On 29 Nov 2017 03:36:37 -0400, Mike Spencer
wrote:


Larry Jaques writes:

On 28 Nov 2017 03:06:07 -0400, Mike Spencer
wrote:

I have five vices -- bench, 2 leg, pattern maker's, cabinet maker's --
permanently mounted on benches.

Ooh, got an EMMERT turtleback type 4 patternmakers vise? (gains
reverent look) http://www.mprime.com/Emmert/index.htm
cue cathedral pipe organ https://is.gd/pOIJ7p

No, sorry. This looks pretty much like a machinist's bench vise except:

+ No jaw inserts
+ Contact area for the jaws is much larger than usual.
+ Jaws are much taller then usual, tapering toward the top, giving
clearance to file at a steep angle.
+ No swivel base.

The 8" leg vice is firmly bolted, via the usual band & wedge device,
to a piece of heavy-wall 4x4 HSS. The HSS post and the foot of the
vice stand in sockets welded to the center of a 4'x4' piece of 1/4"
plate.

8" leg? That's a huge vise.

Just so. I saw three in the maintainance shop at the old underground
coal mine in Stellarton. The guy who bought the biz bulldozed the
entire shop and sent it for scrap when he couldn't get urban collector
price for for the old gear -- asked $250K IIRC. They used the vices
to hold the ancient pneumatic drills that kept failing. (See the 1910
Brittanica under coal mining for pics of such drills in use.)

Some years later I heard about this vise and drove 200 miles to get it,
another smaller leg vise and a Continental engine that I never could
get needed parts for.

BTDT. Conti parts are as hard to find as dinosaur teeth.


The vice, even without the attached post, is too heavy for me to lift,
as is the plate. But it's easy to pick up first the vice and then the
plate with a garden variety rolling engine hoist and prop them in a
corner when the space but not the vice is needed.

Do you roll the cherry picker over the plate...

Yes. Not a powered basket cherry picker, just a manual push-around
lift/hoist. Old guy, y'know? Picking heavy stuff up off the floor is
no longer my thing.

Ditto here, for the most part.


...then lift 2" off the ground under the legs, to move it? That's a
heavy chunk of iron!

I don't get that. Have to lift the vise/post assembly ca. 4" to get
the post out of the socket. The plate has a 2" hole near one edge.
Lift with a pry bar, get a chain hook into it, pick it up.

Since my cherry picker legs are less than 4' apart, and only a few
inches off the ground, I thought yours might be the same. OK, so with
the post hole you'd have to lift it by the side, but isn't it top
heavy? Sounds ungainly, but you didn't mention rigging.


The plate and socket are heavy/sturdy enough that hammering, twisting
and wrenching don't move the vice.

I'll bet. Pretty cool. In a hurricane, it'd surely hold the house
down, keeping it from blowing away.

Present shop has a concrete floor. Could blow down *around* the vise.
Original shop was too small to hold such a rig, had a 6" leg vise
outside.

Nah, just tie the top corners to the assembly.


http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/temp/shed.html

Or not, since it likely wouldn't weather a hurricane. g


--
Silence is more musical than any song.
-- Christina Rossetti