Okay, okay, it wasn’t quite as dramatic as the movie Saving Private Ryan, but it was still pretty cool. In my search for old vises to restore, I keep an eye on several online resources, with one of them being an estate sale listing website. The site I use lets you search for keywords, so… [Read More]
The vise that started it all
A while back I started planning work benches for the pole barn/shop I was building. As part of that, I started researching bench vises. I knew I was going to want more than one kind, and I planned on having several benches, so I did my usual and researched the topic to death. While doing… [Read More]
Such an Athol
Athol, Massachusetts. Say that five times fast! When I first started reading about vintage vises I quickly learned that Athol vises are among the most highly regarded and the company actually has a pretty unique story behind it. In 1868 the Athol Machine Company was founded in order to produce a meat cutting device invented… [Read More]
Big Daddy
Sometimes it all comes down to fate and a little bit of luck and this vise is a really good example of that! Little did I know it would bring me an American Scale vise of huge proportions! A few months ago I was driving to Toledo, Ohio to meet someone for work. I had… [Read More]
Barn find Wilton 935
I stopped by an estate sale late on a Friday on my way home after work, and found this little gem of a Wilton 935 still bolted to a workbench where it had obviously been for decades. Usually you have to get to an estate sale very early if there are any good vises available,… [Read More]
1955 Wilton 9400
As you can see, this old guy came to me in a pretty sorry state. It’s a Wilton 9400 which means it’s a machinist vise with 4″ wide jaws. The handle had a huge, ugly ball welded to it, the swivel locks were missing the handles, the jaws were worn and the owner had stripped… [Read More]