Sat Feb 23 2008

Bending longerons

I was having trouble keeping the swivel base of my vise tight enough to keep it from turning while whacking the longeron with the hammer. So I tightened the swivel lock as tight as I could by hand and tapped it with a hammer to tighten it up some more. After a couple taps I heard this "snap" sound and it kinda got loose again. Uh Oh. I dismounted the vise and turned it upside down expecting to see a cracked casting. Hrm...looks OK so far.

Ahh I see...the head of the bolt cracked through. Well dang. I stuck a standard bolt in there and cranked it down tight temporarily until I can get either a new vise or a replacement bolt. This vise is kinda too small to be doing a lot of rugged work on it. It was one of the first tools I bought as a kid...maybe 12 or 14 years old. I've used the heck out of it. Maybe time to get an upgrade.

Even though I put tape over the jaws of the vise I still got some marks on the inside of the angle. After I noticed this I piled on about five layers of duct tape and that cured it, but these marks are gonna be a real pain in the keester to polish out.

After a bunch of work with the die grinder and a 1" ScotchBrite wheel, I managed to polish out all the marks from the vise jaws.