Vice spring repair?

[domgoneultimate]

Hello! I've got as nice large Parkinson's perfect vise and it is kind of working but I'm getting some movement on the quick release at certain points of the turning. So I started searching around and my best guess was the spring is a bit wonky here are some photos:
http://imgur.com/gallery/UQAKEHc
So hopefully you see those 3 photos. My idea is to heat it up to reform it (just flatten it as such/get the coils inline) with my map gas torch. But obviously it's not as easy as that and I've started looking into this but I'm unsure heat up clamp cool down fast with oil? Then heat up again and let it cool slowly... Would that be it or is there more? As you can tell I'm new to metal! Thanks!

[Bob225]

It should be sprung steel heating and rapid cooling may make it brittle or affect the steel

Clamp it in a vice for a week, it may spring back into shape

Edit. iirc record 'borrowed' the design the spring should be a common item unless you a restoring the vise to original

Edit 2. had another look at your pics it looks like the flat bar has a broken edge this would hold the jam nut and spring in place

A quick google https://smallworkshop.co.uk/2018/03/25/ ... fect-vise/

[Dave54]

Springs are tricky to work with.
As Bob says, a bit of judicious clamping might reset it. Some springs, especially old ones ,are surprisingly soft.

If you have to anneal it, and then re-harden it, then "temper" it. Be prepared for failure!

You need to heat it up as equally as possible, so you need to get some fire bricks to make a little "furnace"

First off, heat it to "cherry red" heat, and leave it to cool naturally. It'll cool slowly in the bricks, and should be soft when cool.

You should be able to re-form it once it's cool. It should have lost it's "spring".

If it hasn't, repeat the annealling.

Once it's ready, heat it up to "cherry red" again in the firebricks, take it out and "quench" it. You can use water, but oil is less brutal. A little less likely to cause failure.

The spring will be quite brittle at this stage, so don't "spring" it or generally knock it around.

The tricky bit to get right is "tempering" You need to polish an area on the spring with fine emery cloth or similar.

Then you need to heat the spring equally until the colour on the polished part turns blue. Then quench it immediately. Don't hang about wondering, when you see it go blue, quite a pale blue after a darker blue, take the heat away and quench it. That should have "tempered" it back a bit so it'll still be a spring, but won't be too brittle.

The best way to heat it is on a piece of steel plate, and heat the plate, although I've done the occasional one on a piece of firebrick with the blowtorch.

You can see the colours, more explanation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempering ... elf-temper

The bit under "Blacksmith"

That's how I've done a few small springs successfully. It's easy to get wrong though, easy to crack the steel hardening it, and easy to get the tempering wrong.

[Bob225]

I only have experience is with kick starter springs (the sort that can break your ankle) the sprung steel can act strange when heated what ends up in tears

As dave says above about heating, I doubt the mapp gas with a torch like a Rothenburger or a turbo torch will be able to heat it up quickly and evenly, you would need a rosebud type torch (propane and a small roofers torch will do the trick tho)

A record spring and jam nut is £20-30

[Dave54]

Yes it's a bit of a black art in general. It's relatively easy to harden and temper small tools, by quenching just the tip until the red heat goes, and then watching the colour back a bit from the tip before re-quenching when the colour is right, but springs are quite a bit trickier.
I've got a big butane torch that uses a separate bottle, and that does this sort of thing OK.
The only thing the OP can do is try it with the kit he has.
I haven't tried it, and this really is only an idea, but you might be able to use a charcoal barbecue for heating for the tempering. You could hold the spring over the heat and watch it that way.

[Job and Knock]

I'm lucky enough to have a fairly local spring maker who seems to happy enough to make-up one off pieces. He's done me a few springs over the years, bending coil springs from scratch around mandrels to start off. When I watched him harden and temper the last one (about 10 years back) he heated-up the spring to the appropriate colour in what looked like a cross between a blacksmiths forge and an industrial oven (there were 6 or 8 large gas burners suspended over the bed). Oil quenching was done by lobbing the item into a 45 gallon drum and quickly pulling a sheet of metal over the top before the oil caught alight. Crude, but effective. Same guy also annealed, re-hardened and re-tempered some oil coil springs off a car for me at the same time

[Dave54]

