Wilton vs Columbian Bench Vises TIPS 554 tubalcain

howdy is tubal-cain which do you like better Wilton or Columbian vices I'll be right back to tell you what I think you know I'm a man with many vices and the double entendre isn't ended but I have long favored Colombian vices maybe because my dad had one I'm not really sure but I do think they're a better vice just a personal preference and opinion I know but let's explore the differences of the two different brands these are both three inch wide jaws that's how we measure the size of a vise they both weigh 19 pounds isn't that unusual this one is on a swivel base this one is not it probably was available with a swivel base I'm not sure and I have another Columbian vise and I have another weld advice for that matter I've owned many other Wilton vices in the past Wilton vices are often called bullet vices for obvious reasons and they have achieved near cult status in the United States they certainly are the most prolific producers of vices and they have been since 1941 so valued that I've seen men get into virtual fistfights over them at auctions as I said Wilton vices have been around since 1941 Columbian vices a little bit earlier 1929 but I believe that the management that Wilton also loved them so much that in fact they bought out the company in the 1990s so now if you want to buy either a Wilton or Columbian you can get them from the same manufacturer and it's in short Park Illinois Wilton has a great website so check that out and they have an extensive selection of products including c-clamps and other vices such as milling machine vices and a few tools there that you might be surprised that they make or offer so check that out most vise manufacturers including Colombian used a ram that was either square or rectangular whereas Wilton was a leader or probably the originator or maybe the only manufacturer of vices with a on RAM which was no doubt much cheaper and easier to manufacture because it could all be done on lathes or milling machines and it's easy to make round holes and around RAM is difficult to do this although they're both three-inch laces let's compare some of the other dimensions for instance on the columbian the distance from the top of the jaw down to here is 3 inches where is big difference here you've only got about two of the quarter inches that's a big advantage if you like a low-profile vice wilton is your baby look that's only a little bit well five and a half inches whereas this one is six and a half inches and you can knock off even another inch on that if you take off the swivel base both vices sport handles that are 7 inches long but the columbian is 1/2 diameter and this is a little less at 433 all vices have a little pounding area on the back we generally call it the anvil the Wilton is pretty small at one and a half by one and three-quarters the Wilton a lot larger one or 5/8 by two and a half but one thing you have to watch for in a big shop where people do a lot of hammering is that some of them them will hammer back here that is not an anvil that is not meant to be struck I have seen several that are split in their advertising literature Wilton makes a big deal over the fact that they have four mounting holes whereas most other vices including Columbian only have three these however are larger in diameter a full half inch these more like three-eighths however if you remove the swivel base you're down to just 2 notice that on this vise they use an acorn not some swivel vices use a handle I prefer this because the hand are always in the way and very seldom do I ever swivel a vice I do like these diamond pattern jaws they give a nice grip but what I don't like about the Colombian that these jaws are pinned into place and it's very hard to even see the pins perhaps you can see one of them right here I actually have never removed any but you would have to drive them out I assume to replace the vise jaws but looking at it from the side you can see that they are very well made and that they they reach into the body of the vise so that is good construction now looking at the Wilton and the ones I had at school had Diamond jaws but I didn't like some of them they were so sharp when they were new that we had to put them on the surface grinder take a little bit of that off because the kids would damage their work because they would tighten it up too much I love the way that Wilton fastens them with screws are very easy to get out but looking at it from the side you can see they are not keyed into the vise themselves now Wilton makes a wide variety of vise jaws caps now this is the wrong size but they make them an aluminum and I think nylon another various metal and various sizes most of them magnetic both brands open to about the same distance which is four and a half inches and maybe this is a little less well it's hard to decide just how far out you can bring these before it either falls out or lacks strength or could be damaged but I would say they're about the same maybe I just didn't move this one out far enough vices are very often abused because desperate men use them in desperate times they pound on them they beat on them they eat them they weld them and they press things with them and one problem I had a school with two different Wilton vices and they were larger ones on this perhaps four inch I don't remember exactly but somehow or another the kids put a large piece of work in here and cranked their down as tight as you can get and bent this beam such that the Vice could not be used now it wasn't a real Big Bend but it would jam and when you laid a straightedge on it you could see that it was bent I got the Wilton representative to the school one time showed it to him and he didn't seem to care now that's 45 years ago are you aware that Wilton made of ice it was called the power screw of ice it was in fact a hydraulic vise so there was a hydraulic mechanism in there and there were two of them at the high school when I came and they were quite new I think it was the previous teacher probably in the previous year that had bought them but I didn't like them at all because the kids could not seem to understand how to use them