Vise Restoration

Our old vise was looking a bit worse for wear, so we decided to give it a good refurnishing. We took it apart, cleaned the surfaces, and gave everything a fresh coat of paint and grease. In this video, you will see the bench vise restoration. If you want to see us fix up the workbench it lives on, check out our Workbench Cleanup video.

The vise wasn't in too bad of shape. It was still completely functional, but the jaws did not fully close, the pivot was tough to move, there were chunks and scrapes over the whole thing, and rust was starting to show through the previous layer of primer.

We started by dissembling it. Most of the screws were bent, the threads wrecked, and rust trying to hold them in place. Some came loose with elbow grease, but a few of the screws needed the impact screwdriver. To our great amusement, the newbie working the impact screwdriver the first time had it set to tighten and the screw still came loose!

Once everything was taken apart, we could clean off the accumulated dust, grease, and rust- first with some grease remover and water, and then with a wire wheel. There were some tough to reach spots on many of the pieces, so we had to use a variety of different tools to reach them and take everything back to bare metal.

With everything cleaned up, it became clear how deep and numerous some of the gouges were in the metal. This vise had been well-used in its time. We started with the hand files, trying to get an even surface. When that didn't completely remove the gouges, we got some metal filler. Since this was a working vise, we didn't care about making the surface perfect. Instead, we filled in the biggest of the holes and gouges and left the rest mostly rough. Once the filler dried, we sanded it down to match the vise. We used the files a little bit more to clean up the anvil. After we finished the entire project, we decided it would have been nice to fill that huge hole in with some welds, but oh well. Maybe next time.

We taped off all the parts that would be left as exposed metal before coating everything in primer. We added our paint, removed the tape, and then it was time to put it all back together. We made sure to use plenty of grease wherever there were moving parts or metal would touch.

We are not professionals and make no claims to being experts on our topics. These videos are for entertainment purposes only; attempt at your own risk.