POTD- PROJECT OF THE DAY: What Did You Make In Your Shop Today?

Eyerelief said:
Finally finished the Bison FPU vise I flashed a couple of weeks ago in the "What did you buy today" section. It is a 6" that had seen a little use, but not in many years. Here it is when I picked it up:
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It was rusted and bound up (most likely from inactivity). It came apart surprisingly well. A little Kroil and some patience and everything ultimately came loose.
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Some sandblasting followed by sanding and bondo
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Passed the facing mill over the anvil and one of the jaws to remove some but not all the damage.
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The blackening. As far as I can tell, the vise had a phosphate treatment on the hardware. I'm lazy. I had a half gallon of old motor oil handy so I heated the parts up and dipped them in the old motor oil to give them a little protection from oxidation.
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Brush painted everything with Rustoleum hammered. I wanted to keep the original handle so as you can see, I cut off the end about .75" short of the ball. Drilled and tapped the bar, turned and threaded the ball. I lost that .75" of leverage, but I can find it again if I need it. Added a couple of rubber washers
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Not wanting to drill more holes in my home shop workbench, I cut up a piece of a 2" laminated beam and made an "adapter" out of it. I made three nuts tapped 1/2-13 and recessed them into the bottom. Now I can put the POS vise back on the bench if I have some heavy welding to do.
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Really wanted to mill off the top of the fixed jaw, but didn't want to loose the stamped info so I decided to leave it
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Here are a few pics in situ showing the now black "adapter".
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Once adjusted it opens and closes smoother and more true than my Wilton. There is no wobble, play, or end play in the dynamic jaw.
During assembly I discovered that the gib adjusting screws were not contacting the gib. The threads were damaged on all three adjustment screws. I don't know if the original owner damaged them or if they were not turned down enough when it left Poland. This issue may have been giving the original owner fits as the vise was pretty sloppy the way it was. By taking about .125" off the threads of all three screws, proper contact with the gib was achieved and everything works as it should.
A peculiar side note. While looking at images on the interweb I discovered that when new, these vises had a sticker afixed to the top of the dynamic jaw warning to not strike the vise or the anvil with anything. Not a problem for me, but they maybe shouldn't have put an anvil on the vise to begin with.

Date stamp shows 3/65 so its coming up 60 years old. I think I breathed enough life into it to get me to the end of the road......
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came out nice. I don't believe in beating on my vise. That's what an anvil is for.
I look at the anvil on the vise as super light duty, unless you want to cry when you break the casting.
 
rwdenney said:
All my panels have the panel maker’s whole-house surge protectors installed, and those are still showing that they are functional. Many systems were not affected, including the major appliances in the house (except the treadmill).
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Big bummer! You officially killed my confidence in the whole-house surge protector. Hope the insurance covers all your losses. Do you have the documentation for your strip surge protectors? May not matter after a specific time period.
 
I installed an industrial style whole house surge suppressor along with additional ones at sub panels, did not have any issues when others in the neighborhood had multiple appliances blow during power surges. Attenuation of surges is a layered approach, MOV's by themselves may not be sufficient to dissipate a voltage spike, and a significant surge any from a lightening strike on a power transformer, well not sure anything can effectively dissipate that current if nearby.
 
We had panels with very large mov bricks.

The bricks were buss br sized and coukd pull the main breakr to disconnect from line if needed

Sent from my SM-G781V using Tapatalk
 
Eyerelief said:
Date stamp shows 3/65 so its coming up 60 years old. I think I breathed enough life into it to get me to the end of the road......
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If you look at the design of the FPU / Gressel vises, the farther you open them, the less support you have on the ways...

I've seen a lot of them that the front ⅓ or so of the dovetail on the gib screw side is broken off.

If you have to open it more than half way, you may want to be careful not to overtorque the jaws and break the dovetail out.

-Bear
 
Shiseiji said:
Big bummer! You officially killed my confidence in the whole-house surge protector. Hope the insurance covers all your losses. Do you have the documentation for your strip surge protectors? May not matter after a specific time period.
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My insurance supposedly covers replacement value. I certainly have the receipts for the replacements.

But the expensive parts were the circuit boards. The Zap door openers are $750 each, and I have four of them for the big doors in the shop. The replacement circuit boards are $400 each—still less than a residential opener that won’t lift my doors. The shop is only three years old.

And the control board in the $3200 boiler in the shop’s heating system is also $400, and also only three years old. The board for the treadmill was $210–less than even that 10-year-old (but good quality) treadmill is worth on the secondary market.

With me doing the repair work, State Farm is getting a deal. But we have also made a claim with the power company—they did not immediately reject it as I expected.

We’ll see what happens.

Rick “no choice about fixing stuff” Denney
 
682bear said:
If you look at the design of the FPU / Gressel vises, the farther you open them, the less support you have on the ways...

I've seen a lot of them that the front ⅓ or so of the dovetail on the gib screw side is broken off.

If you have to open it more than half way, you may want to be careful not to overtorque the jaws and break the dovetail out.

-Bear
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Excellent! I too have seen many of these vises broke around the front gib screw but wasn’t sure why. I will keep this in mind.
 
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