Very important tool

 In the middle of work, house work, running a home and fixing things life happens. My spouse's uncle died and we went to help the Aunt and daughter with some home repairs. They were very, very appreciative and decided they would give me a lot of the tools that the uncle had in his shed.

Now we are talking about some family history tools like a hand drill, hand planers, hand routers (oh these are antiques!) a new router (still in the box) angle grinder, power drill, chisels etc, etc.

I was blown away by their generosity and even offered to pay but they refused. I had started to disassemble the wood vice but the daughter had gotten justifiably upset so I let it be.

I found a wood vice online in one of the trade link places (Gumtree) and bought it. It was in a bit of rough shape so I decided that I was going to overhaul it.

I did the typical Youtube search for someone who would have done the same by now and followed what they did. Here is a step by step picture tutorial of what I did.

This is what it looked like when I brought it home. 

 

 

 

So this is where I started to disassemble the vice, piece by piece.

 

All the pieces had to come out so that they could thoroughly cleaned and repainted before reassembly.

 

 

After coating everything (that was painted) in paint remover and scrubbing it clean, then I had to soak the parts in rust remover and take a wire brush to it all.

After it was all cleaned of rust and dried, I covered the parts that were not to be painted and primed it.

 

I then painted it the color you see here (I think it was fire engine red?) and reassembled.

 

This is the final product, top and bottom.

I was so, so pleased with the way this turned out. It took a few days to get it all done and now its mounted on the workbench you see above. I drilled out the holes from about and cut out the side so the vice would sit almost flush against the table. I've used it many time now and my only regret was putting it on that side of the table, I should have put it on the left but oh well, just have to make do.