Category: Vices
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Charles Parker No. 23 Vise Restore: a 150 year old beauty
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in VicesThis post will cover the teardown and restore of this 150 year old vise. Dating to around 1870, this No 23 is one of Parker’s earlier models – back when the model numbers were still simple! According to the catalogue, the vise is 48lbs with 4 1/4″ jaws and was available in 1875 for $11,…
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Charles Parker No. 59 Vise Restore: the beast
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in VicesThis 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…
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Charles Parker No. 973 1/2 Vise Restore: the perfect all-rounder
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in VicesA quick teardown and restore
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Charles Parker Vise: Overview
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in VicesThe Charles Parker Company, originally based in Meriden Connecticut is an historic (and prolific) manufacturer of vises beginning around the early to mid 1800s. They also made other goods like coffee grinders and guns, but they are most known for their vises. I ran into a few of them at good prices on the marketplace…
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Wilton Machinist ‘Bullet’ Vise: Restoration
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in VicesIn the prior post, we went over background on the Wilton and the iconic 4″ Machinist Vise I picked up. In this post we’ll go over how I restored it. Overall, the vise was in good shape, with unworn jaws, and minimal scarring, and no broken parts. A few things to look for are jaws…
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Wilton Machinist ‘Bullet’ Vise: Overview
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in VicesThe Wilton Machinist Vise, also known as Wilton Bullet Vise, is iconic, highly sought after, and has an aggressive collector’s market. Oh yeah, I hear it also makes a decent vise. How do I know this? Let me tell you a story… The story: I was browsing the classifieds one day and saw the post…
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Electrolytic Rust Removal (Part 3): Cleaning up and protecting your part
Once you flip the power on, with in a few minutes you should see the hydrogen bubbles begin to form on your rusty part and rising off. The process to can take anywhere from a few hours to a few days. You’ll know when it is finished when the bubbles slow down, but you can…
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Electrolytic Rust Removal (Part 2): Setup and important information
List of supplies: The good thing about making your rust electrolysis set-up is that at its core, all of the necessary parts are quite simple and you you should be able to pull it together using household items. You can, of course, also go all-out and spend a lot of money. Here are the supplies…
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Electrolytic Rust Removal (Part 1): All you need to know about removing rust with electrolysis
When I found a very rusty Wilton bullet vise a few months back, I started to look into how to go about cleaning it up. What I learned is that rust removal is a messy, arduous process. But I also came across some posts about people using electrolysis to remove rust; it looked like a…