and because of that and I think they failed shortly anyway they came with a very small handle and since you couldn't tighten them up properly unless you used the hydraulic mechanism correctly they would beat on him or whatever and the vise handles puny puny little handles were bent so after two or three years of suffering with those I put them into the dumpster and bought new ones I was unable to find any information in their old catalogues about the Power screw so I'm going to show you pictures of the patent drawings for that and the patent number on there in case you want to check that out this is page one of the patent drawing for the Wilton power screw note the number in the upper right hand corner this is page two of the Power screw now I will rotate the page in the horizontal position for a better view you can see that it's a rather complex mechanism probably cost a lot to build here's a catalog picture of the Wilton power screw vise the end of the screw was clearly marked power screw now Wilton vices are all marked as to when they were manufactured all of the vices that were made during the Second World War because they started in 1941 as I understand it went to the military and here's the date on this much older than I would have thought September 1945 the war was over the Wilton vise has a key so it's very accurately made there's very little wobble in the vise jaw and another great feature of these vices that the end of the screw here has a cap on it that prevents dirt grit grime grease and chips from getting in there where the Columbia is packed full of debris I thought I'd check to play with a dial indicator so the indicator point is up against the draw this is the wellton now and there is about 30 30 thousandths which is 1/32 of an inch and that I would say is very well expected tolerance that's not bad at all let's see what the Columbian does although the Columbian seam is very sloppy in fact it's just about exactly the same 30,000 s as the Wilton so they both have a very tight tolerance you know you got to expect this may I digress just a little bit now these videos are too boring let me know and I'll stop making this kind but I think every one of the free world knows that we'll have made a wide variety of work positioners some of them equipped with laces a lot of these were used in the aerospace or electronic industry but that's not what I really to talk about I think that Wilton c-clamps are the best c-clamps ever devised by man now I'm not saying that the frame of the screw was a whole lot different than an Armstrong or Williams or one of the other premium names because they're forged and you can see that's the month that's a three inch Wilton but what is so great about them is this little perma pad which absolutely does not come off and in fact is what high school teachers would call student proof I think it was patented and there's a little ring in there and I don't care how you beat on it you're not gonna knock it off of there and you can buy replacements well why would you need a replacement it won't come off yes you might have a Jorgensen or some other clamp that you've lost the swivels on you look at anybody's rectus it clamps and you're going to see a bunch of them without a swivel if you need to replace them get the perma pad I'll show you a little picture of that out of the catalog but it's an extremely bad picture feel free to pause your video to read that about the perma pad and they came in a variety of sizes as replacements so this is a brilliant design because this can be turned on a lathe very accurately and relatively easy easily and this can be bored and then of course it's broke now the nut and there is a very long nut and it's perfectly in alignment with the Acme screw which it is not in most other vices and I'll show you in a minute and there of course is the key seat and the key that prevents it from rotating perfectly clean in there except for dirty grease no chips and there is a cutaway showing the straight line pole a lifetime system and that's what they mean by a straight line Paul push have you ever been driving down the highway and you see a service truck that is a plumber or something of that nature or they have a big ol Wilton vise mounted onto the bench and you think to yourself I sure would like to have that vise but I think they weld the nuts so you can't get them off or they'd be stolen at a motel you often see them at motels and I don't know if you're aware but they do make a weatherproof model that can be mounted on a truck and of course it's not gonna get ruined with our Illinois salt now when you're disassembled of ice that has the rectangular type of slide bar if someone has been beating out here and mushrooms that you're going to have to file that address in order to in order to get it apart but you can visualize this isn't particularly hard to machine but to get that tolerance would be kind of tough and it's machined on all four sides and inside you can see the screw so to me that would cost more to do I may be wrong and it's certainly difficult to make a rectangular hole like that of course it would be cast in there and you can see that it is not square all the way through so they only had the machine the front and the back and of course the bottom there are the nut and you can see that this is not a straight line pull design like the whoop the Wilton and there has to be a little bit of play in there for it to align so that's probably designed in there and that nut is not as long as the one in the Wilton however I've never really had problems with these and every one had a serial number now this is my everyday vise that you've seen in countless videos it's a four-inch Columbian I'm gonna take that off the bench and compare it to another Wilton that I have a slightly larger Wilton now meet the big boys this vise came off of my workbench out in the garage garage number one this one again right off of the corner right here now of course this stuff's all used I never could afford one of these brand-new but Bubba long time ago bent this handle as you can see some of the Wilton vices had a nice rubber washer here that would prevent a blood blister because