Pre-1896 Starrett Vise and Bevel Protractor, Hmmm

Hello. Today I found these two tools. This thread is probably going to be pretty picture heavy. I think i can only post 5 pictures per post, so i'll have to split this up into a few posts it seems to get all the pictures in.


There are two sets of pictures, the one for the vise, and then another set of pictures for the bevel protractor, I will talk more about the protractor after the first set of vise pictures, so please dont skip over that, the text might be hidden between the picture sets.

I saw this small vise, and I noticed it had the older stamp, just says L.S.Starrett. So i am assuming it is pre 1896. The condition is remarkable for that age, so i am a bit hesitant to assign that age for sure. I have looked around online for other examples, and I realize now that my vise is not complete. It is missing the smaller of the 2 moving jaws, as well as the steel rod that goes through the screw head. If anyone knows the exact diameter of this rod, please let me know.
And apparently these use to come in sets of 2, so I'm also missing the other vise.

I have seen several other examples online, and most of them have the stamp on the side of the vise, not on the top like mine. Also the others i have seen do say "The L.S.Starrett Co." so i have to assume the one i have is in fact older, and maybe pre-1896. But this vise does not have a patent date stamped into it, and i find that almost all of the pre-1896 stuff I have seen does include a patent date typically. So does that mean this vise may be newer given that it has no patent date stamped on it?

I have been able to find it in one of the later catalogs, it is listed as No. 160. In the catalog, the stamp has the "THE" and has the stamp on the side of the vise.
This vise DOES NOT show up in the 1895 catalog, the first time it shows up in any of the catalogs i have seen is in the 1900 number 15 catalog. So does this mean that the vise has to be post 1895? Did the 1895 catalog have all products that starrett made at the time?

Although the fact that the movable jaw is removable is well advertised, i have never seen any pictures of the retention mechanism. It turns out to just be a small split ring in a groove. Also, there is a tiny booboo from when someone drilled into the vise by accident. Probably happened over a hundred years ago.

Here are some pictures of the vise that i could find in the catalogs.

Notice that the stamp is on the side as opposed to the too like on mine.

This picture is from catalog number 17, the vise does not appear in 16, but it does appear in 15 like i said, with this same graphic that 17 has.

At any rate, this vise seems very old, and pre-1900, but i have read a few times that it isnt right to judge the age of a starrett tool by the stamp alone, as many parts did have the old stamp for tools produced after 1896, and also there are some tools that do have the "THE" but are made pre 1896.
The reason I lean more towards this being a pre 1896 version is just because the stamp for this vise did in fact change over time to the "THE" stamp. So I assume that the change happened near ish 1896 like it did for most items that got the stamp change.





I am not sure where this picture is from but I saw it online somewhere.

Apologies for the multiple posts, but i can't post more than 5 pictures per post.

Okay, and i also want to mention the Bevel Protractor I got today as well.
It has a stamp, also an early one it seems, without the "THE"
This one actually has an 1800s patent date, so this one is most certainly pre-1896, i think. Once again the only reason I am skeptical because it seems a little tooo minty. It isnt really perfect by any means, it does have some surface rust, but it has no dings or any real damage i can detect.
Any advice on getting this clean? I was just thinking of wiping it down with some isoproply alcohol or something similar, and to get any junk out from the slots.

Upon perusing the starrett catalogs that I have full access to, i see this came in a vernier version, this has no vernier.

Also, i see that this may be missing what the call the "Acute Angle Attachment."

Thank you for reading! I hope guys can shed some light for me!


EDIT: I found this tool in the 1895 catalog, and it is sold without the Acute Angle Attachment at that point, so i cant safely assume that my tool is complete asides from the box, although it would be nice to have one of those attachments. Also the vernier version was not produced during this time.

Here is the original graphic for this item, from the 1895 catalog.
This catalog is the earliest i have the scans of, i would love to see catalogs that are further back to see these tools, but i do know that is not always easy.




This is another picture of a scan, this one is from no. 15, and it shows no increase in price, but does show a various set of ways one can use the protractor.




Here is the vernier version, I'm not sure when this one was introduced, but it appears in catalog number 26 (1938) for sure.



