4 inch bench vice restoration

[olderdan]

The house next door was sold for refurbishment and after looking in the builders skip for anything useful I noticed a piece of steel poking out of the rubble, pulling it out I was amazed to find it to be an old bench vice that had been thrown out, I just had to rescue the poor thing as to many vices get miss treated these days. It had not been used much, just left in a leaking garage and very rusty so an electrolysis bath and a strip down was the first step. The strip down proved to be difficult as I could not shift the acme nut in the body as it was dovetailed, peened over and pinned into the fixed part of the vice, determined to separate the two halves I had to make a cut out in the rear of the sliding jaw to clear the nut, as this would normally limit the opening of the jaws I would have to provide some other means to replace this function, tapping the end of the screw for a stop washer sorted that out.
After cleaning and two coats of paint I now had a good as new vice. It took about a week of spare time but I enjoy this kind of thing.
I have found a rotating base handy in the past and I have a steel plate that I had planned to make a 3 point steady for my lathe no longer needed, so when I find it I will complete the job and it will replace my long suffering 3 inch one that will get the same refurb treatment.