A Boeing Surplus Machinist Vise
The Boeing Company used to be located in Seattle. Now their manufacturing is done in many places. Back in the old days there was a very cool retail outlet called Boeing Surplus. You never knew what you'd find there, but often incredible deals were had. For example, every machinist had a steel bench with a Wilton 400 machinist's vise bolted to it. There was no swivel base, because those too often slip. Boeing sold those steel benches with the vise still on them for $20. Day in and day out for years. So, of course, I bought one and let go of the steel bench and kept the vise. I used it for about 10 years and loved it.
I don't have any "before" pictures, sorry. I wanted to briefly mention the mods I made to that vise. I made a new handle that was slightly longer than the original. Also, around that time on the newsgroup rec.crafts.metalworking the tribal wisdom was that for the same amount of torque applied by the handle you could get more clamping force if you installed a thrust bearing behind the handle. So I installed a flat roller thrust bearing and two hardened washers. I have just a couple of pictures of that. I set the vise up on an angle plate on a rotary table and milled a flat circular pocket just behind the handle.
This is what the thrust bearing looked like:
And here is the thrust bearing installed in its pocket:
With the thrust bearing installed the head of the vise screw pushed on the thrust bearing rather than directly on the cast iron movable jaw. I cannot say it made a very big difference the way I used it, but I learned from the experience and had fun. I gave the vise a nice silver paint job and as far as I was concerned it was like a brand new vise. Here are a few pictures to enjoy:
Thanks for reading!
