New Wilton Vise Quality?

[ClappedOutBport]

C.O.B.:
I agree with you 100%
I have seen some unbelievably high quality restorations of Wilton bullets featuring mirror polished jaw tops, handles, anvil areas, and sporting show car quality paint jobs. If a very particular person wants to pay top dollar for a showpiece vise to display in their showplace garage with weekly mopped epoxy floors, and gleaming toolboxes full of polished tools, that’s great. But that’s not me.

I know that the many hours of fine detail work that goes into restorations of that level don’t yield big hourly dollar payoffs.

I have learned which old vises are good quality and which are not. And what they usually sell for. Craigslists everywhere are full of overpriced vises, often damaged. Uneducated buyers are at risk just like when uneducated buyers shop for used cars, heavy machinery, or lots of other things.
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Ok. Sound'ds like we're on the same page then.

Wilton off-shored a lot of their vise production. If you want U.S. made from them, you have to pay for their top dollar units. We have a lot of U.S. Wiltons at work, and they are pretty nice units.

/rant

As far as vise collectors go: I rank them the same as anvil collectors. They constantly scour the classifieds ads and yard sales for great deals on old iron, scooping them up before anyone else even has a chance to make an offer. Then they hang on to piles of them without ever using them and then want top dollar to let go of them.

I get it, everyone has their hobbies and interests and collections. I collect antique fans and film cameras - but I actually use them. I have a 1940s Hunter blowing air in my living room right now, and just recently took some photos with a near 100 year old Kodak Brownie. But the things I collect aren't particularly valuable or useful in a modern context. Vises and anvils on the other hand are always useful. But these vise and anvil guys just hoard 'em and never use them.

/rant over - signed, disgruntled hobbyist blacksmith who can't find a nice anvil or vise because they get scooped up by collectors the moment they pop up on craigslist

+1 I've seen anvil dealers with 100 of the durn things. Why do they feel the need to buy them instead of letting the neighborhood blacksmith kid get one, other than to turn a profit and ship it across the country.

 

[Elsinore13]

Poppakap:
Post your home town.
I have found great vises for GJ guys thousands of miles away from me right there on their local Craigslist.

Clappedoutb’port is right. The old solid ones are super durable and easy to work on. Like he said, look for one like you see at the far left of this page.

I’m one of the guys with a wall full of old vises but I buy, sell, and trade. Am I a hoarder?

I sure would like to have a top shelf Craftsman vise like that for my youngest son before I go bolting this Wilton bullet down on the Craftsman workbench resto project of his...

What would that set a needy person back??