Help Identifying this vise

[Duncan M]

Hello everyone, I am new here and thought that I would introduce myself first. My name is Duncan Macdonald and I live in wells, a small town in central British Colombia, Canada. I am 17 and have recently built myself a coal forge. over the past few years I have slowly been acquiring tools for blacksmithing. 

Recently I was given a large bench vise and was looking to find the background on this vise. I have done some searches on the internet but can find no info on the vise.

Hopefully these images help. All the writing on the vise is shown in the pictures. at some point in time the vise cracked. one portion is welded to a baseplate and the other chunk can be bolted to the plate to hold it in place.

any info you have would be great, thanks

 

Duncan

[Frosty]

Welcome aboard Duncan, glad to have you. I can't tell you much about your vise other than it's seen a hard life. Is it's age really important or it's usefulness as a tool. Does it open and close reasonably smoothly? Are the jaws very beaten up? I can see a broken corner. Cast iron tools made in India are or were bargain tool store regulars and pretty low quality. 

If it works screw it to your bench and use it until better turns up. Remember it's cheap cast iron you can NOT hit it very hard with a hammer. It is a bench vise NOT a blacksmith's leg vise.  In general a bench vise really  needs to be mounted lower than ON the bench depending on what you're doing to use it for most. A good rule of thumb is to mount the top of the jaws at the same level as your elbows with your arms hanging relaxed at your side.

This makes it much easier to file and use a hacksaw while keeping them straight and level as it's at the level your arm WANTS to swing at it's most level. It'll seem too low but once you get used to it everybody else's vise will seem silly too high. 

Don't build your bench too high either. Oh sure everybody builds bench tops too high, mine is but it's much better to build them about the same height as a kitchen counter top. 

Frosty The Lucky.

[ThomasPowers]

Does India have their patents online?

[Duncan M]

Hey Frosty, the age doesn't really matter, I was just curious. It's neat to Know the history of my tools. The screw runs smoothly but the crack you see runs right through the vise. Someone must have been pounding on it and snapped the vise from the base plate. now the base plate is welded onto 3/8 plate and the rest of the vise can be bolted to the plate. If attached to the plate, the vise runs smoothly.  the jaws are in rough shape but they line up nicely. If I wanted removable jaws I would need to re drill the pre existing holes which are filled up. I don't think thats necessary at this point. 

I appreciate the advice on hight also. I am curently forging outside with my anvil, blower, and a smaller vise given to me by the same guy mounted on large rounds of wood. I may want to shorten my vise stump.

thomas, I am not sure about indias patents, I may have to check it out.

 

thanks for the replies.

[Frosty]

We get a lot of beginners who think the older their tools the better. 

There is or was a URL showing how to mount various tools for various jobs. Seems vises had a lot of different heights and positions in the day folks made a living working at a vise. 

Frosty The Lucky.

[Nobody Special]

On 6/4/2020 at 4:02 PM, ThomasPowers said:

Does India have their patents online?

They do, in a system called InPass.  More countries do now because they want people to search before trying to get new patents.