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Post Vise Help


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Hello everybody,

This is my Iron City post vise. It's probably nothing special but I think it's beautiful and deserves some TLC.  It's one hundred pounds and the jaws are just over six inches. The whole thing is tight and solid and the screw seems in almost perfect shape, though pretty greasy. The grooves(not quite sure the nomenclature) on the jaws also seem to be almost unused. Overall, it's a bit dirty (mainly because I put too much grease on and it got everywhere) but when I first got it and before a light wire wheeling, it was covered in orange rust and every part was frozen solid.

I've had it for about a year but have not permanently mounted, partly because I wanted to get this inconvenience fixed the right way, and i'm not sure what the right way is.

If you can't tell from the pictures, the shorter, moving jaw is about a quarter inch higher than the stationary leg jaw. It's not much, but I would imagine this would be pretty inconvenient for any real forging other than bending.

The suggestion to grind the jaws flush was presented to me, but I'd rather not bring a grinder anywhere near this beauty. My brother suggested that I heat the thing up in the forge and bend it to where it belongs. I thought this was the option to go with, but it would be quite the challenge for me and I might mar it up pretty bad. Also, I noticed that the jaws mate up very well and are parallel the way they are, so just bending it in one place wouldn't be enough.

Letting this brew in my mind for a few months, I had the idea to take a round file and extend the pivot hole upward on the moving leg, the area I marked with the penny. This would lower the jaw to where I need it. This seems to be the best solution I'm capable of thinking of, and I think I will attempt it unless one of the experts knows a better way. Does anybody know if this will cause any binding in the screwbox or anywhere else? The lower bolt is pretty tight and, without the spring, the jaws don't move as easily as I would imagine they should.

Thanks for any and all advice and I would be happy to provide more pictures or information if anybody would like that.

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No obvious bends in the shafts and the pivot bolt fits the pivot holes just right?

How I adjusted one was to remove the moving leg and bevel the pivot hole a bit on both sides.   Then I  heat shrunk and riveted a plug in the hole.  Dressed it flat and redrilled it at a correct location. It's only been in abuse for a decade now (Used in a metals, Fine Arts, classroom---the same one that broke the horn off their anvil....) I'll see how well it stands up after another decade or so.

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Now that's some expert advice. Thank you. I don't think my dinky old drillpress could make it through that much though til I get a better motor for it and straiten the quill.

I'm not seeing any obvious bends. When I get some sunlight I'll look again and probably take a picture. The bolt is also looks strait but is very tight. It's not easy to get the bolt all the way through any of them so the holes in the mounting bracket might not be perfectly aligned.

Would a little bit of an oversized hole cause any problems?

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Is the high jaw sprung backwards a bit in the neck from over-tightening at some point?  That'd cause one jaw to be high relative to the other.  The fix would be to heat the neck and forge it back into place.

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Over sized hole in either the cheeks or the moving jaw would both tend to shift the moving jaw down WRT the stationary jaw. When I replace a pivot bolt I tend to dress the holes back to round if needed and up the bolt size to fit.  If the holes stay aligned with the centers along the same axis then that doesn't shift the jaws.

Note if you want to experiment---cut out some cardboard pieces to represent the stationary leg&cheeks and moving leg and drill holes to see what happens.

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In the first picture that shows the whole vice, it is obvious that the screw is not horizontal but is going up towards the moving jaw, and also ... in another picture that shows the jaws meeting, they do so perfectly flat so ... my reading is that the moving jaw is not bent back but is too high most likely due to a worn out bolt or hole or both. It goes up and not down with gravity only because the spring wedges the jaw upwards. 

If you put the vice back together and compress the spring with a clamp, the moving jaw should drop down most likely past the level and too low, indicating pivot to be worn.

Easy fix.Thomas has described how to. Hardest part will be to redrill the new hole in the correct place for the jaws to be levelled. 

if everything fails, you could get a machinist to turn a bush out of center so that you can try different positions until you have the jaws leveled.  

