doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DIY Gunsmithing @ doublegunshop.com Vice advice

Looking to clean off the rust on my vice slide and apply a lube/rust inhibitor. Thanks in advance.

Naval Jelly maybe...Geo

how much rust are you dealing with?

how much rust are you dealing with?

Not much. It’s a fairly new mid level Wilton. It’s out in my barn and want to prevent it from getting worse.

if it's just some surface rust, you might be able to take care of it with some steel wool. as for protecting it, and thin coat of paste wax seems to work well to make it slide smoothly and prevent rusting without gumming it up

Fluid Film

Thanks all. The rust came off with steel wool. I put some paste wax on it because that is what I had laying around.

Wilton is to bench vises as Steinway is to grand pianos.. Great vise indeed.. RWTF

I was surprised how poorly the Wilton vises fared when tested to extreme limits of strength.



It doesn't sound like the rusting problem posed here was at all bad. I'm still blown away with how well a solution of feed grade molasses does when it comes to removing rust from iron and steel. Nothing is more cost effective either. The only real drawback is that the process can involve soaking the rusted item in the solution for a week or more.

Wow. Thank goodness I just use mine for sharpening lawn mower blades.

Be careful when buying a Wilton. The last one I saw for sale, new, had "Made In China" stamped on the end of the box.

Hard to find a vise made in America these days, although they are out there if you look hard enough and are willing to pay more. From what I can tell there are only three manufacturers producing machinists vise's in the States:

Wilton bullets (e.g. 500s)
Yost 108 or 208
Milwaukee/Morgan (seem to make all their vises stateside)

Situation is even worse for our British friends since Irwin bought Record and moved production in search of cheap labor. Looks like there aren't any vises made in England anymore.

I've got a Reed 5 inch vise that I keep in a shed, Fluid Film with a black plastic trash bag to protect it, seems to work.

For some reason I can't understand I started collecting vises some years back, I have an old Parke, 2 Yosts, a Yankee drill press and several others out in the garage I may restore.

I'm in the same boat. Started with restoring a Parker coachmaker's vise, followed by a Wilton Tradesman, followed by a Columbian post vise, followed by a Reed machinist's vise... I don't have a good picture of post vise, but here are the others. All started as rusty and beat up messes.