I have a new vise (not vice)!

In October last year, I put lipstick on a pig or possibly tried to make a silk purse out of a pig's ear. In other words, I made the mistake of taking a closer look at the generic Chinese Angle Lock (Kurt clone) vise I bought in Canada a few years back for the Blidgeport. Which naturally resulted in a complete stripdown and rebuild with some serious machining along the way. Although I probably got the Angle Lock feature to do some actual angle locking, I surely weakened the thing along the way. For some stuff you need to really tighten up the jaws and I'm not convinced it's up to it any more, if it ever was.

So I finally bit the bullet and bought a more up market vise this week. It's still a Kurt clone, made in China but it seems that the supplier (Arc Euro) has taken pains to ensure that it's made reasonably well and they also appear to have made a few small improvements.

It's their "Versatile SG Iron Milling Vice (sic)", denoting that it's made of malleable (SG) cast iron. Unlike my pig's ear, it has no mounting bolt lugs but this offers the option of mounting it on its end or side. The downside is that it doesn't come with any hold-down clamps, although I'm sure I can bodge (machine) something up to suit.

From their blurb:

• Angle Lock clamping. When tightening the vice, the angled face on the nut transmits it's clamping force both forwards and downwards via a self-aligning spherical segment (an ARC specified improvement). The spherical segment locates in a corresponding recess inside the movable jaw preventing the jaw from lifting off the guideway. A small amount of jaw lift is possible depending on the type of work being held. (A little fettling in the area of the nut casting can improve the accuracy if required.)
• A friction reducing thrust ball bearing increases clamping pressure when closing the vice.
• Both ends of the fixed jaw have an M8 threaded hole for mounting a work stop (not included).
• For light work, the capacity of the vice can be increased by mounting the jaw plates on either end of the jaws or even on the top of the moveable jaw. Note: The fixed and moveable jaw holder height may vary. If necessary, pack/shim as required if using the vice in these configurations.
• Material: Ductile SG (spheroidal graphite) cast iron. (click for Wikipedia definition)
• Supplied with plain hardened jaw plates, locking handle and 2 locating keys.

The 160mm version is £188 delivered, which compares well with the other stuff out there, especially if you believe it to be of dependable quality.

		100mm Vice	160mm Vice
Jaw Width		100mm	160mm
Jaw Depth		32mm	45mm
Max Jaw Opening (see also:		122mm	199mm
Location Keyway Width		14mm	18mm
Overall Size	Length	305mm	440mm
	Width	100mm	160mm
	Height	95mm	127mm
Weight		10kg	30kg

Note the claimed increased jaw opening of "199mm" (to the nearest mm). The other, apparently identical example of this product I found only managed 140mm.

Time to take a closer look. It was well packaged up, although the polystyrene packing pieces had been reduced to rubble under the 30+kg weight. LIke most Chinese stuff, it was inside a polythene bag and nicely oiled:

Cleaned it up with some wet wipes and then some WD40. Looks pretty good. All the functional (slide) surfaces are ground and nicely finished:

The handle seems to be machined all over, unlike the fairly rough cast finish of the pig's ear:

It's a 6" nominal vise, which means 160mm jaw width. You may just about see that the jaws don't sit down against the base. That's normally easy to fix - by loosening the jaw fixing bolts and tapping them down.

Which I did, using my plastic headed mallet, to avoid damaging the jaws. They didn't quite line up on the end faces, so I gave them a bit of attention, tapping one jaw on to side and the other jaw in the opposite direction. That did the trick. But wait - what's this???

These jaws are described as hardened and the mallet is plastic (Nylon?). So WTF? Those marks are actually indentations. How can this be possible? It may not be the end of the world (that's next week, AFAIK) but I'm certainly puzzled.

Anyway, it's quick and easy to remove the moving jaws on these, to take a closer look at the hidden gubbins.

First you remove the short locking grub screw from this hole:

Then the full sized grub screw comes out. This holds the moving jaw against the spherical ball / socket of the sliding nut.

You can just about see the ball here, hidden in some black grease:

Finally, the underside of the moving jaw. I was expecting it to be ground like the external surfaces but it's just rough machined. The pig's ear vise wasn't ground but the surface finish was better. Perhaps this is something I could tackle myself at some point if, only to avoid unsightly scratching on the slideways.

So, what about those soft(?) jaws? This is what happens when you unleash an automatic centre punch on it. The punch remains sharp and the jaw yields easily enough:

And when a needle file is used on the edge of the jaw, it cuts easily enough:

Not convinced I'd describe those as "hardened" but perhaps I should compare them to the pig's ear jaws....