In this video i'm restoring a very rusty and stuck antique watchmaker vise.

Sometimes I spend a lot of time just scrolling through the antique section of eBay without seeing something not even close to be interesting. It was exactly this case a few weeks ago, but then all of a sudden this little watchmaker vise appeared. I knew right away that I want it. I really like the small size of it with all the details and the old school design, so I bought it for $20.
It had really a lot of rust and I was sceptical at the beginning if I could get rid of all the pitting and put a nice mirror polish on it, because it is very thin at two spots. It turned out to not be a problem and it worked very well. The jaws themself looked still very good after removing the rust, I've only pu a little bluing liquid on them and that was it. The bolt and the wing nut on the other hand was a big issue on this project. The thread had way too much play, the thread in the nut was not straight and it was a non standart thread size. That means I had no tools to cut this exact thread. So I need to make at least a new bolt and put a same size metric standart thread on it. With this new thread the nut doesn't fit anymore on the new bolt. If I want to repair the wing nut, I'd have to close the old thread with welding and cut in the same metric thread as on the bolt. I talked to a professional welder to close this thread, but he told me that the diameter of the hole was too small compared to it's lenght to be able to close it, or it could be that he melts the whole nut while trying to weld it. For that reason I decided to make a new one. Even though it is just a simple wing nut, this part was one of the most complicated parts I've done for this channel so far, but it turned out perfectly. I also had to replace the wooden handle because it had some cracks and the holes have become too big.
At the end it turned out very great in my opinion. With the polished steel, the polished brass and the stained wood it has a very classy look and I really like it.

I hope you like my work and the video.

Huge thank you to all of my Patreon and PayPal supporters and specially to:

Noelle Sophy
Armands Satrovskis
Afreeflyingsoul
Bryn Gilbertson
Adel AlSaffar
Alan Hanson
Amanda Taylor, Esq
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Andrew Phillips
audi4444player
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Dan Williams
Gregory
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Jonas Richartz
LVE
Mellissa Marcus
Nick Cannon
Paul Ambry
Paul Mampilly
Shawn Daniels
Trevor Kam
TRG Restoration
Vince Valenti
Zachary Grimes


Timestamps:

00:00 preview
00:42 disassembling
01:52 showing all the parts
02:07 cleaning the parts with the parts washer
02:32 removing the rust
03:05 removing the bolt
03:29 restoring the main part
04:55 bluing the jaws of the main part
05:16 polish the inside with selfmade tool
05:41 explaining the issue with nut and bolt
06:16 making a new bolt on the lathe and milling machine
07:45 making a new wing nut on the lathe and milling machine
10:58 restoring the small washer
11:22 making a new wooden handle
12:37 stain the wooden handle
12:47 apply linseed oil on the wooden handle
13:02 restore the brass ring
13:30 restore the eye screw
14:05 showing all the parts before reassembling
14:19 reassembling
15:16 showing the finished restoration
16:08 final test


Time and costs of this restoration:

I was working on this project for 1 week
$20 watchmaker vise
$2 ash wood for the handle


My camera:
Panasonic HC-V180


If you have any questions about the process, machines i'm using or other stuff, just ask me in the comments. I read them all and i try to reply as soon as possible.

Sorry for my bad english, it's not my language. I try my best to improve my technical english.

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Thank you for watching :-)

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