Drill Press Angle Vise - Restored

As mentioned in my last post on the Boley C60 bench vise I had three vises I was working on restoring. This Drill Press Angle Vise with movable jaw is the second of the three. It's a very cool vise in the fact that unlike most drill press angle vises you find today, on the dynamic jaw there are two half moon jaws that rotate for holding round or odd shaped items.

Unfortunately, I don't know who it's made by, or the age of it. The only marking was a worn "Made in Taiwan" sticker.

Originally it was red in color. I went with Dupli Color Metalcast Green with a base of Metalcast Metallic Silver. I wanted a darker green which took 5 coats of the candy green. A total of 17 coats of paint over a couple days from the Etch Primer to Clear Coat.

The digital images taken with my smart phone do not do this paint justice at all... In the sun the Green Candy just explodes with color. Three coats of clear give it even more depth. Cure time is over a week and with this many coats of paint you really have to wait it out.

As for the condition it was in when I received it, it was in pretty bad shape. Completely rusted up and frozen. Basically a brick of rusted metal.

This was a lot of work prepping it up. First things first before starting any prep was to see if I could break things free. I sprayed it completely with WD40, basting it every couple hours with more and let it soak for about 8hrs before things started loosening up so I could disassemble it.

Once disassembled came a lot of prep work. From wire wheels to sanding. A mild yet quick acid etch of the metal. More sanding... More wire wheeling.

The usual stuff to prep something in this bad of condition. The handle and other parts were chromed which had to come off. Which it polished up nicely so I don't know what the chromed it to begin with.

Because this was so rusted I wanted to chase the threads to clean them up. Not owning a thread chase set, something I do need to add to my tool collection, I opted for trying out the DIY thread chasers.

Very simply you get the appropriate size hardened bolt, cut 4 slots in it, and you have a thread chaser. I used grade 8 bolts to make mine in 1/4-20, 3/8-16 and 1/2-13. I used a Dremel to cut the slots.

BUT..!!! Though the 1/4-20 and 3/8-16 were correct, the 1/2-13 was not. That's the pivot bolt on this vise. I had checked, thought it might be metric but when discovering it wants metric, went back to thinking it was indeed a 1/2-13 since it would thread in about a 1/2" inch. I was about to grab a wrench and drive the chaser bolt through when I thought, let me count the threads first. And lucky I did as it turned out to be a 1/2-12. A quick Google search revealed that a British standard bolt. So there you go, check before cutting if a bolt snags unless your sure of the size.

I hate it when they mix standards and imperial with metric on products. If you don't catch it, you can really mess it up trying to force the wrong thread size in the hole.

As for how good the DIY thread chasers are, they work to a degree, but they're not near as good as true thread chasers. True thread chasers are slightly under and over sized depending on whether you're using them for a internal or external thread. And they're not too be confused with or used as you would a tap and die, though they are very similar. Tap and Die are for creating new threads, while Thread chasers are for cleaning and repairing existing threads.

A Thread Chaser kit or Thread Repair kit I've been looking at is one by Kaster. Many say they're good.  They come in a 48 piece kit, a 40 piece kit and others I'm sure. They're sold under different brand names such as Craftsman, Mac and the like. I believe this is the 48 pice kit though I've seen it in a red case as well.

You might as well go for the 48 piece or larger if they have one. You know if you go for the smaller kit, given Murphys Law, the one not included, that's the one you'll need.
Do a quick search, they're sold pretty much everywhere online, you may even find them locally.

As for paint...
I'm not going to bore you with pictures of every coat..  besides I didn't take any. I did take one the first day of painting. This is after the metallic silver base coat was completed.

And yes, that's the $12 paint rack stand I posted about in use. I use it all the time. Something else I used this time was bamboo skewers...

If you find you don't have a great way to hold or hang something for painting but you have a hole in it, you can jam a couple bamboo skewers in it and...

There you go, a way to hang it without a wire getting in the way of your paint.

So here's the before and after pics combined so you can see the difference.

Here's a shot of the inside after it was restored.

And here it is extended to it's max of around 83° or 84° degrees.

Of course it's adjustable anywhere from 0° on up to its max.

With a coat of wax on all, including the bare metal it's fairly smooth. It's not the best made vise but it works fine. It grips both flat items or round. The rotating jaws as mentioned hold round pipes in a three point manor. Below is a small piece of 3/4" PVC held tight.

And a larger tube...

The half moon rotating jaws by far are it's best feature. They move on pins both in the bottom and sides of the dynamic jaw.

On the bottom of the half moon jaws there's a groove which the pin on the main jaw rides in. In that groove there are two stops on each side, one is a spring pin like the others, the other is an allen key threaded keeper which when removed allows you to remove them.

I tried to remove the spring pins but had no luck.

There's a groove on the back side of the half moon as well that the upper pin rides in. Rather simple design, but that's what holds them securely in place and allows them to rotate freely.

It didn't have a high polish finish on the half moons, I did that just because I thought it would look good. At the same time I didn't want to sand them to too much and change dimensions of things so I found a happy medium on the side of the high polish when sanding things.

Well, I believe that's going to be it for this post on this restoration project...

I enjoyed sharing it with you all and I'll see you next post.

Till then, stay creative, stay Happy.
Happy 4th though I see by my time piece it's the 5th now. Lol.

Cheers...