Stanley MaxSteel bench vice - spare jaws?

My feeling is Stanley is only a name these days.

Big old S/H one. Try local papers etc., as you don't want to pay eBay shipping from the wrong end of the country.

Look for Record, Woden, Parkinson's Perfect (for woodworking) etc.

If you mean "Irwin, the Yankee bastards who have closed down half of Sheffield", then feel free.

If I was buying a modern engineer's bench vice I'd look at the Czech ones from Axminster (Used to be Czech, probably Chinese now) and probably get one with a swivel base. I've used two of these swivellers for the last few years and they're holding up well.

Soft jaws are well worth having, and ideally several sets (home-cast lead, nylon, red fibre for everything, a clean red fibre that you haven't chewed up yet). Nearly all makes of these will fit any vice the right width, so try Axminster again.

Irwin no, an old Record no 4 ebay such as

Having worked in light, medium and heavy engineering, we always got over that by making our own.

Soft jaws, take a piece of soft aluminium and cut a profile in it so that it has a face to cover the serrated steel jaw of the vice. Put this into the vice, clamp and tap the top half over the top of the jaw and make a note of where to trim it so as to wrap over the end of the jaw. trim to shape and bend that over in the vice and repeat for the other vice clamp.

If you want softer clamping, then just glue material to the the face of the clamps.

Do a google for soft vice clamps, but ignore any link that calls a vice a vise.

Dave

Just cut yourself a couple of bits of lead flashing, and hammer to fit. Easy and indispensable.

Modern vices tend to be Chinese, and I have found that the screw thread soon wears away inside the casting: they are very cheap though.