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I Forge Iron

General blacksmithing vise vs. vise question


Raspvtin

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One of our experienced smiths is taking back equipment he lent to the workshop and helped us find some replacements. One of the items was our leg vise we found a seller for what I can tell is a 6" ACME 112# leg vise for $350 which is similar to the of one we had. Looking around I found the same seller has a B. B. Noyes caulking step vise for $550. I know the caulking vise is a combo farrier/blacksmith vise, but if there is no farrier work is there a usability or feature difference between the two?  Both are refurbished and work fine though I have not verified that just what's stated in the ad.

Basically should I go with the leg vise or the caulking vise for general blacksmithing.

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I would go with the leg vise. In my limited experience with a calking vise they sometimes won't hold the stock tight enough and you have to keep the pressure on the pedal so some operations that require you to move around is difficult. Not to mention the $200 difference in price.

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Yeah 350 is a lot and the more I look I see he has other stuff on offer at closer to a reasonable price just spread out in 15 different offers instead of a complete list.  I keep looking, but end of the day its someone elses final decision and not my money as bad as that sounds I can only make recommendations to them.

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Pity most local and short time upcoming conferences have been cancelled.

I've owned both types of vises and for general smithing I would strongly recommend the post vise over the calking vise. (So much so that I have a bunch of postvises and sold off the Calking vise!)

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Thanks for the info. There are a good amount near Chicago just with us being closed down our discretionary spending has been frozen so they tend to disappear before we can get a hold on them. It was a vice I happened to see as part of an offering did some looking and IFI popped up some results that it was used, but no details on usefulness outside of its specific design. 

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