Picked up a Rock Island 575 today

[propmaker]

I saw this on FB market place a week ago @ 30.00 and tried to pick it up and he changed the price to 300.00. It then went down to 240.00 a few days later. Today as I was on lunch I got a notification he dropped it to 65.00. I messaged the seller for the address and he was 1 mile from my work. I can right over and grabbed it.

It was all locked up, but loosened right up with some penetrating oil. I'll leave it soak over night before I try and get the base bolt out. At some point someone welded the jaws on. Not sure why, I'll probably grind the welds off. I has one broken or missing screw in one of the jaws. I didn't have much time to mess with it today.

 

[Packard V8]

Congrats on a good find. Hope it will clean up for you. Rock Island is one of my favorite vises. The slide-to-body fit on my 577 is the tightest of any large square slide vise I've ever owned.

jack vines

 

[7th Kahuna]

Nice Vise! I'm glad you stayed on top of it. I have a hard time trusting the guys who pull the 'forgot a zero' trick. I have blocked more than one. Some years ago I had a guy play that on Craigslist with a saw.

I had seen the saw come up for free one Sunday morning. Per the owner, I had 'just missed it'. Later that week it reappeared on Craigslist in a neighboring town for '50 - oh I meant 500' dollars. In the end I got it for $50, which was actually what it was worth, but the story didn't end there. In the process I learned that the guy had listed it on eBay with a low starting price. When he didn't get the price he wanted, he claimed it was stolen. I ended up meeting the bidder. Interestingly he was only looking for the under cabinet and I was looking for the saw. I had thought we would end up splitting the cost but he had found another before the whole thing resolved. Just another day in the marketplace.