[TheForge] God, I love the junkyard. A huge post vise!

[Barking Crow]

Well, we took yesterday off since it rained all day and that gave us a
chance to rest the strained muscles and things.  This morning we were still
using the long pipe on the cheater handle to turn the screw and by myself I
couldn't turn it at all.  Now the damn thing is mounted on a 12" post that
was available but not in the right place.  It works wonderfully.  The spring
quits pushing the jaws apart at about 3" but at that point gravity seems to
take over and it continues to open.  I was gonna weld a big ball bearing on
each end of a 20 inch piece of rod for the handle, but the welder won't
reach to where its mounted and I ain't gonna move it without my son, so I
made a handle that I think will work out well.  Its a 20" piece of 7/8"
threaded rod from the junkyard with a piece of side of the road thin walled
aluminum pipe 1 1/8" , I think it was part of a andle for some swimming pool
tool, sandwhiched between a nut on either end with some thread tite to keep
the nut in place.  Its sort of a classy handle, though I don't know how it
will wear.

The female threads are brass and therefore wern't rusted to the male screw
like I had thought.  They were filled with a hard mixture or old grease and
maybe rust grains that I dug out.  It works like a dream.  We unstuck the
jaws by just flooding the joint with various penetrating liquids and oils
and working the jaws in and out even though to start out we could only move
em with a sledge.  Now the damn works like a dream.  The curved piece of
flat stock welded to its fixed jaw (about 6") made a great mounting bracket
and we just lag screwed it to the post so that the end of the female thread
cone sticking out the back of the fixed jaw rests on top of the post and the
bottom of the post sits on an 6 x 6.

Jeff in Tallahassee who may now have another old post vise for sale