I threw together a bit of a bench in my junk shed and had a couple of vises laying around that landed on top. They both had sorry looking jaw plates and I figured they were nice enough to warrant replacements.
I looked up Kevin Scotts's Wilton Parts website and both sizes I needed were in stock, so I hit the order button. 3 days later these beauties showed up. I'm not sure if his company has sold locally or if he's outsourced the jaw production, but these were made by a Colorado machine shop not far from where he was running his home business. Either way, they looked like grade A parts to me.
The green 450 had less teeth than a 15 year old mutt. Turns out the plates in it were made from cold rolled bar and not original. A file cut right into them (not hard).
The other vise was an early C1 Wilton. Probably made in 1957 or 58 (5 yr warranty date of 1963)
It had seen use in a welding dept somewhere and the plates were scared and flipped over once. The seats were in perfect condition thankfully.
The lumpy spots were just paint that scraped right off. It was some crappy like tempera paint. Both vises are due for cosmetic overhaul.
Now the next project is to make copper caps to cover these nasty teeth up for clamping down on this I don't want to mutilate.
