The Framers Forum

Hello,

I bought a Stanley Marsh 400 mitre vice for picture frames. After a good clean it has two issues.

One vice runs perfectly smoothly on its threads, but the jaws are not parallel and seem to get further out of parallel as they close.



Does anyone one know the cause of this, and was the solution may be?

The second vice runs smoothly until it's open about 2" and then it gets tight until becomes almost impossible to open further.

Is anyone familiar with these issues? Any recommended solutions?

Any advice or tips appreciated.

Thanks

This might be a problem with muck and rust on the screw theads, but it may be another some other problem. Rust disolves quite well in white wine vinigar, don't bother with malt vinigar, the malt is added to tone down the acidity and is not as effective for disolving rust. Generally most muck on screw threads can be cleaned up well by dumping the vice into a container of Disel for a few days and brushing the threads clean. I also have a Stanley 400 mitre vice, it used to be very useful when repairing older frames, but I don't seem to get as much work repairing such frames since the town auction sale room closed some years ago!

Thanks for your suggestion.

I had given it a thorough clean, but I'll go back over it again paying special attention to the threads.

Submerging the whole thing in white vinigar should disolve any rust inside the internal threads where you can't get access to clean the threads. working the threads back a d forth after the white vinigar has had time to attack the rust should also be helpful. Thoughly cleaning away as much as possible of the white vinigar before soaking the vice in diselwill prevent any vinigar from restricting access for the disel to fully penetrate the threads. What the vinigar canot remove will be removed by the disel. The royal navy and the royal engineers clean old gummed up mechanisms by soaking in disel, it's a recognised and well proven technique.