The VISES of Homesteading Today.

First one I've ever seen, and I've looked at thousands of vises.

It's certainly unique. Downside - is it's exposed screw (not very collectible or strong for use) and it's missing both faces.

Still very unique though and an absolute score at $5 bucks, and I think you did a great job in snagging that up, I sure would have!

How exactly does the lever contraption on the side work??

Filson, the bolt with the silver handle thru it is backed off and that lets the vise pivot 90 degrees to the left on that bolt running through the 2 blocks coming out from the body. In essence it lays over on it's side.

Filson,

I took the Craftsman vise apart today to try to fix it.

I am still scratching my head on this one. There is one single bolt that runs from the bottom of the vise that holds the threaded female part in place. This bolt hold the bottom swivel onto the vise as well.

That bolt is broken. It still holds the swivel base on the bottom, and also is still long enough to serve as a stop for the female threaded part. I'd say that it comes up as a stop about 3/8", but could be longer, maybe up to an inch longer.

There is wobble to the female threaded part. The inner threads are fine, and not broken or cross threaded.

The vise is still hard to screw open and close after it gets past the 4" inch mark.

Thoughts????

This is a picture I found on the web, but it is exactly like my vise only mine is cleaner. It has a Patent date of September 22 1914. I don't think there is a makers name on mine. But I can't check right now, since I'm not at home.

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Hey guys, sorry I've been away for awhile. Things have been crazy busy around the farm. Anyway, back to the vises!

That's very cool bro. I would definitely hang on to that one!

Sorry again, I took so long to get back to you on this. What you are experiencing is most likely the result of multiple different issues.

Firstly, the vast majority of vises out there with swivel bases, have one bolt dead-center on the bottom of the swivel base, that attaches it to the rest of the vise, and that bolt's only function is for that. There is a unrelated keeper-pin that holds the female portion in place. Your vise could be an oddball design that uses the swivel base bolt for both purposes, but I have yet to ever see one personally. I'll attach some annotated pictures below to illustrate.





If your swivel base bolt does indeed double as your stopper pin for your female part, it doesn't need to be very big. Most keeper pins (even on my large 280 lb vise) is only a half inch to an inch tall. If your keeper pin is holding the female part in place by sticking out only about 3/8" of an inch, that sounds quite normal on vises of average size.

So to me, all of the above sounds quite normal. Now... for the vise being hard to screw in and out, that is usually the result of something completely unrelated to what we were just discussing.

Now, wobble of that female part is actually normal on many vises and shouldn't be a concern. You'll notice in the above picture that on this particular vise, I have the female part in my hand, even though the pin is still in place. I didn't have to remove it to pull it out, it simply fell out of the back. This is by design. The pin is there to prevent the female part from moving forward (which is what it wants to do) while your tightening the vise down. When your opening up the vise, there is very little pressure pushing the female part in the opposite direction, so on most of the smaller vises there are no pins in the back, simply a casting edge that helps hold it in place.

On many older vises that have the squared off style screw cover, like the back of my big Reed (picture below to illustrate..) It is unfortunately not uncommon for them to get stiff or even stop screwing out any further, once they are unscrewed a ways. Usually, this is right around the half-way-out point. Why? If you have a micrometer, measure the width of the back of the slide, starting from the nearest part of the main body, all the way to the very end. It tapers out. Why the hell this happens, me and my fellow vise-nuts aren't quite sure. Obviously, they wouldn't have designed vises to have this problem intentionally, and we can't think of any abuse-related causes that would make the slide flair out slightly (and oddly, uniformly) on so many different vises. It's actually not an uncommon issue. Screw your vise out until it starts to lock up, and look at the back portion (visible again in the picture below) to see if the male and female parts are starting to grind together in the back. ~90% of the time, this is the issue.



The way to fix this, is to get a sander and spend some time removing a bit of surface material on the rear half of the slide. I wouldn't worry about the bottom of the slide, just the sides and top. Use a fairly fine grit to do the job, and take your time with it. When your done, spray the areas you hit with the grinder with penetrating oil to protect the freshly exposed metal. Periodically check your progress by trying to screw the vise out now and then.

There are always the 1-off odd-ball issues that come up, but the above info will fix this problem 90% of the time.

I hope this helps, and if it didn't, please take some pictures of your issues so I can see them. You'd be surprised just how many differences there are from one vise to another as far as design goes, and it'd help to see your specific style. Anyway, best of luck, HTH!

Yeah those are some pretty old vises that fell out of favor not long after WW1. Let me know if you find a makers mark on yours, would love to know more about it.

Thanks for all the replies guys, let's keep it going!