[TheForge] Re: Welding cast iron

[Mike Spencer]

IowaHarry wrote:

> ...broken the vise nut in my chinese vise shaped object (bench vise).
> [snip]
> The crack was on the diagonal behind the nut proper so we cut the
> nut away from the base completely and made a black steel base to
> braze to.

Is the nut -- the female threaded part -- integral with the body of
the vise?

I forget just exactly how my bench vise is, but IIRC, the nut floats.
That is, it's a separate part and is held to the base loosely with a
pin or bolt or the like.  If the nut is actually part of the base
casting, a sort of mushroom affair that sticks up into the axial line
of the screw inside the movable jaw, that sounds like a really weak
design. And if you reattached it with a braze and didn't get perfect
alignment, that would subject it to even more stress.

If that's the case, you might look first at a higher quality, old
bench vise to see how it's made and then try building some kind of
affair that would float the nut.

Or maybe I don't understand just what your arrangement is.


- Mike

-- 
Michael Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada       .~. 
                                                           /V\ 
mspencer at tallships.ca                                     /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/                        ^^-^^