Costal Workshop & Garage rehab

I have mine mounted to a brake drum from an 18 wheeler. 

I had to change the post to a round pipe as the C-channel didn't have enough torsional rigidity. 

The gap between the mounting flange and the post is intended to accommodate a small wood shelf for holding tools. Some day I might even follow through with it. LOL

The drum is something like 110# and is an ok weight to counterbalance the top heavy nature of the vise. I'd like to fill it with concrete but can't figure out an easy way to do that without getting the vise leg encased in concrete. 

In the meantime, it desperately needs a cover over the hole(s) as stuff constantly falls in and gets lost. At 170# for the entire assembly moving it isn't terrible, but I definitely try to avoid moving it if I don't need to. 

In reply to Crackers :

Wow, that seems like a pretty solid setup!

Is that as far as your jaws open?

No, the jaws should open as far as the screw/box will allow.

In fact, the front jaw will swing all the way to the ground with the screw/box removed. 

Ideally you want the threads to engage a minimum of 1.5x the diameter of the screw, but you should have at least a 3" opening if it was built properly. The screw on mine is damaged or it would be functional to about 4". 

I hammer on stuff in this one pretty regularly and it stays pretty stable. My only real gripe is the whole thing spins if I crank on stuff too much. But it's not really going to be much of an issue for automotive uses. Even at that, a piece of pipe between the leg/post into say, a receiver hitch, remediates that issue.

FWIW, your vise looks very old. I'm pretty sure that's a hand forged wrought iron body. The bolt/nut are probably hand forged as well.

The shackle is attached with two wedges. One is keyed, and the other should be able to be driven back out with a hammer. I had to make new ones for mine. Newer versions used a u-bolt. 

It will be a lot easier to hang once that's all apart. 

In reply to Crackers :

I think you’re correct about it being hand-forged. Either that or it’s had quite a bit of makeshift repairs over its life. 

I’m a bit concerned about attempting to fully disassemble it, as right now it feels like the spring is pulling the jaws back closed...and I really don’t want any of these pieces to go flying. 

Thanks for the explanation on the shackle!

You're probably going to need some heat on the pivot but wrought iron has some weird characteristics when it's near non-magnetic temperatures. It can split and crumble if it's worked with at the wrong temperatures. 

So don't try to pry/hammer on it if if its glowing. (This was actually my point when I mentioned it was probably wrought iron before, just forgot to mention it.) 

The eye shape says hand forged and the "grain" around the eye is typical of how wrought iron stretches when it's hot. If it's hot enough to glow but not hot enough those grain lines will split like old wood. 

I wouldn't worry about taking it apart. The springs on these don't have enough tension on them to make stuff fly around. (Even at that, the parts are so heavy they wouldn't go far anyhow.) You really want to drop the front jaw to relieve spring tension before messing with the shackle anyway. 

In reply to Crackers :

Ok, thanks. Fortunately even after 5-minutes with my little MAP torch it was nowhere near glowing. 

That's a neat vice.  How are they meant to be mounted?

In reply to Ian F :

I've heard them called a stump vise. Pick a tree saw it off and Mount the Vise to the stump. The long leg gets secured towards the base of the stump.

In reply to Ian F :

Typically they bolt to the edge of a workbench, with the post attached to the floor, but they can be mounted on a stump as mentioned above or even on a freestanding stand of some type.  http://www.anvilfire.com/FAQs/blacksmith-vise.php

I had a bit of time in the garage this morning. After quite a bit of pounding the pivot bolt wasn’t budging. At all. I’d spread the jaws as far as I could with my wedge, which was t really that far, but fortunately I was able to squeeze the Miata’s jack between the jaws & got it opened this far. 

Hopefully working it back & forth a bit will get it freed - and by “working” I mean beating the berkeley out of it repeatedly. 

I was reading up on these vices last night & sounds like this is definitely from the 1800’s or older, most likely mid-1800’s from the hand-forging.  

No major updates because I’ve not been working in the garage much. Part of the reason is all the cheap LED lights I got on sale from Farm & Fleet died. I replaced a couple with ones from Home Depot, but at ~$50 each I didn’t bother replacing them all. So the garage was pretty dark & miserable to do much work in. 

My wife surprised me with a 6-pack of barrina lights last week & got 4 installed the other day. 2 replaced one dead fluorescent fixture that was tied to the main light switch for the garage, one replaced the dead LED light above my main workbench, and the last one replaced a dead fluorescent fixture above one of the parking spots. 

I still have to replace the fluorescent fixture over the other parking spot - it’s not dead, but it’s flickering quite a bit. The other one I’m going to install between the two parking spots. That’ll give me a high concentration of light above the fronts of both vehicles from multiple angles.