Welding Cast Iron to fill holes..add metal to an old vise

[Ulma Doctor]

Hey Mike,
I've done zero brazing...But have torch setup. But that's not stopped me before. I could take this opportunity to learn it I suppose.
Don't have a GTAW setup... :/ It's on the want list though.
Stick can be a PITA but I've got two tombstones in the garage. One of which I'm willing to trade for something lathe/mill related. lol
I think you and Dave saw me get this thing from Guy. It's a mess and I know better. But I can't help myself.

if you have the torches already and want to learn a new skill,
all you need to do is get some Brazing rod and get a sacrificial piece of steel or cast iron.
you can drill some 1/2" x 1/8 to 1/4" deep holes in the material and fill up the holes, much like plug welding
you'll quickly learn the flow temperatures for the thickness of the parent metal
in brazing you are not melting the parent metal, rather just getting the metal and surrounding zone hot enough to melt the filler rod
not to be confused with braze welding, where the parent metal is brought up to it's melting point and the added filler rod creates an alloy of the parent metal and the filler.
the brazing technique is a heat, dab the filler, and repeat cycle. over and over again.
there is hundreds of hours of instructional videos on youtube that can show you how to braze.
i'd be happy to try and explain things you may have questions about.

 

[expressline99]

No pics! So sorry, cannot be that helpful. Just guessing because no pics, but I would use Devcon steel instead of welding. It’s a no heat fix, much safer, no machining required, not as durable though…Dave

Here are the pictures. Also looks like there are removable wear plates on the top. So that will eliminate some of the issues.

 

[benmychree]

Those wear plates are your Godsend! remove them, clean things up, patch with Devcon, level things off then make/ replace the wear plates. You can machine a small amount off the top of the jaws to eliminate the drill point pockmarks,

 

[4GSR]

Those wear plates are probably not original to the vise. I bet someone made them to cover up all of the bugger marks made the first time around.

 

[benmychree]

Those wear plates are probably not original to the vise. I bet someone made them to cover up all of the bugger marks made the first time around.

Yes, that is plain; but not a bad idea at that, except that the steel wear plate will attract a lot of burrs. I would not call this a milling vise, but a drill vise, but it can be resurrected and made useful; first thing after removing the "wear plates", I'd give it a bead blast job so that the Devcon would stick at its best.

 

[expressline99]

What's not shown is the plain jaws I took off.

This is just an interm vice for my mill. I haven't started collecting tooling and fixtures for the mill yet. Should be better than the "nothing else" I have for a vice.

 

[intjonmiller]

I haven't started collecting tooling and fixtures for the mill yet. Should be better than the "nothing else" I have for a vice.

Keep in mind that with a good t-nut clamp set and a few parallels or machinist jacks, you can mount just about anything on your mill. It's more difficult to set up a repeatable arrangement, and it's slower than a vise by far, but it's frugal, it's good practice, and you'll be better equipped to handle pieces that are too large/extended for your vise to handle without additional support.