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Donated Prentiss Vise From Tooljunkie4

thehorse13

Well-known member
Joined
Mar 15, 2015
Messages
3,484
Location
Jefferson County, WV
Some of you may recall that Tooljunkie4 generously posted here on GJ with a free vise give-away. As luck would have it, I live close enough to him and I took the donation. I would like to thank him one more time for giving me the vise.

Today I decided to strip down the vise to exactly what's going on. If you have a weak stomach, don't look at the pictures.

The first thing that I removed was the spindle. It gave me some trouble near the end which I thought nothing of at that moment. Later, I discovered why the spindle gave me fits but let's move on to the other parts first.

I separated the base from the vise body and discovered a series of set position holes. There is a spring loaded knob that you pull up and then set it into one of these holes in order to lock the vise into position. Pretty neat.

Next I removed the front jaw from the vise body. I immediately saw cracking along the top of the body. Yikes. My attention then turned to the inside where I saw what was left of the spindle nut. Does anyone know where to get one of these?

After I removed the spindle nut, I started poking at the cracks along the body of the vise and discovered that it was just full of cracked welding metals. You can see that this piece of metal was once part of the swivel.

I then inspected the front jaw and found about a 3 inch crack along the top. It goes all the way through.

The jaw pads are welded on and there is no hope of removing them easily. The same goes for the body pin and the entire swivel on the body.

Sooooo, here is where I begin. The very first thing I'm going to do is clean everything thoroughly and then look for a Prentiss spindle nut. This is where the adventure begins.
 

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454ragtop

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Joined
Mar 24, 2008
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5,011
Location
Carver, MA
If that were a horse, we'd take it out back and shoot it. Might be time to make that one a parts vise, what parts I don't know.
Jim
 

colin39

Well-known member
Joined
Mar 3, 2014
Messages
1,498
That is a road kill vise! Poor old thing need some serious tlc or just euthanasia.
 
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thehorse13

Well-known member
Joined
Mar 15, 2015
Messages
3,484
Location
Jefferson County, WV
Yea, she is in very rough shape; worse internally than I expected. The real killer is the broken spline nut because without that, she is just a pile of scrap iron.

Be that as it may, I'm not going to give up on this poor old vise. I am going to see if I can dig up a spline nut from someone here or even off a parts vise locally.
 
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thehorse13

Well-known member
Joined
Mar 15, 2015
Messages
3,484
Location
Jefferson County, WV
Update:

I have identified the vise as a Prentiss swivel vise No. 19. I have not been successful in finding a spindle nut and additionally determined that the spindle itself is bent.

At this point, even if I do find the spindle nut, I can't do anything unless I can straighten out the spindle.

Does anyone have any advice for straightening a spindle other than brute force?
 

nickelTwin

Well-known member
Joined
Aug 8, 2014
Messages
294
Location
St Paul, MN
If have a hydraulic press or know someone with one. You should be able to straighten it. I've done a few big scscrews and handles that way.
 
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