Repair - Drill Press Vise #2

Repair (and Restore) of a Cheap Drill Press Vise

Before restoration

After restoration

I bought this cheap low quality drill press vise at an estate auction for $8, thinking I could put it to some kind of use. I thought it was pretty low quality when I bought it, but when I got it hone and inspected it carefully it turned out to be even worse than I thought. So why would I bother fixing up this piece of junk, when I know it's going to be at best an OK vise after a lot of work?

I decided to do this restore primarily because I thought it would be a good opportunity to practice using my surface grinder and shaper, as well as try out some other restoration techniques. If I mess it up, I haven't lost very much. If it works out, I'll have a usable drill press vise, but more importantly I will have gained some valuable experience in using my equipment.

The above picture shows the vise as I bought it, with vise jaw plate removed, and the screw partially removed. The vise jaw plates were pretty beat up, with a fair amount of rust behind the plates.

The screws holding one of the plates were so badly rusted in place that I had to break them to remove the plate. In the photo to the left, you can see that one of the screw holes has been drilled out and re-threaded, with the second hole pending.

While inspecting where the screw connected to the screw handle, I noticed that the screw had been soldered into the handle with soft solder! It only took about two minutes with a MAPP torch to melt out the solder and separate the screw from the handle; I plan to silver solder it back together later.

With the vise dis-assembled, I put the all of the parts into rust remover (Evapo-rust). The rust remover didn't do all that much, and considering the next steps I probably shouldn't have bothered. Lesson learned.

Before rust remover

After rust remover.

The base and moveable jaw were partially painted, so I used paint stripper to remove the paint:

Before paint stripper

After paint stripper

After removing the paint, I washed the parts and scrubbed them with a wire brush and soapy water. This was effective, leaving me with a good surface for re-painting. I also took the time (see photo below) to clean up the casting a bit with an angle grinder - just to remove mold flashing and a few odd bumps on the surface.

With the base and jaw cleaned up, I put masking tape on the non-painted surfaces and gave them both a coat of primer. After 48 hours, I followed this up with a coat of "hammered finish" green paint.

Primer coat

Final "hammered green" coat

Here are the finished painted pieces with the masking tape removed.

The handle was re-attached to the screw using Harris Stay-Brite silver solder and flux (the two pieces were heated with a MAPP torch while resting on three pieces of fire brick). A short session with the wire wheel cleaned it up nicely.

After silver soldering . . .

. . . and cleanup up with wire wheel.

I couldn't resist giving the drill press handle a matching paint job.

The small plate that holds down the movable jaw was given a quick session on the surface grinder to improve the finish of the sliding contact surface. I ground both sides while I was at it - partly to remove rust and partly to provide a good contact surface for the magnetic chuck. I also wanted to make sure the relatively thin plate did not develop any "curl" due to relief of internal stresses from being ground on only one side.

I also ground the thinner of the two vise jaw plates in a similar manner.

The thicker of the two jaw plates has two vee grooves in it. The back of the plate had some raised areas around the corner and edges, so I stoned it flat before putting it on the surface grinder. I alternately ground both the front and back faces. I did not attempt to grind out all of the dents in the front face, as I did not want to thin the plate too much, but I was still able to get a reasonably good surface. Measuring the result on my surface plate showed that the two sides were ground parallel to <0.0001 (dents excluded). This is definitely overkill for a cheap vise, but it shows that my surface grinding practice is paying off.

Stoning the back of the fixed jaw plate

Checking the completed grind

A previous owner of the vise had drilled a couple of bozo holes in the base, so I filled them in with JB Weld epoxy - partly for cosmetic reasons, but also to help keep the vise from collecting swarf. The holes were intentionally "over-filled" to rasie the fill level above the surface.

Drill holes in base (oops!) . . .

. . . filled in with JB Weld epoxy.

Once the epoxy was set, the over-fill was removed flush with the surface with a razor blade. The level at this point is not critical, because this surface will be surface ground in the next step.

I don't have the magnetic blocks needed to set up the vise for grinding, so I made a holding fixture. I made a general purpose fixture so I can use it late for other tasks.

Holes drilled, tapped, and chamfered.

Both surfaces ground parallel.

The first grinding task was to grind the base flat. I had to remove about 0.015" to get the base flat and even.

In fixture - ready for grinding.

Part way though grinding - note variations in surface.

With the base flat, I could now mount the vise directly on the magnetic chuck. I used a dial test indicator (not shown) to make sure the back face of the vise was parallel to the grinding wheel, and dressed the grinding wheel for both surface and side grinding. Thre was some estimation involved in setting up the vise at this point, as there was still quite a bit of rust on the back face. I had to remove about 0.030" from the top surface to remove the worst of the pitting and get an reasonably even surface. Approximately 0.010" were removed from the back face. After grinding a check on the surface plate showed the surface to be flat and even to within a few tenths (0.0002"). Unfortunately I don't have the required equipment to test squareness, other than a machinist square.

The next step was to grind the back face flat and perpendicular. I did this by side grinding with a 1/4" wheel. As I do not have a reference right angle, the only method I had to check for squareness was to use a machinist square. Using this basic test, I found that the back face was not square after grinding. I suspect that this was because I was working too fast and not taking proper care.

I re-trued the wheel with a diamond dresser, and also carefully created some relief in the side (again using the diamond dresser). I then re-ground the back face in small increments. I did this in three separate stages, allowing the piece to cool between stages. After this, a check with the machinist's square gave a good result.

Next, I ground the bottom of the moveable jaw on the surface grinder to remove about .020" of material. This was necessary because after grind the top of the slideway, the moveable jaw was now proud of the bottom slides. This would prevent the clamp plate from firmly clamping the moveable jaw, so it was necessary to remove some material.

After this, the clamp plate was re-installed (with the addition of spring washers on the screws).

With the moveable jaw complete, both jaw faces were re-installed with new screws. The retention screw for the clamping screw (old screw shown on top left) was replaced with a new set screw (which was fastened in with LokTite). Because the internal face of the clamping screw had been shortened, it was necessary to insert a spacer into the hole in the moveable jaw.

With those repairs complete, the jaws were clamped tight, and the tops of the faceplates and jaws were milled flat. After milling, the same top faces were finished up on the surface grinder (see completed surfacing in the picture to the left).

As a final step, the faceplate on the fixed jaw was removed and the Vee grooves were cleaned up. This was done on the mill using a carbide 90-degree point cutter. This step not only cleaned up the grooves, it also insured that the grooves were perpendicular or parallel as required.

Vee-grooves before cleanup

Vee-grooves after cleanup

Here is the completed restoration.

Some after-thoughts:

This restoration turned out to be a lot more work than I thought it would be, but as an exercise in self training I think it was well worth it. Although the net result was that a cheap crappy vise was turned into a better and usable (but still cheap!) drill press vise, I learned quite a bit in the effort. Further, precisely because it was a cheap crappy vise, it gave me the confidence to try some things that I might not have tried on a better quality tool.

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