Vices

[Wally Bear 0]

I am new to the whole tying thing and am getting ready to purchase my first set up. I have read everything I can about vices on here till I fell asleep last night and I am back for more.

 

I keep seeing people talk about soft jaws. Does anyone ever heat treat their jaws before they use them? It is not that big of a deal to harden metal. Is this service offered out there or can you buy hardened replacement jaws for particular vises? If not a torch and quench and 10 minutes is all it would take.

[Johny Utah 0]

Just buy a Regal and you wont have to worry about a thing

[Guest]

Jaws that are too hard are just as bad, probably worse, than jaws that are too soft. Be careful with that torch

[JohnP 0]

Just buy a Regal and you wont have to worry about a thing

 

 

I agree. I have a Regal Medallion and it is a great vise. Simple to operate, rock-solid hook hold ... what more could you ask?

[gaeronf 0]

Just buy a Regal and you wont have to worry about a thing

 

 

I agree. I have a Regal Medallion and it is a great vise. Simple to operate, rock-solid hook hold ... what more could you ask?

 

Dido. There is really nothing else to be said. There are no complaints from me towards regal.

[flytire 0]

any required heat treating of any manufactures vise jaws should have already been done at the factory. it shouldnt be the responsibility of the customer to heat treat or do anything else to the factory product except use it for its intended prupose.

[perchjerker 0]

As has been noted by others here before, the Regal vice has a propensity to 'spit out' hooks #20 and smaller. At least on the older models, when this happened, the jaws were invariably chipped by the force of the two faces slamming together. Mine are thusly chipped, but not to the extent that they warrant replacement. However, the very close friend who persuaded me to buy a Regal has had the jaws of his replaced at least twice; and maybe more, as he and I have not compared notes on them in close to 20 years. My extremely limited knowledge of metallurgy has led me to attribute the problem to the jaws having been over hardened, leaving them brittle (crystalized). I have wondered if this problem may be why they now have stainless steel jaws available for their vises.

 

The size of the standard jaws makes it awfully difficult to properly mount a very small hook and not run the risk of it being 'spit out'. This is a great vise for anything down to #18, in my opinion, and I have been using one for over 20 years now. I still use my Thompson "A" for anything smaller than a #18 because of this problem.

 

perchjerker

[morfrost 0]

I currently use a Danvise and I'm on my second set of jaws. I tie a lot of Atlantic Salmon flies and also quite a few trout flies.

 

Initially, I think what happened is that when tying salmon flies I was placing the hooks too near the tip of the jaw and this placed too much stress at the point of contact with the hook bend, pushing the jaw steel beyond its elastic limit and slightly deforming the tips. Permanently deforming metal changes its molecular structure and weakens the metal. This effect is cumulative and eventually the jaw tip deformation was clearly visible. With the cam action of the jaw closer mechanism and the thread adjustment in setting the jaw opening width I could locate Salmon hooks near the tip, and have them solidly gripped, but this was done at the expense of using smaller hooks.

 

Now I bury the hook bend of Salmon flies further back into the jaw ( where the tapered jaws are thicker ) and leave the tips of the jaws for the smaller hooks, and so far, after about a year, everything seems to be fine, and the jaws look like new.

 

Clearly,in hindsight, hook jaws are tapered to a reltively small point, and the jaw material gets thicker as we move away from the point. Thicker material and larger surface contact area with larger hook sizes allows unit stresses in the jaws to be kept at more moderate level and will minimize or eliminate material failures such as chipped jaws and deformed tips.

 

I think sometimes we don't pay enough attention to the smaller details, and end up blaming the manufacturers for equipment that doesn't stand up to our misuse, intentional or otherwise. Just ask my snowblower!

[primitivepete 0]

 

I've got a budget vise that I think I am going to harden the jaws on. You can always temper them after dunking them in oil or transmission fluid by heating them up slightly and letting them cool to remove some of the hardness. Again that's after they were heated to red hot and quenched the first time.