Good day all. I have a question concerning an old Stanley No. 700 bench vice that has soft pads. I bought it at a yard sale and for 5 bills it was worth it after a little elbow grease , however the soft pads, that resemble a type of brownish material about 1/4" thick similar to peg board material seems to be worn. Would anyone know what type material it is or what would be a good substitute. If necessary I'll supply a picture. Thanks and have a safe day... Ray
what I can make out, it looks like a type of chipboard. I don't think you have to worry as much about what it is, rather find something that is likely softer than the wood you'd be working with. Even some slabs of hard rubber should be able to fill you needs.
It looks like it's just glued on hardboard (the stuff pegboard is made of). You should be able to get a piece at your local "home center" that you can cut replacements out of. I can't tell by the pics how thick yours is. The stuff available locally is 1/8 and 1/4 inch. I think you'd have to move into fiberboard to get any thicker (or do 2 layers of 1/4 inch).
Will you be able to use one of those white cutting boards made of hard plastic? It is widely available, cheap, and you should be able to cut and shape it easily.
Interesting. Traditionally, at least in the UK, a hardwood such as beech would be used for this purpose. It would extend about 1/2" beyond the metal, all round, and the metal recessed into it so that there is no risk of edge tools coming in contact with the metal. It should be 1/2" thick, not including the recess, and the grain should be vertical.
Why vertical grain? I can see reason to prefer end grain, butcher block style, for the compressive load between the vise faces. I installed thick horizontal grain faces to extend the vise width. Racking so far isn't a problem. Why vertical grain?
It is the recommendation I read recently in some photocopies I made years ago of some pages from a book which, I think, must have been published by Record tools. (Now part of Irwin). The book has a lot of information about planes, vices, and building work benches etc.
However, if your vice cheeks extend above the metal work (as I described in my post) and you have to hold something like a piece of 2x1 flat, to work on it's broad face, it is held largely by the wood with little metal support behind it. If your grain is horizontal and you put a lot of pressure on, the vice cheeks themselves can split along the grain.
It happened to me a while back and it was only recently when I was looking at these pages, when they turned up in a draw I was going through, I realised why the grain should be vertical.
I can see your reasoning too if you are trying to increase the effective width of the vice and might possibly have something to hold that is held just by the wood.
On the new bench I am working on, the vice cheeks are of substantial plywood, for strength in both directions, faced with hardwood so the hardwood is fully supported.
Vertical grain, (i.e., "rift", "edge-grain", or "quarter sawn") is more dimensionally stable across the face, and is less like to warp or cup since most of dimensional instability is in thickness, important in a vise.
Most old timers considered "grain" as the most important attribute when choosing wood for a particular purpose. You see evidence of this in most of the older, 19th/early 20th century, literature on woodworking and carpentry.
While not exactly a lost art, or rocket science, most folks today, when faced with choosing fence posts from a stack, would be hard pressed to pick the ideal ones for the job by just looking at the ends, or when siding a house, which grain direction would hold a paint job longer. :)
Are you kidding? They don't about grain anymore on finish carpentry. How many times have I walked through the Lowes or HD cabinet section and seen doors on which the rails and stiles look like different species?
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