- Joined
- Jan 25, 2015
- Messages
- 2,558
Well, was building a plinth for a ball turner for my lathe, but I just didn’t feel like working on it today.
So I pulled the beat up B&S mill vice from under the cabinet and did some work on it.
Loaded up the fly cutter and planned to make it true and parallel. At least as much as I could with the tools I had on hand.
About the only surface that wasn’t beat up or otherwise damaged was the ways under the movable jaw. So I flipped it over and clamped the vice into the current mill vice resting on the moveable jaw ways. Then proceeded to fly cut the bottom surface:
I’ve reassembled the moveable jaw in that pic. Took about 0.010 to get most of it flat/true. The odd thing was the area under the fixed jaw was actually lower than the area back by the hand crank. So it was tapered from front to back. Not sure how that would have happened, but who knows what was done to it in the last 40-50 years. I suppose it simply could have been dropped and that bent it up a bit at the fixed jaw. It’s anybody’s guess as to what happened to it….
Some areas are still showing wear and damages, but they’re just too deep to machine out. They won’t affect it once on the mill anyways as the vast majority of the surface is true.
With one surface flat and parallel, I flipped the vice over and fly cut the area between the jaws so it would be parallel with the bottom surface:
About 4 thou cleaned it up and made it flat again. With the working surfaces now back to “useable”, I did fly cuts on the sides and the tops of the fixed and moveable jaws:
Again, not factory fresh, but about a 4-5 thou skim cleaned up most of the worst bits. Places where you see the JB Weld filler material is flat to the surrounding metal, so when painted it will mostly disappear.
Its not perfect, but it doesn’t need to be. It just needs to be functional and presentable. The small bits of damage still visible here and there are just its well earned battle scars.
I’m actually beginning to think that I might use it later on to learn scraping. Just the bottom surface to start. Should be a fairly easy piece to scrape: cast iron, relatively small surface area, fits on my surface plate, etc.
No classes offered around these parts on scraping (I don’t think theres even a shop around here that does it), so its going to have to be youtube and practice to get me up to speed on scraping….
So I pulled the beat up B&S mill vice from under the cabinet and did some work on it.
Loaded up the fly cutter and planned to make it true and parallel. At least as much as I could with the tools I had on hand.
About the only surface that wasn’t beat up or otherwise damaged was the ways under the movable jaw. So I flipped it over and clamped the vice into the current mill vice resting on the moveable jaw ways. Then proceeded to fly cut the bottom surface:
I’ve reassembled the moveable jaw in that pic. Took about 0.010 to get most of it flat/true. The odd thing was the area under the fixed jaw was actually lower than the area back by the hand crank. So it was tapered from front to back. Not sure how that would have happened, but who knows what was done to it in the last 40-50 years. I suppose it simply could have been dropped and that bent it up a bit at the fixed jaw. It’s anybody’s guess as to what happened to it….
Some areas are still showing wear and damages, but they’re just too deep to machine out. They won’t affect it once on the mill anyways as the vast majority of the surface is true.
With one surface flat and parallel, I flipped the vice over and fly cut the area between the jaws so it would be parallel with the bottom surface:
About 4 thou cleaned it up and made it flat again. With the working surfaces now back to “useable”, I did fly cuts on the sides and the tops of the fixed and moveable jaws:
Again, not factory fresh, but about a 4-5 thou skim cleaned up most of the worst bits. Places where you see the JB Weld filler material is flat to the surrounding metal, so when painted it will mostly disappear.
Its not perfect, but it doesn’t need to be. It just needs to be functional and presentable. The small bits of damage still visible here and there are just its well earned battle scars.
I’m actually beginning to think that I might use it later on to learn scraping. Just the bottom surface to start. Should be a fairly easy piece to scrape: cast iron, relatively small surface area, fits on my surface plate, etc.
No classes offered around these parts on scraping (I don’t think theres even a shop around here that does it), so its going to have to be youtube and practice to get me up to speed on scraping….
Last edited:
