Pete.
Member
- Messages
- 14,884
- Location
- Kent, UK
As told elsewhere I recently bought two rusty vices, a Nippy drill vice and an Abwood machine vice. They were in desperate need of some TLC.
I managed to bring the Nippy back to life pretty easily the most difficult bit was drilling the sheared retainer bolt out of the fully-hard moving jaw and cleaning the thread with a tap. But it worked out alright and turned into a nice tool.
The Abwood also cleaned up pretty nice but had other issues to address. Someone had drilled the heck out of the base between the jaws and made a right mess of it, plus as you can see in the first pic the jaws were all wrong and obviously fabricated to hold a specific job. These needed looking at also.
First to sort out the drill damage. I milled the worst of it out and found a piece of cast iron to set into the pocket. Bonded that in with Araldite 2013 (proper industrial strength araldite) and left it clamped overnight standing 0.5mm proud of the rest of the dovetail. I also filled in the last couple of divots with the araldie mixed with a little cast iron swarf.
Then today I milled the part down to level with the top surface of the base.
After milling the vice went on the surface grinder to make the wole surface flat and parallel to the base.
Here's a side shot of the piece. I didn't fancy putting a load of work into extending the dovetail nearly an inch so had deliberately left the bottom 30% alone when milling and sized the inset piece to sit almost flush with each edge so it didn't foul the slide.
I managed to bring the Nippy back to life pretty easily the most difficult bit was drilling the sheared retainer bolt out of the fully-hard moving jaw and cleaning the thread with a tap. But it worked out alright and turned into a nice tool.
The Abwood also cleaned up pretty nice but had other issues to address. Someone had drilled the heck out of the base between the jaws and made a right mess of it, plus as you can see in the first pic the jaws were all wrong and obviously fabricated to hold a specific job. These needed looking at also.
First to sort out the drill damage. I milled the worst of it out and found a piece of cast iron to set into the pocket. Bonded that in with Araldite 2013 (proper industrial strength araldite) and left it clamped overnight standing 0.5mm proud of the rest of the dovetail. I also filled in the last couple of divots with the araldie mixed with a little cast iron swarf.
Then today I milled the part down to level with the top surface of the base.
After milling the vice went on the surface grinder to make the wole surface flat and parallel to the base.
Here's a side shot of the piece. I didn't fancy putting a load of work into extending the dovetail nearly an inch so had deliberately left the bottom 30% alone when milling and sized the inset piece to sit almost flush with each edge so it didn't foul the slide.
They look good painted Green, if I do say so myself. 
