THE vise from the grandfather

So, a month ago my grandfather past away (an entire life of beeing machinist untill the last day). He teached my mother (yes, to my mother)a lot of things electric house connections, grinding, welding, plumbing, welding and all that stuff "only men does" and both teached me all of that. My mother (his daugther) inherited most of his tools (files, wrenches, pliers, screwdrivers,etc.) between all those tools is a drill press and a bench vise.

I'm in the process of making a small shop for personal proyects for my mom and me at her house and i'm planning on restoring the drill press and the vise (first the vise) to how it looked like when my mom was a little girl. Unfortunately I haven't got luck on getting any information for the vise it only says "TISA 118". I found a guy that has a "TISA 114" and that was it nothing else. The vise works pretty well so i'm just taking of the rust, painting and adjust tolerances if possible (it has a considerable amount of play).

If someone around here has any advices or infomration it would very helpful.

(here are some images)

Your vise looks a lot like my Parker vise, and mine is quite loose too.
But they are a very nice vise. Your Grandpa sounds like he was a talented, and patient man! Hope your shop goes well too.

Dont worry about the play, vises are kind of sloppy overall until tightened - some more than others.

If the paint is as it was when your mom was young, leave it be. A good rub down with oil and a soft cloth will clean, shine, and protect it.

A product like Evaporust will do an excellent job of removing the rust, no scrubbing necessary. If you're worried about it removing paint, you can soak some towels in the solution, wrap them selectively around the rusty bits, wrap the whole deal in plastic sheet, and let sit overnight. Wipe dry the next day, and oil liberally.

Its pretty cool to see you restoring and USING a nice heirloom like this. Treated properly (no hammering on the handle!), it will last well through your lifetime. Enjoy.

Welcome to PM. I don't remember seeing a member from Mexico before. I'm sure there must be others, I just haven't noticed any.

Your English is immeasurably better than my Spanish, so I won't wank about grammar or spelling.

How are you intending to remove the rust? The green vise doesn't look too bad. Maybe just scrub the rusty parts with an oily steel wool pad and leave the paint alone. I all depends on how fine you want to make the vise.

Do you have Evaporust in your area?

At the begining it was the intention to just clean it with some compressed air and rubing but while disassembling it find out a similar color underneath the stationary jaw and in the base (one of my older uncles comfirmed that my granpa once painted the vise because he spilled some acid over it and ruined the original paint) so my mom asked me to repaint it that color.

Evaporust is not available around so I'm turning my sight towards some paint thinner or paint stripper (now that i'm reapinting it) and some electrolysis for the rust inside all the little parts that I can't reach with a drill and a wire wheel like the bolt holes.

Sorry for taking too long It's been a couple of busy weeks in the office.

I have already desassemble the vise and th update is this:

- I had to heat the jaws screw, use WD40 and a little of help of a persuation tool (a 2lb hammer) to take unscrew them (broke 2 of them) I'm drilling and retaping thoose hoping not to make it worse.
- Found out it wasn't the original paint so we're repainting It to the original color (powder coating if color available).
- Now that we are repainting it I'm using electrolysis to take care of the rust becasue I can leave the "electrolysis station" working while I'm in the office and to take the weekend to paint it.
- The play on back and forward motion of the vise was due to that the main nut got to short for the stopper and side to side becasue the guides of the main nut (wich is made of a soft metal) started to get deformation. I'm founded a replacement for that on my grandpa shop so we got the play thing covered in case we deside to not reuse the original one.
- Beeing a 6 inches vise i got impressed that it opens up too 10 inches 1/8 maybe 1/4 after 10" and 1/8 the dinamic jaw it starts to unscrew from the main nut.

ViktorMizzael said:

...Beeing a 6 inches vise i got impressed that it opens up too 10 inches 1/8 maybe 1/4 after 10" and 1/8 the dinamic jaw it starts to unscrew from the main nut...

Click to expand...

That's very good; I wish my 6 inch bench vise opened that far ! Good luck with this project, it's well worth the time spent, in my opinion.

Welcome ViktorMizzael, as long as you are painting the bench vise maybe paint the pipe vise too.

A bit off topic, but as far as posters from Mexico, wasn't there someone from Mexico a couple of years ago restoring an old generator with a two cylinder Wisconsin engine?