New to me Wilton Tradesman vise refresh
Posted: Sat Sep 10, 2022 1:37 pm
I picked up a 5 1/2" Wilton Tradesman vise for $50, which I consider an incredible price. It's a step below a Wilton Bullet, and those are the holy grail. This one is similar to a Bullet, but were sometimes sold as a Wilton, other times as a Snap-On. It opens to something like 8", and has nice pipe jaws. It's a very nice vise.
But part of the reason it was so cheap is that it's missing one of its serrated jaw inserts.
I looked into buying replacements, and what's available for about $30 probably won't fit. It's hard to say.
And what will definitely fit are approaching $200. And that just ruins the whole bargain.
I measured the existing jaw insert and guesstimated that the cross-hatch grooves are .025 deep, and .100" apart.
So I took some 1/2" steel plate and cut it to shape on the bandsaw.
Then mounted it in the milling machine and face-milled it to the proper dimensions.
Then I milled a step/tab on one end to allow me to clamp it down at that point.
Then I drilled and counterbored the mounting screw holes to match the existing jaw.
Then I took my adjustable angle table and set it to 45 degrees and clamped it perfectly parallel to the mill's table.
Holding the existing jaw against the angle table, I find the angle to place the jaw to get the cross-hatch channels to be horizontal. It turns out to be 28 degrees down from parallel.
I mounted the new jaw insert on the angle table at that angle. The upper portions is bolted down through the mounting screw hole, and the other end is clamped down to the step/tab I left for that purpose.
I used a CAD program to figure out that to move the groove .100" up the face of a 45degree plane, for each step I need to move the table .071" in, and raise the cutting head up .071"
I ran through however many passes it took to mill all the channels in the first direction and took a look:
So far so good!
So I flipped the part to the other 28 degree orientation and ran through it again.
I made the mistake of trying to start at the top and work my way down. I don't know if it was an error in backlash or just backwards thinking. But my initial two grooves at the top were way too deep. I'll just hide that corner down on the inside bottom. Once I did the smart thing and precisely repeated my first steps, I got precisely the same result the second pass. Funny how that works.
I'm very pleased with how it turned out.
As a final "why not try it" step, I grabbed the acetylene torch and heat treated it: Harden it by heating to bright orange, quench it, then sand the diamond faces just enough to see shiny metal color, then temper it by slowly heating until the shiny metal turns a straw color.
I don't know if it has enough carbon content to be hardened at all, but I can hope that I at least toughened it a little bit.
As long as we're messing around with it, we'd might as well disassemble it, wire wheel the whole thing
and and give it a coat of paint
A little white lithium grease here and there, a few minutes' reassembly, and it's ready to use:
But part of the reason it was so cheap is that it's missing one of its serrated jaw inserts.
I looked into buying replacements, and what's available for about $30 probably won't fit. It's hard to say.
And what will definitely fit are approaching $200. And that just ruins the whole bargain.
I measured the existing jaw insert and guesstimated that the cross-hatch grooves are .025 deep, and .100" apart.
So I took some 1/2" steel plate and cut it to shape on the bandsaw.
Then mounted it in the milling machine and face-milled it to the proper dimensions.
Then I milled a step/tab on one end to allow me to clamp it down at that point.
Then I drilled and counterbored the mounting screw holes to match the existing jaw.
Then I took my adjustable angle table and set it to 45 degrees and clamped it perfectly parallel to the mill's table.
Holding the existing jaw against the angle table, I find the angle to place the jaw to get the cross-hatch channels to be horizontal. It turns out to be 28 degrees down from parallel.
I mounted the new jaw insert on the angle table at that angle. The upper portions is bolted down through the mounting screw hole, and the other end is clamped down to the step/tab I left for that purpose.
I used a CAD program to figure out that to move the groove .100" up the face of a 45degree plane, for each step I need to move the table .071" in, and raise the cutting head up .071"
I ran through however many passes it took to mill all the channels in the first direction and took a look:
So far so good!
So I flipped the part to the other 28 degree orientation and ran through it again.
I made the mistake of trying to start at the top and work my way down. I don't know if it was an error in backlash or just backwards thinking. But my initial two grooves at the top were way too deep. I'll just hide that corner down on the inside bottom. Once I did the smart thing and precisely repeated my first steps, I got precisely the same result the second pass. Funny how that works.
I'm very pleased with how it turned out.
As a final "why not try it" step, I grabbed the acetylene torch and heat treated it: Harden it by heating to bright orange, quench it, then sand the diamond faces just enough to see shiny metal color, then temper it by slowly heating until the shiny metal turns a straw color.
I don't know if it has enough carbon content to be hardened at all, but I can hope that I at least toughened it a little bit.
As long as we're messing around with it, we'd might as well disassemble it, wire wheel the whole thing
and and give it a coat of paint
A little white lithium grease here and there, a few minutes' reassembly, and it's ready to use: