Huge Ridgid/Columbian 6" Combo Vise Restoration

Edgecrusher said:
I have a powder coating setup and I've seen some of the flat black with red vein powders and thought that would look fantastic on an engine like valve covers. But maybe I'm thinking more of whats called crinkle coat?? It's kinda similar except it usually has a flat base color and contrasting 2nd color. I don't think you would have been very happy with the performance of a powder on a vise anyway. I wouldn't expect it to last long. As much as I love the convenience and utility of PC, I don't really suggest it much when people talk about it. I like it on small parts that are easy to redo or are expendable like suspension parts. Anyways, back to vice talk.
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I restore and flip a lot of Capri/323 GTX valve covers and use black wrinkle on those. VHT wrinkle used to work well but the last few cans I bought became pretty inconsistent so I switched to powdercoat and that turns out even better, and there are a lot of different wrinkle textures to choose from.


This one was VHT wrinkle.

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Powder from The Powder Coat Store. Its smoother/glossier so it cleans up way easier and doesn't trap dust.

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Started the lathe work last night but didn't get to finish, the motor that came with the lathe has always been weak and last night it finally bit the dust. I got the area of the shaft that goes through the dynamic jaw turned down, and started on the handle end but it died before I got it all the way cleaned up.

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The brass bushings and sleeves came in from McMaster so I can bore and sleeve the dynamic jaw's bore and the handle bore. I found the Athol 714 a couple weeks ago, it's pretty decent overall besides the ratcheting handle "repair".

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Got the lathe motor replaced and started back on machining the spindle. After turning down the end I bored the handle hole back to unwallered metal.


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.003" press fit on the bronze sleeve, then turned down within a couple thou and sanded flush with 150 grit.

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Jim C said:
nothing wrong with a bit of debt as long as its constructive debt. if you can make money from the money borrowed then that is fine and in your favor. something like a shop so you can work to make money is fine. the shop will pay for itself and any interest...plus some. destructive debt is what is bad. your just losing all the way around. car loan for instance.
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I was debt free for a decent while, but got addicted to this metal shaping stuff, and I didn't want to wait years to be productive so bit the bullet and went back into debt. I cry a little every month when I see the payment come out of my account. In case you were wondering, that day was today! :confused:
 
Chad.S said:
If you were my neighbor, I'd never leave you alone. lol. I have a mill and a lathe but surely not the best at it. I know a lot of it isn't complicated but when you have to learn everything it's quite the challenge to do even basic stuff.
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We had a lathe in the corner for a few years before I ever got around to learning how to use it, and bought the mill thinking we'd need it to make pullmax dies but its turned out to be useful for tons of other things. I had zero experience and had to teach myself, mostly via youtube, would've been nice to have had a neighbor to learn from! Tooling to fixture and cut everything is the biggest hurdle, I just got super lucky and had the opportunity to pick through a closed down old school machine rebuilding shop before the owner of the building scrapped everything when the tenant quit paying rent. I've known the owner of the building for 30 years (went to school with his son) and he remembered that we "did metalwork" and thought we might be interested before the new tenant scrapped everything. Some of the good stuff had been stolen after they closed, but there was still plenty there that I could make use of.
 
I finished cutting the thrust surface and cleaned up the rest of the bore snout while I was at it, then tried to reassemble it but the spindle gets in a bind before the jaws close all the way. I figured this would be an issue, tolerances weren't that tight when it was new so the misalignment didn't matter. Abom79 had the same problem on the Fireball vise he machined from raw castings. I set up the dynamic jaw on the surface table last night to find the height of the bore relative to the bottom slide surface.

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Took a little thinking to figure out how to measure the height of the nut relative the slide. Settled on using an adjustable parallel in between the slide surface and the area of the spindle shaft that goes through the dynamic jaw, and used the notches on a Starrett precision level to see when the spindle was exactly parallel with the slide surface as the parallel was raised.

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.105" shaved off the base of the nut with a flycutter and Milwaukee power feed.

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Test fit- works perfectly now, no binding.


 
I started roughing in the soft jaws tonight using 1.5" square aluminum bar I already had, and figured out how to add serrations with the boring head.

I started to chop it in half on the bandsaw then figured I could mill the center out first to create the stepped top lip and have a lot less to cut with the saw after milling. This is just roughed in to get it all squared and have a starting point for finalizing the fit, I'll go back and dial in the step height to match the jaw shelf dimensions better, and shorten the top step/overall height a bit.

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The fun part- I set the boring head up with the bar inserted horizonally, with it adjusted all the way out. Ground a hss bit to about 55* with a slightly rounded tip, then lapped it using 1500 grit hoping it would leave a better surface finish. Mill rpm was around 450, .030" depth of cut, feed rate was however fast a Milwaukee M18 drill goes at full trigger speed in low gear, the original Bridgeport power feed doesn't work so I had to improvise.

 
The jaws shelves weren't parallel to the base, and needed to be matched to each other. I clamped it in the mill and found that the static jaw shelf was around .055" lower on one side than the other- noticeable by the very narrow machined strip on the far side and wide strip on the near side.

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Touched off on the left, big drop off on the right.

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About this time I realized I should weld up the saw blade cuts...

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The weld was impossible to machine with the tooling I have, carbide wasn't digging into it. I covered the area in sharpie marker as guide coat and carefully ground the welds down close to flush.

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Finished by block sanding with 80 and 150 grit. I'm not a fan of the wide machined flat on the static jaw and the very narrow flat on the dynamic jaw, I'll address that when I smooth out the castings before paint.

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Four corner height check. About one thousandth spread, decent enough.

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Dialed in the step dimension of the jaws to match the jaw shelves.

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Lapping the jaws to the shelves.

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As usual I come away from one of your threads feeling wholly inadequate.....:) Great work John. Figured out what the possible uses are for it yet? Just curious as it is so massive I wonder what it was used for or intended use.

Would make a great vise to use like they did in the movie Casino.... :eek:
 
Chris_Hamilton said:
As usual I come away from one of your threads feeling wholly inadequate.....:) Great work John. Figured out what the possible uses are for it yet? Just curious as it is so massive I wonder what it was used for or intended use.

Would make a great vise to use like they did in the movie Casino.... :eek:
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Good to see you back! Still not sure what I'll use it for, I don't want to screw up the knurling pattern on the soft jaws lol Maybe make a set of UHMW or Delrin soft jaws to protect the aluminum jaws. The biggest reason I'm doing all of this is to just get more experience with machining, the vise getting repaired is a nice bonus.


crashtech said:
Anything an average vise can do, this can do better. Although, I'd be afraid to abuse this one the way I do mine, lol. It's gonna be way too nice!
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No abuse for this one, I might even sew up a dust cover for it! I've got the other Columbian for that, it was the perfect tool for some bumper straightening work I did a couple weeks ago.

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JC Daniel said:
My daughter just bought a house last month and there is a huge Columbia vise mounted to the bench.
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You're just going to say that without posting pics of it?!? lol
 
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