The following is a note I sent earlier this year to the fellow who runs the Emmert's vise site that rivett608 mentions: that is a fine site.
I know I'm lengthy, so perhaps I shouldn't, but think some may enjoy this.
Northernsinger
I have enjoyed looking over your fine web pages on the Emmert’s patternmaker’s vises for an about a year now. You’ve done a fine job.
My family (with some other investors) bought a downtown Philadelphia iron works, the Sam’l J. Creswell Iron Works, at 23rd and Cherry Streets, in 1952 or so. This iron works (which went out of business about 1985) is partly documented. It’s claimed beginning date is 1833. It apparently operated in a number of downtown Philadelphia locations until the late 19th century when it bought property (thought to be a former tannery site) at the aforementioned address (which, though downtown, was pretty far west then, practically on the Schukyll River, which was the western boundary of the city for awhile—though it’s long extended way past there). I first remember the iron works from the late 1950’s, and certainly from the mid 1960‘s, when, as a teenager, I was summer help.
No casting was done on site after the 1951 or so fire which prompted the sale of the business from the aged owner (Colonel Biddle) to the group of investors my father put together. The pattern shop continued however, perhaps making patterns which were cast by other foundries, and certainly repairing old patterns. By the mid-1960’s there was only one person in the pattern shop, Mr. Lee Hays, who had been foreman when it was thriving, and was now aged, and was kept on for repair of patterns and, possibly, as a favor to him and for sentimental reasons. Mr. Hays showed me around the pattern shop a number of times, and gave me a few machinery lessons. He had worked there for forty years or more, most of the time as foreman, including the busy war years when the shop employed scads of workers.
The iron works moved from the 23rd & Cherry Street location to North Philadelphia (Comly Street off of the Roosevelt Extension) around 1969, into a former stoneworks (and continued at that location until its demise, about fifteen years later). The 23rd Street property was rented, for a time, and then most of the buildings razed and the land sold. The pattern shop was never able to be rented. And, though, it is now long gone (condominiums there, I believe) it was locked up and left vacant, with some of its tools, for a time.
I, who had gone to the local Ivy League college (as had my father and mother and about thirty others in my extended family) moved out of town in 1972. By the mid 1970’s I was firmly enough established here in Vermont, and interested enough in woodworking and in old tools, that I was given all that I wished to take out of the vacant pattern shop. This was a fair amount, and eventually involved, two full-sized loaded pickup trucks, an 18 foot enclosed truck part loaded here, and shipping of some machines via commercial carrier. (There were for example, five fair sized machines, a 36” band saw, a 24” planer, a large patternmaker’s lathe, a 20” jointer, and a 14/16” table saw: I still own several of these items, and would like to buy back—this may be possible—the three that I traded away.)
Along the south wall of this second floor pattern shop, constructed in the late 19th century, was fifty feet of work bench made of a front bench of 2 ¾” thick commercial maple bench tops 18” wide (five of these, each ten feet long) backed with a pine board about 12 inches wide, for a tool trough. Each of these five benches were identifiable as separate stations as each had had an Emmert’s vise let into them. And next to the vise a little planning stop. Only two of the Emmert’s vises were still attached to these benches when I was given the material, three were missing, though their distinctive cut outs showed they’d been there. (I’m sure you know what I mean.)
I was just a young fellow at the time and—while I wanted to take all fifty feet of the maple tops and their tools wells at the back, I wasn’t going—at first—to take the Emmert’s vises. This was in the mid 1970’s you see (1975, I think), and I had never—except at this ironworks—seen or heard any reference to these vises. The type of vise that I then wished were the old wooden screw cabinet making vises and I was—for awhile--displeased that the iron works did not have these. But my father, a mechanical engineer by training (and a person with more common sense than me) convinced me to take the two remaining Emmert’s vises. Which I did.
I remember I shipped one vise, from Philadelphia to Vermont. In those days Railway Express (which had formerly been a very large successful carrier) was on its last legs. But I packed one of the Emmert’s vises (I can’t now recall how I brought up the second one) in a tin foot locker and shipped it to myself. I can’t recall the shipping charge but do remember I thought it high. Railway Express managed to crack—but not fully break--the turtle back of this vise. (Which is still the vise I use today.)
I mounted this vise in my in-laws house, a shop in their cellar, as I had not yet bought myself a house, and we were living there during two winters (1973-74 and 1974-75). It was probably 1975 that I did this, as by 1976, I bought a house which I still own.
Later in the 1970’s I built myself a wood shop at that property and took one of the five iron works bench tops and remounted the Emmert vise from the cellar of my in-law’s place at that workshop.
When I moved from that property to my current house, in 1998, I took that setup and another of the bench tops and made one large bench, which I use today.
In the mid 1980’s—when the iron works, then 150 years old, was finally going under—I bought a number of their metalworking tools. At that time I found another Emmert’s vise stored and unused at the newer iron works site. I bought this ($5 I think).
All three vises were the same vintage, I believe, though I only have one left to check. (The disposition of the other two—which rankles me somewhat—is another story.) I believe the iron works fitted up the pattern shop that I knew in the late 1890’s or just after the turn of the 20th century. I know that the latest machines I took from the shop were early 1920’s machines; I believe my table saw predates the 20th century. I suspect that all five Emmert’s vises were bought at the same time.
The one that I have is—according to your type study—a Type 5. I’d be happy at some time in the near future to send you a photograph if you like. This vise has been in my possession and use for approximately thirty years (I turned the current handle on it before 1976, I think: it’s polished shiny by my hand) and in my family’s possession since 1952 or so. (The vises are listed in a late 1951 appraisal of the iron work’s property—used I believe to set a value for the 1952 sale which my father oversaw—as
1- 50’0” x 27” x3” work bench with 5 cabinet maker’s vises
And valued at a ‘reproduction’ cost of $250. (That was probably pretty serious money then.)
I also took—in the mid 1970’s--from the pattern shop office (that had been used by Mr. Hays, whom I previously mentioned) all the literature and catalogs I thought worth saving. I’m sure now that I should have saved more, but I do have a number of old pattern shop supply catalogs (Kindt-Collins, from Cleveland, and Adams & Nelson, from Chicago) that have cuts of the Emmert’s vises I believe: perhaps you’d like to see these? (I think I have a couple of patternmaking trade books—text books—that also show Emmert’s vises, though they are not identified as such.)
I’ll close now, and thank you again for your interesting site, and work.