Thank you for reading all my shenanigans.
I have caught the vintage starrett bug like many of you, and wish to know more about the older tools i may have.

I also have a set of pre-1896 hermaphrodite calipers, and a set of pre-1896 outside thread calipers.

Here is mine. It has the "The L.L.S.Co. Athol, Mass" stamp on the top. There is a 5/32" hole with a countersink through the bottom. The hole could attach the base to a handle for use as a hand vise. This one has some vise jaw and hammer marks on the body. The bar is .1555" dia. x 1.8775" long with pointed ends. There is a small compression spring inside the knurled handle that retains the bar, but allows the bar to slide as needed.

I bet those thin jaws are scarce.

I have some B&S vises with the same sort of sliding bar and retaining spring.

Larry

Here are photos of my vise and protractor for comparison.

Thank you guys for posting your examples.
Thank you for the measurements of the bar larry, ill be turning up one of those real soon.

c5h5nino is that the original case for the protractor? Yours also appears to be the pre-1896 version, and the condition is astounding. What is that bar that is along with the protractor in your case? I certainly dont have that, and that does not look to be the Acute angle attachment that comes with the newer editions of this tool.

Here are some more pictures of my vise. It does not have the drilled and counter sunk hole through the bottom.
I have took the jaw off and got some pictures of the retention mechanism, havent seen any pictures of that online.

From what I see, there are three versions of this vise.
The one that c5h5nino and I have, with the early stamp of "L. S. Starrett" on the top of the vise.
The second appears to be the variation that Larry has, with the stamp still on top, but with "The L.S.S. Co." I had not seen this one at all in my research of this vise.
The next and most common one is the one that appears in the catalogs and has the full "The L. S. Starrett Co." stamp along the side of the vise, as opposed to on the top.
I have seen a few other examples of the most latter one. Seeing as in the 1900 catalog, the depiction already has the vise with the stamp on the side, so I am guessing all of our examples here are earlier than 1900.

Yes, I believe it is the original case. Strangely though, it is labeled with “The L.S. Starrett Co.” (see picture below).

I am not exactly sure what the bar is for, but my best guess is establishing a reference perpendicular to the angle set (see picture below).

How long is your vise? It seems to be quite a bit longer than the ones Larry and I have (~2”).

Hello.
Odd, I have a case that looks just like that for a speed indicator i have, a bit smaller but just that style.

Hmm this is very odd. I just measured the vise and it is indeed longer.
It actually is 3 and 1/8th inch long, and 11/16ths wide.

How wide is yours? is mine just proportionally larger?







I also thought I would ask here about a plumb bob i saw.
I saw this Starrett box yesterday, but it contained a plumb bob that had no starrett stamp, so I assumed it was a random plumb bob in a starrett plumb bob box. it was highly polished as well so i thought maybe a stamp could have been polished off through the years.

The odd thing is that i never have seen in any catalog a plumb bob like the one i saw. It is short and fat, not long and skinny like all the mercury filled ones, and not like the brass tapered one. But the box was starrett, and it fit the plumb bob nicely. Looking online i have found this example, and the box I have seen is identical. What era is this box? Whats odd is that comparing this picture to the one i saw, the shape is identical, it just lacks the black coating and is just bare metal. The shape is really identical, and it the one i saw had a string that looked just like the one in the picture.
So going by this i have to assume this is a starrett product that was produced for some time, and the one i saw probably is starrett even though it lacks a stamp.
But i cannot for the life of me locate a plumb bob like it in any catalog, or any other examples asides from this picture i present here.

Is the example in this picture a real startett? I do not see this in any of the catalogs I see, the closest thing I see is maybe the plumb bob here on the steel tapes, from a much later catalog.

Joining the conversation a bit late. Here is mine, looks almost identical to dzarren's but came with a countersunk hole in the base. It retains most of the case hardening color, but I had to stone off a lot of burrs since it had been rolling around in a box of old tools for decades.

I enlarged that hole in the bottom so that it would accept the same hardware as other accessories on my wife's Unimat. She mostly uses it as a polisher, so I've got time to find her a new vise.