1940 History Restored Bench Visa You Won't Believe the Before & After!

#BenchVisaRestoration #Challengebenchvisa


1940 History Restored Bench Visa You Won't Believe the Before & After!

I bought this vice pretty much 1940 years ago together with the other Gresse bench vice I already restored and made a video. I also payed $10 for this one. Since then it was laying aroung in my basement. I always knew that I'll restore this one as well, just because it's a Gresse and it will totally worth to safe it from the trash.
This one wasn't that rusty like the other one, but it was also completely deadlocked. The handle was beaten up and bent. The jaws, some screws and two pieces to hold the spindle were missing. The pin that secures the spindle from turning was broken. Because of all that the spindle fell out. This vice has two threads and two concentric bushings to keep the jaws in place. Talking to Gresse I found out that this method was only produced until 1960, so it's at least 60 years old now. It could be from 1943, as both parts had a „43“ stamped on them. As these original jaws are getting no longer produced, I decided to drill an extra hole between the threads to be able to use new jaws. Gressel was so nice to send me new flat jaws. All the bare surfaces were in really bad condition due to heavy use, that's why I decided to weld up material and clean all these surfaces on the milling machine. I replaced the handle with a new one, but I used the old rounded ends again which turned out great. I later secured the ends with Loctite when reassembling. I also made the two missing screws and the broken pin out of the old handle. I choose to paint the whole vice the same color as the movable jaws from the new Gressel vices are, cobalt blue I think it turned out very well, the white lettering, the shiny bare spots and the black parts match very well.

I hope you like my work and the video.