ESTATE SALE VISE FIND

[Ken W.]

I found this neat old vise at an estate sale today.There is something stamped on this in two spots , but I can't make them out.I'll have to take it out to the garage to clean it better.I only wiped it down with a paper towel and Kroil.There is a spring wound around a rivet  that  has been bent.I've never seen this style before in this small of a size.

    The jaw width is 1 9/16" , It opens up to just over 2" , 4 1/2" tall. It's stamped J.T. Ryon on the outer jaw below the screw as well as the side of the inner jaw edge. Both jaws have crosshatch pattern on them. The vise in general is in pretty good shape and kinda tight.

[turnnut]

never seen one like that, nice find.   I like the bottom clamp plate.

[Branson]

Mine has had the handle replaced, but I have one of these, too.  The jaws on mine are identical.  I wonder what's with the extended back jaw on these.

[Ken W.]

I think that would be to pound on something small.

[scottg]

You would go 7 lifetimes of yard and estate sales here on the worst coast,
 before you found something like this.
 I have been offered exactly 2 ordinary post vises in 40 years. Ordinary 4" post vises you can't give away back east, in 40 years.
    yours Scott
   

[Ken W.]

Your making it sound really special. 

  I just updated my first thread with more info.

[oldtools]

Looks like it clamps on to a round pipe? or would really dig into wood when mounted..

[Ken W.]

This would really dig into the wood when mounted.

[Branson]

Looks like it clamps on to a round pipe? or would really dig into wood when mounted..

It's *supposed* to really dig into the wood of a bench top to make them perfectly stable in use.  These have been made at least as early as the 1700s, and are called "table vises."  Teeth in both pieces that clamp onto the table or bench, top and bottom. 

[Ken W.]

How would you go about dating this vise ?

[Branson]

How would you go about dating this vise ?

I'm really not sure.  I'll want to check mine more carefully to see if I find the Ryon name on mine.  The extension of the back jaw is quite unusual and argues a special use -- it seems as though it's intended to work like a brake, so perhaps an application in tin smithing.  I'll check with a friend who is
very familiar with 18th and 19th Century tin smithing for a start.  These, yours and mine,  clearly aren't hand smithed, but neither are they castings,
so I suspect strongly that they date to the mid 1800s, almost certainly not later than 1880 or so.  The Ordnance Department was issuing table vises of
the more common sort (look just like mini leg vises) by the 1840s -- mass produced with interchangeable parts.