise to a bench mount.

Note that this vise also looks a bit short in the leg and might need a prosthesis.

[Bentiron1946]

When the spring broke on my leg vise many years ago in the midst of a job my smithing buddy reached into his box of junk and got a valve spring from a 350 Chevy engine and stuck it in the bottom pivot and it has been there 30 years doing a great job of opening the jaw.

[philip in china]

I agree with Bentiron. We sometimes get too wound up about replacing things with the same. Now if you were restoring it to be in a museum that is one thing but basically anything that will open the jaw is what you need. The travel on a vice spring is surprisingly little and you can do quite well just witha piece of mild steel strip. I remember fixing one assembly where I couldn't weld in a spring for various reasons by putting in a small block of rubber. 10 years later it was still functioning well!

[brucegodlesky]

I had one here that someone replaced the leaf spring with a coil spring. Took the screw out and placed the coil over the screw. It was a large spring, about the size you see on a hammer.

[jimbob]

Anvilfire has a nice article on vices shows all the parts and how it goes together Blacksmith Vises : Solid Box, Post or Leg Vise (Vice)
this might give some insite in to what you'll need to get it up and running