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About 6 weeks ago I picked up a rusty old legvise from Spokane, companion piece to the family anvil. A legvise (or post vise, or solid box vise) is designed to be able to take lots of abuse, like direct hammer blows. The jaws hinge, transferring the blows down a leg directly into the ground. The leadscrew floats, so it can't get warped from the blows to the jaws. A normal bench (machinist's) vise would be lucky to last a month being used for blacksmithing. A decent legvise can last centuries.
This is what it originally looked like. The leadscrew wasn't rusted tight, but the jaws were. Not too horribly pitted, but generally in pretty sad shape.
After some cursing, a scraped knuckle and a lot of WD-40, it looked like this.
All the parts were electrostripped and painted. With a nice new coat of grease, the action on the leadscrew was pretty decent. But it was missing the leafspring that pushes the jaws open -- because the leadscrew floats, it can only pull the jaws shut. Without the leadspring you can turn the handle the other direction all you want and the jaws will just sit there. Being high carbon spring steel, they tend to be the first thing to rust away on old legvises. So I had to make my own.
Thanks to a donation from a very helpful local metalworker, I had a nice chunk of Jaguar suspension to work from. 30 minutes at the forge, and some adjustments the next day, and it worked pretty well. Springs are neat.
Some scrap from Boeing Surplus, two refills on my oxy-acetylene tanks, and some really horrible welds later, I have a stand for it. Big enough to be useful for random vise work in the shop, but still moderately portable so I can move it outside when I forge. Unfortunately the welding warped the base plate, which I should have expected, leaving it about as stable as a hobby horse. And I haven't painted the stand yet. But, for now, I'm calling it done.
This is what it originally looked like. The leadscrew wasn't rusted tight, but the jaws were. Not too horribly pitted, but generally in pretty sad shape.
After some cursing, a scraped knuckle and a lot of WD-40, it looked like this.
All the parts were electrostripped and painted. With a nice new coat of grease, the action on the leadscrew was pretty decent. But it was missing the leafspring that pushes the jaws open -- because the leadscrew floats, it can only pull the jaws shut. Without the leadspring you can turn the handle the other direction all you want and the jaws will just sit there. Being high carbon spring steel, they tend to be the first thing to rust away on old legvises. So I had to make my own.
Thanks to a donation from a very helpful local metalworker, I had a nice chunk of Jaguar suspension to work from. 30 minutes at the forge, and some adjustments the next day, and it worked pretty well. Springs are neat.
Some scrap from Boeing Surplus, two refills on my oxy-acetylene tanks, and some really horrible welds later, I have a stand for it. Big enough to be useful for random vise work in the shop, but still moderately portable so I can move it outside when I forge. Unfortunately the welding warped the base plate, which I should have expected, leaving it about as stable as a hobby horse. And I haven't painted the stand yet. But, for now, I'm calling it done.
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I think I have a ways to go yet.