Another of the things I was given by my granddad was some well used Record branded vises, specifically a type 23 engineers vice, a type 91 pipe vise and a type 52 woodworking vise. All of these had clearly had quite a lot of use in their lives but were still functional. Unfortunately they clearly hadn’t had any attention for a number of years and just needed a bit of tlc before they started their new life.
Yet again I’ve decided to do it properly. The first step was to remove all the grime, there was old grease, loose paint and quite a lot of surface rust so I went to it with a powerdrill fitted with a rotary wire brush.
This removed the majority of the grime but I needed to use a solvent to degrease the surface prior to painting.
It’s probably worth pointing out at this point that due to me wanting to try out the new paint I didn’t clean the entire vise, that’ll have to wait for another day.
The key bit for me of restoring these vises was making them look the part, so while I could have painted them any colour I did quite a bit of research and found the correct factory original colour for them is BS381C-110 Roundel-Blue. I managed to find one place who could supply a this as a very high quality enamel paint – Paragon Enamel Paints it can be bought via Ebay or direct from their website. I’m not going to lie, it’s not exactly cheap but even the smallest 0.5l can goes a surprisingly long way so you can always retouch it if you need to. It’s also worth pointing out at this point that they specify PT8 synthetic thinner as there doesn’t appear to be much that works. I recommend buying this with the paint as it’s probably the best option for cleaning brushes/spills – sadly me being me it hadn’t noticed this and just cleaned the brushes with petrol.
Now having painted half the first vise I realised that while I was waiting for it to dry I couldn’t clean the other side. I admit that was obvious but I wanted to see what the paint looked like! So I started looking at the next vise:
This is a type 91 pipe vise is generally used for holding a pipe or tube usually to cut a thread onto the end without crushing it. Such fittings used to be used for water pipes in houses many years ago but that is no longer the case but threaded pipes and rods are still widely used in engineering.
This time I disassembled the threaded bar to avoid potentially getting paint on it as well as some other moving parts and all three jaws. I then cleaned it in the same way as the other vise – although with the addition of of a toothbrush to get into some of the corners.
Next up was painting it, this one was a little more fiddly as it wasn’t attached to anything – in retrospect I probably should have just screwed to to a bit of wood but hindsight is a wonderful thing! Also It has a few moving parts which will get stuck if paint gets in them.
So I need to finish it off and paint the areas where I was holding it and things but we’re heading in the right direction. The pair if vises now look like this:
Still more work to do to get it all looking spot on but that can wait until part 2 – where I’ll also have a go at the woodworking vise:
This gives a better idea of how they all looked before I started cleaning them – not terrible but in need of a clean.
To be continued in part 2…