Ohh go on then. Whatcha got?
It's not a competition. You already win that with your old Peter Wright...
<edit> don't spend all your money, I may yet try and sell you this one.
Ain't got one Matt. I found it in a barn where my empire came from. Had to get a sack barrow to get the thing out. Will pick up in a week or two as I am out collecting a IXL lathe so will pick it up on way home
Well I will sleep better at night knowing that. If your going to try cash it to me then it better be really cleanWell I have been meaning to try out some new chems. Trisodium Phosphate (TSP) for degreasing in this case. I mixed up half a cup to a litre of water and gave it a try.
It was like water. I mean, it hardly seemed to make any difference.
Apart from some super thick grease in the slideway and thread, the rest wasn't too bad to start off with anyway.
Drive nut was a bit mucky I guess
After brushing in the TSP bath and wiping with a rag, I blasted the lot with a pressure washer.
A clue to how effective this stuff actually is (yes it does work!) is how clean this tray is after being caked in grease. This is the tray after simply rinsing off under the tap.
It certainly came up clean.
I won't bore you with the details. I appreciate these are not as dramatic a before-and-after as you might expect rom say, electrolysis or a citric acid bath. But the grease is virtually all gone from the threads. The body parts are squeaky clean and this should help massively if I go on to electrolysis/citric (not decided yet). One thing I should note, cold water is a bad idea. It really needs to be hot or at least warm. Almost all chemical reactions work better with heat. At one stage I emptied the bottle only to find half the TSP powder undiluted.
Secondly it doesn't help shift grease like say a solvent would. Best to mechanically remove the lumps first. It's a bit like a soapy wash but without the foaming or bubbles. I think chemically it behaves exactly like that. The benefit is you don't have an oily residue to remove as with a paraffin wash or petrol, acetone etc. The oils and grease literally flush away in water, when dry its all gone. I can see why it's popular with painters.
If they don't come out mate then there is one option.I still don't know if I am going to take the jaws off. The screws are proper stuck. I would have to destroy them out and Spence hasn't even been near it yet...
Well it is sort of done I suppose. I picked out the letters in silver.
And while the above is work in progress it seemed to be coming along...
But then you stand it up in it's more usual orientation and the lettering changes completely! Because the letters are rough cast and triangular in section, the angle from which you view them changes their "lines" dramatically. So I had to paint it from a viewing angle.
I think it looks a lot better but letters are strange things visually. The slightest imperfection changes their character so that some of them now look a bit fat.
The X looks wrong here because the shiny black surface seems to join up with the aluminium lettering. Pretty sure it will look different in all sorts of different lighting conditions.
I have decided not to spend any more time decorating it. It is a massive great vice and I'm hoping whoever buys it will be less worried about how it looks and more about it's performance. Now all I have to do is shift it one last time to set it up for proper photos. I should probably bolt it to something, I can't begin to tell you how awkward this thing is to move as a single unit. I'm seriously considering breaking out the engine hoist.
Go On Then....... How Much ?
It's to much hassle and risk. Especially that sort of dollars
I sure there be an English punter soonYeah, would probably have been fine but "probably" doesn't apply to £175, I wouldn't bung that down at the bookies...
Anyhow I told the chap (via the monitored eBay email system) he could look out for a similar vice and "good luck with the search" so if Luka from Croatia turns up here, point him to this thread!