if you have small children fiddling around the shop or even freshmen here's what the here's what the kids would do while you're giving a demonstration and I you know I this is funny try not to take this as if I am criticizing the kids but you got kids sitting here on a bench we got eight vices and they're all doing this during the demonstration now that would annoy even you but if that rubber washer is on there prevents most of that and Wilton also made a beautiful line of woodworking vices and we had those in the woodshop at the high school although this vise looks a lot bigger than this one and by the way this weighs 48 pounds with the swivel base and the Colombian weight is thirty-six pounds but this is a three and a half inch this is a four inch even though they look to be about the same size but the beauty of this one is it has the pipe jaws and you've seen me use this in a video where I did some faith ready now the tables are turned here we have four and a quarter inch depth and on the columbian three and three quarters so this is deeper and the tables continue to be turned I'm not going to measure it but the anvil area on this vise is considerably larger than the one on the Colombian you can see where people have beat on this one back here and apparently even some saw marks Bubba is present in every shop you have Bubba in your shop I like to mount a vise on the corner of a bench rather than in the middle but that might be a personal preference also but another thing that I want to tell you here is that I see that most vices are mounted incorrectly so if the lace is mounted like this and you want to put a long piece of round stock in there perhaps to thread it it's gonna strike the table a vise should be mounted off board like this so that the work no matter how long will clear the table owned many many more bench vices in my life than what you see here today and I do have two others out in the other garage I don't think I'm gonna show you but I got rid of most of them you know I had so many it doesn't make any sense you saw my video on how many drill press vices I have no is that crazy but often at an auction I would buy a vise and it would be mounted on a bench and I could not get it off sometimes the you needed wrenches of all different sizes or it was just buggered up you couldn't get it off so I usually carried either a hacksaw or a wood cutting saw or I would buy one for 50 Cent's right there or borrowing and I would saw that entire corner off of the people thought I was nuts off over the bench because I had bought the bench as well they often sold it sold it as a unit so that was my way of getting it off and getting it off fast crazy as it sounds well as I wrap up this video I'm gonna do one other thing that I usually don't do and that is to clean these up a bit mask them off and give them one of my superficial paint jobs here with the rust-oleum gray dark gray gloss and see how they look in fact this little Welton belongs to my grandson Jordan I gave it to him when he was 10 years old you well the Wilton is all cleaned up masked and ready to paint upon that are cleaning up the screw we're like a little more to go there is no perceivable where I wish I could say the same thing for my body because this thing's only two years younger than me now I want to emphasize this is not a restoration this is just an oral side special with the difference that I mask mine let's compare the two screws of the vices while I'm at it and I have them open here this is the Wilton notice it's about an inch and a half shorter they're both 5/8 diameter the Wilton is much finer as six threads per inch the colombia colombian is four threads per inch and they are held into the vise in a different manner Wilton uses this little I don't know what we call it yoke and Colombian uses a collar and then the collar slides up here the Vice is in between here and it uses a little set screw like that to hold this in place and by the way both of these threads are square threads not Acme I might also point out that on the Colombian we have a washer here with some ears on it and one side has a thrust washer that is it looks like it's brass possibly oil light but it's pretty badly warm I'll pay any car for 2995 well it's a day later and the paint is dry and I'm ready to do the unmasking okay I think the laces are looking great and their new coat of gray paint the only wear that I see on the Colombian Vice that is troublesome is right here I'm sure that many of you were troubled by the fact that I did not mask off the anvil area on either vice and I did that on purpose and tend to dress it up just a little bit with the cutter on the Bridgeport you and of course the same thing goes for the welcome and now to reassemble the Wilton and I like that they went the extra mile with the dowel pen that goes into the center of the jaws you you you [Music] you and there we are - beautiful vices not restored but refreshed and brought back to a great utility which is your favorite Wilton or Colombian and of course our many other brands put it in the comments what your favorite brand is some of them are no longer available but our beautiful old vices I particularly liked that big Charles Parker I've got out in the garage so what will it be a Wilton available of course in many different sizes american-made and I believe they're still made in America I hope they're or Colombian I hope you enjoyed the video you

Channel: mrpete222

Views: 36,662

Rating: 4.9660115 out of 5

Keywords: love a parker vise, repair a wilton vise, fix a columbian vise

Id: sk4UFr7XYIc

Length: 27min 48sec (1668 seconds)

Published: Sat May 25 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/DeepSkull]

Mr Pete had this in a recent video. Really neat idea. Here’s the link to the google patent in the video. https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/61/c9/1d/9280d96e9d763c/US3348836.pdf

I’d love to have one to restore but cursory searches don’t bring them up, let alone one in restorable condition for sale. Anyone have any ideas on finding one?

Edit: realized the vjo doesn’t start at the time stamp like I intended. Skip to 7:42 to get to the hydraulic vise.