Vise Restoration

This vise dates from the 1950's and was inherited by my father from his. Fortunately dad had a lot bigger vise', so this was spare.

Here I've already cleaned most of the 60+ years of dirt and grease off it with degreaser and given it a good rub down with a drill and wire brush attachment:

It needs to have the mechanism seperated now in order to fully clean it, ready to be painted again.

Disassembly is a simple process, but a little awkward at the same time.

• There's a retention pin at the rear of the vise that needs hammering out.
• There is a locking pin through the worm gear that prevents it from being threaded off the locking 'foot' on the end of the gear.

On mine, the locking pin seemed to be just a little too long to knock through, and too tightly bound to be pulled out, so I had to snap off one end of it and then hammer it through. I'll need to replace it with a suitable cotter pin.

Parts disassembled and ready to be given a full degrease:

Given another pass under the wire brush:

I think the handle is going to need some emery paper to get it polished up, also the grips on the vise need to be removed - they're really quite badly pitted and worn. It would also be better to paint without those fitted.

Did a little vinegar bath for the smaller components and the handle to try and get some of the heavier rust spots and deep gouges a bit cleaner:

The parts were left in for ~24 hours. There is an improvement, but not it's still not brilliant.

Red primer:

Clear lacquer on the handle - unfortunately it's so pitted and heavily scratched that polishing it all out is just not feasible. I cleaned it up the best I could without going crazy, then gave it a coat of clear lacquer to try and stop it going rusty and brown again:

First coat of red enamel gloss applied:

Considering how much use it has had in the last 60 years, I'm reasonably happy with the way it has come out. It was never going to look shiny and new like some Youtube restoration, but it has been tidied up and doesn't look out of place on my workbench now: