So the other day Gino called me. His restaurant is closed and of course he's worried and trying to make sense of what's going to happen. I generally take my calls in the shop and for once, with the buffer done, the bench was empty. I'm not good at just sitting still and while we chatted I fiddled with the vise (a Chas Parker No. 973) which has never had a functional rotation lock and has always bugged me. I was curious and assumed it was because one of the two locking bolts had broken...
This happened over the course of our phone call.
What I learned is that the vise doesn't have two locking bolts like my Wilton - it has a single one and a drum brake type expanding set up. It was filthy and covered in grease. I figured I'd give a good clean and getting rid of the grease would fix the locking mechanism.
It spent about 4 hours in the ultrasonic and I changed the cleaner twice. Now, with all the grease gone and the inside clean and dry the lock worked even worse.
Great, I just made an annoying vise worse and more useless.
I chucked up the base in the 4 jaw and cleaned up the casting inside as all surfaces of the this vise are super rough and raw castings.
I didn't go for a super smooth finish - I just wanted it to be even. Now the vise had absolutely zero lock no matter how tight I locked it. Wow, I'm still going backwards. I contemplated throwing it away and just mounting the great Wilton that I've owned forever but never use because it's not bolted to the table.
That's what I should have done.
Instead I then sanded down the shoes so that they'd be smoother. Again, it made things worse.
Finally I realized that the cam plate was bottoming so I removed some material from that and then smoothed the faces on the shoes and cam. It started to work again. I bolted it all together and it actually now worked pretty good.
Gee, maybe this isn't a lost cause after all.
I was considering just putting it back together but, it was clean and apart and it won't be that way again. So I put the body in the bead blasting cabinet for a quick clean up.
Then I looked for unoffensive paint that I wouldn't have to prime and was close enough to empty that I could use it and throw away the can freeing up space. Turned out Hammerite dark gray was the winner.
At that point I was going to just put it together but someone on IG sent me a photo of the same vise they'd restored and it looked nice. I couldn't clean up the vise screw unless I cut off the bent handle...
I bored the hole out to half inch and cleaned up the screw. I didn't have any 1/2" rod except for stainless which wouldn't be strong enough. I found an old vise handle that was 5/8" and turned that down.
Then the slop bothered me so I made a bronze washer to take up that space, some end caps for the handle and at that point I decided to grind down the tops of the vise jaws as they weren't level.
I didn't take a "before" photo because I didn't mean to do this. I never liked this vise but it came with the table and because it was there I've used it. Trying to refinish this vise without a vise to hold things in - wow, that was really hard. You take vises for granted.
This isn't really any kind of "restoration" but more of a fixing a broken vise thing and while you're in there you might as well put some paint on it so it doesn't rust. I didn't dress any of the casting imperfections or do anything other than put two coats of Hammerite on it. And it got two coats because that's when the can ran out.
I will say that the longer handle with no slop in it is really nice. The brake now locks the vise but not nearly as well as the Wilton. I think I may rotate the table 90 degrees and drill and tap the corner so that the Wilton is in this spot and this vise is to my left. If I ever need to clamp something long I'll have two (different which will annoy me) vises in line with each other.
So, that was an accidental mission creep due to a phone call. But that vise is now not annoying me and is functionally improved.
Gregor
Shouldn't that be a Lamy or Faber-Castell technical pen?
