New Jaws for an old vise

Hi all;
Around 1985 or so I purchased a well loved (just broke in) 5" Wilton machinist vise.  I bought it from a neighbor. At 80 years old he decided it was finally time to hang up his welding hood.  
He bought this vise after returning from World War 2,  sometime in the late 1940's.   It had lived on the back of missalenious service trucks since then.
I think he charged me $75 for it.
Since it came to live with me, I mounted it on a truck rim and used it in my auto shop.  Never did anything to it but spray a little lube on it from time to time.
For the last few months I have been  using it a lot for metal work.  It became apparent that the jaws really did need to be replaced.

I researched Wilton vises and was surprised at the value they hold.   My 5" vise if fully restored could bring $1200 !!! Holy Cow Batman! Even well loved like mine it was worth $600 and up !

I  quickly discovered that mine was made in October of 1945!  A date is stamped in a very safe spot if you know where to look.
I also discovered that the early models like mine had different jaws than newer models of the same vise. (Naturally)   I found an original set, still paraffin covered from the heat treating for $72 delivered.
A wee bit more than I thought new jaws might cost...

Change out was a bitch.  Even with all the cool tools I have... I still had to drill  3 out of 4 retaining bolts.  
Resistance was futile as I was going to replace these jaws today no matter what!
About 3 hours later my new jaws are on!
 

You're not kidding about holding their value. They are like gold here. I've been pondering the same thing myself, but haven't remembered to look up the vice to see if replacements are available. I've had to start using a cheater bar lately.

Beautiful job!

I do not have a decent vise and as you have noticed, they are very dear.  But...

On this property there is a small collapsed wooden outbuilding that was once used as a shop.  The building and contents (mostly plastic junk that was thrown in there in later years) is currently a complex pancake of rotten wood, rusty nails, rodent debris, insects, and broken crap, about waist deep, with trees growing up through it. The owner says all her father's tools were stolen by relatives after his death, but she remembers (vaguely) that he may have had a substantial vise mounted on a workbench in there.  He was a retired machinist, so this seems plausible.  I have begun to wonder: was the value of the vise to those larcenous relatives sufficient to outweigh their laziness?  Did they even recognize its value?  

An archeological excavation and eyesore-remediation project has been on my to-do list for years, but it's a ton of effort.  Not sure when I'll be able to do it, but the notional vice has definitely bumped it several steps up the priority list.  (To give you an idea, this is not even the only collapsed outbuilding on the property.)  I want that vice!

As has been reported, a 1000 mile trip starts with the first step!
I takle a big job like that with a few minutes per day.
I may collect boxes to put rubbish in, and each day fill one box and put it where it can be easily picked up.

You may be amazed how the system works.

Thomas, it is insane what the Wilton bullet vises are selling for. I think back to metal shop at RISD and there was one on every bench, there had to be twenty in the shop! Back then anvils could be had for $1-$2 per pound, today it is $5-$6 per pound, unless it is worn out...then only $3 or $4! I wish I had bought more in sooner!!!

We have made some solid aluminum faces for the Wilton bullet at my work. We work in aluminum mostly, and the hard steel serrated jaws always needed soft pads to protect your work, and you usually picked those up off the floor once or twice a day! *clank*
The solid aluminum jaws worked so much better, since the soft pads (usually a section of extruded angle, sometimes a bent piece of sheet) would always "roll" a bit when trying to pinch something small or thin up high in the jaws and then your work slipped out.

Dan, I got a cast-iron firepot for a forge while wandering an old quarry. We went into an old burned out stone building, and I noticed that (1) I was standing on the remnants of a collapsed roof, (2) this building had a "fireplace", and (3) there was something, maybe a stump? under a big chunk of the roof... just in front of the "fireplace"... hmmm, where an anvil would sit... So, no anvil. , but the firepot "was" there.

Thomas, if the handle on your vise is sluggish to slide back and forth, it might be packed with crud in the head of the screw around where the bar slides through. I freed ours up by flushing it with WD40, sliding the bar back and forth, and then wiping away the crud that ran out, repeating until it slid easily.

John C Daley wrote:As has been reported, a 1000 mile trip starts with the first step!
I takle a big job like that with a few minutes per day.
I may collect boxes to put rubbish in, and each day fill one box and put it where it can be easily picked up.

You may be amazed how the system works.

Just as you say.  My first step was to buy a demolition blade for my little battery circular saw so I won't have to do quite so much jigsaw puzzle work, but can just remove chunks from my entry hole in a more orderly fashion.  But honestly I have tree cutting to do before I can even access the ruins, and right now I am focusing my hour-a-day tree-cutting efforts on debrushing my orchard and hunting down this year's Tree Of Heaven sprouts before they can get leaves out.  Once those jobs are done, I hope to get back to excavating the machinist's collapsed man-cave.

Hi,  Really cool Tom. But wow, The price of those things.  My vice was slipping so I filed new groves in it to make it work better. Should of bought new jaws like you did.