I picked up a 5" vise the other day and had a question I was hoping someone could answer for me.  On the lower leg joint, most vises seem to have a typical square nut/bolt combo but this one appears to be set up for a wedge to hold the pin in place.  Looking through some of the file photos on this site I see 2 in this style but the "wedge" is not clear enough to understand--one looks like it's been done with a modified cotter-style pin and one appears to have a hunk of bent sheet metal instead of the original pin/wedge/whatever.

So...anyone know what would have been there originally?  It's easy enough to forge a small wedge which would work but I'd like to copy as well as I can the original design.  No, it's not really critical:   It's more a matter of curiosity since the photos I could find don't seem to tell the story.  

Thanks

Wedge was original to that; usually found with older vises. Does your vise also have the tenon mounting system?

And I assume you will take it apart and clean and lube  the bearing area(s).  Makes vises work much smoother!

33 minutes ago, ThomasPowers said:

Does your vise also have the tenon mounting system?

Here's a photo of the rest of the vise.  No markings at all.  An age guess would be interesting but those are darned hard on vises.  And yes, I'll disassemble and bring it back from the dead.  Fortunately, whomever used it in the "years gone by" kept the screw well greased so there is very little wear or corrosion in the critical bits.

Oh...and thanks for TPAAT!  I went from no vise to 2 vises (the other is a 4-1/2) in the last 3 months just by remembering to keep poking the weeds. Prior to that I never saw one show up in this area (except the rare few which people wanted to trade pound for pound against gold bars)

Nice find, looks like a good vise and shouldnt be to hard to put back to work. the older vise i cleaned up not to long ago had that same slot in it. it had a wedge shaped piece of metal in it. i ended up reusing it since i didnt see anything wrong with it and it works well, now the tang style mounting bracket that was broken and welded onto the vise was a completely different story.