Best decent bench vice?

[Frank Erskine]

It IS a piece of machinery. Apart from the screw, you have the nut (or half-nut), the release mechanism if it's a half-nut, the guide through which the moving jaw passes through the fixed one, and, very importantly, the jaws themselves.

For serious work a swivel-head vice is pretty naff. By all means have a separate vice for fancy work, but you can't beat a proper machine attached to your bench with three bolts (correctly, so that the fixed jaw is slighly proud of the front of the bench to enable you to hold a length of metal vertically to file or whatever the end of it).

I have a Record 4" bench vice (a number 2?) which I got as a birthday present about 48 years ago... and it's still going strong.

(I've developed other vices since then!)

[Andrew Mawson]

message

whatever you

through

fixed

birthday

I am still using the Record No 3 vice that I bought with the first weeks wages I ever earned in a holiday job I had as a student - and that was 38 years ago!

There are some rubbish vices out there made from inappropriate materials. A few years back India turned out copies of Record vices but I think they used toffee for the main screw - useless!

AWEM

[Bob Mannix]

The Chinese seem to do very well with their vices. I have one which is as good as a Record in doing the job. The external finish isn't as pretty and it doesn't have a quick release but these are minor quibbles.

As Record is now owned by Newell Rubbermaid, who knows where their vices come from!

[Rod]

Or what they are made from!

[dom]

As others have said, it depends what you need to do with it. I haven't found an equal to Record's when you need a lot of clout - e.g. using it press-out reluctant bushes. The only time I've seen them damaged is the handle shaft bent - usually by slipping a pipe over for extra leverage, or by hammering on the shaft.

That suggests the handle is sized to bend beyond the force a person can normally exert, and before any other part gets damaged (I think some vices have a shear pin somewhere too?).

I'd guess you can chip the casting by striking it hard enough, but I also haven't seen that sort of damage.

No idea what their manufacturing quality is like now, but there's an abundance of good secondhand anyway.

I do have some new (last year) Record sash cramps, and (surprisingly) they are the equal of the old 1970's ones. The old 1970's ones would have been produced at the Ridgeway factory alongside the vices - no idea if they have any production there still.

Incidentally I had a count up - I have 7 Record vices in all, 2 engineers, 2 joiners, & 3 floorboard vices - one being my dad's throughout his working lifetime as a toolmaker - worn but, but by no means worn-out.

[Huge]

Opium? Gambling?

:o)

[Andrew Gabriel]

Are you sure you got the right meaning of vices?

[Bruce]

The word "Rubbermaid" suggests some sort of experience with vices. ;-)

[geoff]

or whether you get whiplash

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "George" saying something like:

Seriously, try a good one and you'll never want to use cheap shitty ones again.

[Appin]

The message from "Bob Mannix" contains these words:

Who knows? But we'll very soon find out what their attitude to quality control problems is.

I've been speaking to their Customer Service Dept. today about a 3" worshop vice on which the pivot pin on the swivel base has fractured. Looks as if the cast iron on the base is of a very coarse crystalline structure and far from fit for the job. They've asked me to pack it up and they'll arrange for it to be collected and examined.

I'll let the list know the outcome, one way or another. Not quite sure how old the vice is -- perhaps six or seven years, and there's no way it's been abused.