I'm lucky enough to have a fairly local spring maker who seems to happy enough to make-up one off pieces. He's done me a few springs over the years, bending coil springs from scratch around mandrels to start off. When I watched him harden and temper the last one (about 10 years back) he heated-up the spring to the appropriate colour in what looked like a cross between a blacksmiths forge and an industrial oven (there were 6 or 8 large gas burners suspended over the bed). Oil quenching was done by lobbing the item into a 45 gallon drum and quickly pulling a sheet of metal over the top before the oil caught alight. Crude, but effective. Same guy also annealed, re-hardened and re-tempered some oil coil springs off a car for me at the same time

That's the thing about it. An expert makes it look easy; they have the kit and the experience to do it properly, but it can go wrong even for them occasionally.
Doing it as a "one off" isn't impossible, but it's still more likely to go wrong.
I'm certainly no sort of expert, although we were taught simple smithing as part of our apprenticeship. Small tools are relatively easy to do with just a blowlamp or similar using the method I said about earlier. I've made cold chisels, a couple of spade type wood drills, a 1.5mm wood chisel out of old saw blade, various scratch awls and scribers, and other bits and pieces over the years. I've had a cold chisel fail after the tip cracked off that I can remember. No real reason I could see, it just happens sometimes.

[domgoneultimate]

Hello and thanks for the quick responses... When you say jam nut is that this: IRWIN T114L Record HD Vise Spare Parts (Half-Nut, Guide and Screws) https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B019C3FBI6/ ... aEbAPJ0QX3 the silvery guide for part that fits on the bigger half nut as such? I'm not used to the terms. Not seen anything like that on my model but definitely on similar models... I will start by clamping it for a while... Already did a day or so of that but not a week. And your saying the flat quick release bar has the broken edge? I didn't notice that either :S . Starting to wish I stuck with a record for my first large vice :/ .



And yes heating and springs have worried me I can already see the problems. My dad does have a kiln and a mini raku oven in a metal bin :p so I may go that route later. Anyway your advice has cleared this option up. Thanks!

[Bob225]

Sorry i will clarify that by jam nut I meant the serrated/castellated nut that sits in the middle of the spring what the end of the bar sits in/on

http://tinyshopww.blogspot.com/2016/08/ ... art-2.html as seen here

[Chippo1]

Ooo springs , spring steel , and the art of heat treatment , very much a black art.

Often if u use water to quench it will crack, water can be to much of a shock to the structure. Yard gone by whale oil was used and some heat treatments used sand. I believe there are now also special oils and suck like for treatment , however the old colours for temperature still stand albeit in production much more accurate temperature control is used.

And don’t forget Mercedes Benz and several other European manufacurers suffered from poor coil spring design and manufacture with coil springs breaking and popping out. I actually found a piece in the kerb side a few weeks ago.

Try to modify the shape of an exisitng spring with out further heat treatment will require the material to be taken beyond the yield point as defined by Young’s Modulas of elasticity .

[domgoneultimate]

Sorry i will clarify that by jam nut I meant the serrated/castellated nut that sits in the middle of the spring what the end of the bar sits in/on

http://tinyshopww.blogspot.com/2016/08/ ... art-2.html as seen here

Ah ok well it's not too bad when the spring isn't pushing it out of place I thought but I'll keep an eye on it. Here is a better angle : https://imgur.com/gallery/jUHF1wF

[Bob225]

If the edge of the bar was there it would hold the nut square in turn the spring would sit square

[Job and Knock]

And your saying the flat quick release bar has the broken edge? I didn't notice that either :S . Starting to wish I stuck with a record for my first large vice :/ .

I'd have said that either a Record or a Paramo would have been a better first choice. Record are still in production although all offshore with the vices made in India these days) whilst Paramo disappeared in 2003, but either way a better bet than the other three major post-war British woodworking vice makers: Rededa from Sheffield (closed mid to late 1960s), Woden (bought out by Record c.1964) or Parkinson's (bought out by an engineering firm in 1954 and closed down in the 1960s AFAIK), The original Parkinson's Perfect design was completely different to the Record models whilst the later ones aped the Record design (as, incidentally, did models from Rededa, Woden, Paramo, Marples, etc) and whilst they are similar I'd hazard a guess that a Record spring won't fit and that finding a small spring maker would be they way to go.

[domgoneultimate]

Great thanks a lot I didn't realise the bar wasn't meant to be like that...I may try turning it around then and use the other end or side possibly if possible or something like that. Anyway first to the other jobs :) .

[Bob225]

The one of the only spring makers that i have used, off the top of my head is in Birmingham iirc it was Tested Spring Co