This post will cover the teardown and restore of this well-loved Parker No. 59 vise. This model showed up in catalogues around 1912, and according to the 1912 catalogue, the vise is 81lbs with 4 3/4″ jaws and was available then for $11.75, which is equivalent to about $400 in 2026. This particular vise does not have the patent date on it, meaning it was made at least 17 years later, so sometime around 1930 – this makes it just under 100 years old!
Teardown:
When I said this vise was well-loved, I wasn’t kidding. This No 59 has been through it over it’s near-century of life: the famous Parker collar had gone missing and been replaced with a makeshift one, the rear slide was cracked – a common issue on the early semi-steel reinforced slides, and I might have counted at least 4 layers of paint on it. Despite all this, however, the jaws opened and closed with no issues, and the vise felt solid.
Clean up:
The usual clean up process was followed, same as for the other restores. You can see in the photos below the layers of paint that came off over the course of it’s many baths. Preparing the vise to be painted again took a while to tape off the internals and intricate jaw design.
Final Assembly:
Once reassembled and painted in what I understood to be it’s original color scheme, this vise was ready to go back to work. You can see in the photos, the measurements of the vise to get a sense of how big it is. With a 24″ long dynamic jaw, it is just not a good candidate for a modest workbench, but it would be right at home in a welder’s setup or a workshop for large machinery on a proper stand. The telltale signs of abuse on the slide were easier to see once cleaned up, but I have no doubt this one would do another 100 years without breaking a sweat.
Check out other Charles Parker vise restorations here!
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