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Movable leg is bent at the screw hole or just above it.  The jaws should only touch at the top when closed with a gap at the bottom. /\  As the vise opens the jaw faces go parallel, I I and when opened more then the bottom of the jaws do the clamping. \    /. I have a vise that was like yours. I pulled it apart and put the movable leg in our shops 20ton harbor freight press and and bent it at the screw hole until the jaw tops were level

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Thank you all for the advice. Been busy the past few days. Upon closer inspection, the moving jaw has a bit of a curve, rather than a hard bend, which is probably why it wasn't obvious  to me. The lower bolt and holes are all tight and don't seem to be worn at all, and I'm sure they didn't drill the holes this far off. As  Kevin pointed out, the jaws should only be touching at the top instead of the whole thing. I don't have a press so I'll put it in the forge and straiten it to where it needs to be. 

Any more advice would be greatly appreciated, and I'll try to get some pictures of the process.

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The project is complete! I was a little intimidated about putting it in the forge but i'm sure glad I did. I'm not sure if it's wrought iron, and since I didn't want to take any chances, and since I've never worked wrought iron before, I made sure to get it yellow hot, because I was afraid it might split.

My anvils are pretty small, so instead of marking it up real bad, I tipped over the stump that my striking anvil is attached to. Once the piece  was up to heat, I grabbed it and swung it at the stump(RIP my back), so it wouldn't dent it up too bad. Once it was about right, I used the sledge for the final tweaks. Only took 3 heats but a whole bag of charcoal, but it worked out great and doesn't have many hammer marks at all, and the jaws meet up exactly how they should right at the top.

Thank you all for the advice, and I'm thankful for anymore to come. To anyone else attempting this, it's defiantly doable and totally worth it.

Thanks again

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They don't work as well, but I've found them to be more economical than lump charcoal.  In my experience, they burn quicker so you go though more, but depending on the store, I can get twice as many pounds of briquets per dollar compared to a bag of lump. So in one day of forging, even though I use more, It costs less. With a bit of experimenting, I can actually be pretty efficient with briquets, and there is even some pluses, like putting off less sparks than lump. The main problem is that it can crumble to very small bits, so its like fluid lava in the fire pot, so if you let it sit for too long without the air, an explosion can happen when you crank again.  I just wish there was good trees where I live so I could make my own, or better yet, coal! Why is there no coal in Kansas?

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No pallets in Kansas? 

One issue with briquettes is that the depth of fire needed before you get a good stable reducing atmosphere is a function of the average fuel size. (For a bloomery furnace, Rehder calculated it was around 12+ times the average size.) so that's a LOT of briquettes---especially as you need more on top; IFF you need a reducing atmosphere, (forge welding and knifemaking in general).

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Charcoal briquettes are primarily made from compressed carbon particles that is made from wood waste (& sawdust). that is charred in a reduced oxygen atmosphere. The powder is dried and mixed with glue and a coloring agent. The mixture is then compressed.

Lump charcoal is mostly carbon

Some smith's have used the product,  primarily,  for demonstrations.  But it does do not produce much heat per weight. Hence it is a very expensive fuel for smithing.

SLAG.

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They also generally contain a bunch of stuff that leaves the excessive amounts of ash and help moderate burning speeds. A brief websearch turned up:

"Kingsford Charcoal, for example, by far the most popular brand in the US, is made up of bits of charcoal, coal, starch (as a binder), sawdust, and sodium nitrate (to make it burn better)" 

Also:

The ingredients of charcoal briquettes will usually fall under the following:

Heat fuel - wood charcoal, charcoal fines, mineral carbon, coal, biomass, etc.

Burning speed – sodium nitrate and waxes. ...

White Ash Color - Calcium carbonate, lime or limestone.

Binder – starch. ...

Press release – use borax.

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Yes you guys are right. I assumed it at was made mostly of glue and waste,  and it doesn't work too well. My fire-pot is a bit adjustable, meaning I can make it shallower with spacers, but its about about 6 inches deep right now.

Laynne I am in Dodge City right now but I go across state a lot. If you mean pallet of coal then I would gladly buy one and pick it up.

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