Mill Vise Opinions

Andre said:
The vise on my mill was built probably decades before the Kurt angle-lock was even thought of. Talk about jaw lift, but there are ways around it. Use paper to cradle the part and tap it with a dead blow, no big deal to be honest.
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Thanks for the tip. I have vintage vises, 1 Starrett & 1 Bridgeport. I'm assuming they "climb up" on clamping. Any advice on whether this is the case ?
 
uncle harry said:
Thanks for the tip. I have vintage vises, 1 Starrett & 1 Bridgeport. I'm assuming they "climb up" on clamping. Any advice on whether this is the case ?
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Starrett mill vise? Never heard of one. Mustve been expensive back in the day!

Mount a mag base dial indicator on the table, the with the indicator tip on a flat and smooth part of the movable jaw clamp a round bar horizontally and note the indicator movement. .015-.025 should be normal IMO.

Unless your willing to regrind it scrape the vise back into perfect condition, I wouldn't worry about it. I've machined some very accurate parts on my sloppy vise.

Sent from my XT1053 using Tapatalk
 
I have a Shars 4 inch and am happy with it .As Andre said you need to tap the part down so your part is flat on the vise. thomas s
 
Andre said:
Starrett mill vise? Never heard of one. Mustve been expensive back in the day!

Mount a mag base dial indicator on the table, the with the indicator tip on a flat and smooth part of the movable jaw clamp a round bar horizontally and note the indicator movement. .015-.025 should be normal IMO.

Unless your willing to regrind it scrape the vise back into perfect condition, I wouldn't worry about it. I've machined some very accurate parts on my sloppy vise.

Sent from my XT1053 using Tapatalk
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Thanks. I hadn't heard of one either until I purchased a BP knockoff mill from the left-over inventory of the Excalibur Automobile Co. Started by Brooks Stevens & his sons. The logo for Starrett is raised lettering on the casting. This is too ancient to be "off shore".
 
See if you can find a good used Kurt on Ebay minus the swivel base. It will be a lot cheaper, and you probably will never use the swivel base anyway, plus is takes up a lot of vertical space on the table.
Just my opinion.
 
Are replacement jaws/other types of jaws interchangable between different manufacterers or are they brand specific ?
With that, what type of jaws do you find the most useful ?
 
I'd be willing to bet dollars to donuts that there's not a whole lot of interchangeability ... hole locations are probably not the same. But if two brands of knockoffs came from the same Chinese factory, there's a chance they would fit.

As for useful jaws, I'll refer you to an excellent article about soft jaws (by Rick Sparber, a member here): http://rick.sparber.org/Articles/sj/sj6.pdf
 
Thanks for the article hman, lot of good info.
 
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