Seen a few Soviet ones over here with that style too, most likely pinched from the Poles who stole from the East Germans who stole from the West Germans idea :P
Provisionally sold the vice to a mate who runs a busy garage and needed something super heavy duty. Whilst waiting for him to pop round and collect it, dragged the vice to the front of my unit, used it a few times instead of making a mess around my workbench and it’s such a nice, stout vice I’ve had a change of heart and decided to keep it. Something about the 7” jaws and mahoosive, heavy body that rekindled my love for it. It will be given a complete service and put back to use for quick, dirty jobs when the main bench is busy with ongoing work.
Back to the vice. I took it apart after drenching the jaws in WD40 for a few days and hitting the screws with a manual impact driver. A pin that goes through the collar and back of the handle screw was seized solid so I drilled the ends off to free the collar and removed the screw. I will drill the remainder of the pin out when I get closer to the assembly. Got to clean all the gunk and old paint in an electrolyte bucket and figure out if I want to paint it or keep bare first.
I will be replacing the handle with a stainless steel bar - don’t think it’s worth saving the original one as not only it’s slightly bent (easily fixable), it’s heavily pitted and has two different looking nuts for ends. The vice deserves something better.
This brings me to my main question. The jaws are okay but have no knurling left on them anymore. Or maybe they never had any. They appear crosshatched so it’s hard to tell. Perhaps, I can re-knurl the old jaws but given that the vice is in very good overall condition with no damage or missing parts, I’d like to make a new set of jaws (or two.)
Apart from your local engineering shop with a mill, are there any companies out there that offer custom vice jaws? Ideally forged as well.
So I went ahead and gave the jaws to my buddy with a CNC shop to replicate and serrate. I will then forge them the best I can. Will probably be a few weeks before the vice is back in one piece again as it’s on the back burner at the moment. Will post some pictures when done.