Woden Bench Vice

[Andrew_Kieran]

So I've cleaned out the workshop and started thinking about how to make a vice and lo-and-behold the lady that's renting me the space says she's got her father's old vice lying about in the garage.

I've cleaned it up, and freed everything up, but now it looks like there's a missing piece.

I remembered then that this type of vice should have a wee handle at the front, and I see the hole for it. So I get a long screwdriver and wedge it in and use it to hold the doo-da on the inside of the back-plate down and it opens. So I figure I need to make this bit from scratch, as I was kind of hoping it would be lying about in amongst a pile of scrap somewhere, but I searched high and low to no avail. Anyhow, I search google for an image of what I need and here I find this.

DSC_0054.jpg (59.59 KiB) Viewed 749 times

So that looks doable enough, but I'm just wondering if anyone's repaired one of these things before and might have run into any unforeseen problems. I figure a steel rod of the appropriate size, with a long steel bar fitted into a slot at one end, and I can put a long pin through the other end to act as the lever and something on either side, like a large washer or something to hold it in place. Then I have a vice, in theory and I have to figure out how and where to mount the thing on the bench.

[promhandicam]

There is also a spring involved near the lever end behind the front jaw that keeps the flat bar under tension to hold the half nut against the screw.

The simplest solution would be to do away with the quick release and just work out a way to fix the half nut permanently in mesh with the screw.

[Andrew_Kieran]

Aha. That I did not know. I'll figure something out I'm sure