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Wesson Universal Milling Vise

Joe Michaels

Diamond
Joined
Apr 3, 2004
Location
Shandaken, NY, USA
I believe a person can never have enough good tooling, and every so often, I have to confirm my belief. I'd been wanting a universal milling (or grinding) vise for some few years. I could not get myself into a mindset to buy one of the new imported vises that flood eBay. Every so often, a job comes along where a universal milling vise would have been handy. I'd machine some sort of angle block or angled fixture and get by with that. I had seen the Wesson Universal vises from time to time on eBay. Most were beat up and the pricing seemed quite high for vises that beat up (or chewed up by milling cutters or grinding wheels). Browsing eBay recently, I saw a Wesson Universal Milling Vise in what appeared to be very good condition. The seller represented it as being 'dirty' and having some scratches that they attributed more to storage and handling than use. I got the vise for about $ 215.00 by making that as an offer. Shipping was reasonable (Fedex). The seller did a very good job of packing the vise, and I was pleasantly surprised to find the seller, if anything, understated the good condition of the vise. Mostly, it was a case of varnished oil. If the vise was ever used, it was slight, and there is not a stray mark or ding on it. The vise base has one faint imprint from a flanged nut or washer which had bolted it to some previous owner/user's machine table.


I cleaned up the vise and am really impressed with the fit of the parts. Most of the vise parts appear to have been finished by precision grinding. The vise has a jaw width of 4 inches, and a relatively shallow jaw depth. No manufacturer's address nor model number appear on the vise, just the patent and serial numbers and Wesson's name.
To put the cherry on this sundae, the vise base has got keys on it that are a good fit in the tee slots on my Bridgeport. All that the vise lacks is a handle, but I plan to make one in the near future.

The vise appears to have been built by fitting the parts, as there is a small number (74) stamped inconspicuously on some of the mating parts. With a good cleaning and some oil, the vise moves smoothly, with no perceptible slop in any of the angular adjustments. The vise can be adjusted for incline to the horizontal, and has two swivels about the vertical axis, one being between the mounting (base) and the rest of the vise, and the second between the vise and the vertical angle swivel. Interesting that this vise has three possible angles it could be set to. I would imagine this vise, being small and having those three angular adjustments, was the kind of thing found in a toolroom or R & D shop. As such it would not see the kind of use or abuse many old milling vises show.

I am quite pleased with the Wesson vise, and feel I got a good deal on eBay. I am curious as to what the history of Wesson was. I know the Wesson name is still alive in the form of a manufacturer of indexable cutting tools. There is no address for Wesson on the vise, and I suspect the current incarnation of Wesson has relocated from their original plant.
I'd appreciate any information as to age and where Wesson was located when this vise was made.
 
A US patent number will lead you to the patent information, including the application date, inventor name and city and possibly a company name and city.

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VR/Wesson claims to be 75 years old (founded 1947) and Wesson Tool merged with VR in 1961. I see no indication that VR/Wesson is connected to the Wesson Co. of Detroit or Ferndale, MI that was active from at least 1937 to 1961.

Larry
 
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I believe I also have one shown in the lower right of the photo. Got it several years ago and used it for milling/grinding small mold/die details. Wish they had made a larger, more robust model as a companion sort of set.
 

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Joe,

Please post details on the size of the handles you need. You can scale the lengths off the patent drawing in Larry's great post #2. Are the business end(s) of the handle(s) hexagonal or square, male or female, and what size?

( If they're square, a lathe chuck key or a socket ratchet might fit. )

Decades ago, an experienced collector advised me to purchase any likely-looking handles if the price was right. This seemed like a common sense strategy; it has served me well. I've bought handle-less vises etc. and found I had a matching handle in that "box on a high shelf".

John Ruth
 
Thank you to everyone who has responded to my post about my Wesson vise. It is a very well designed and built piece of tooling, and with a patent date of 1940, could well be somewhere in that same age/date range. The vise, given its design and how it was finished, looks to have been built in small numbers.

John Ruth: Thanks for the suggestions as to the handle. The shank of the vise screw is 1/2" square. I happen to have a 1/2" square broach. I will make a handle by broaching a piece of round steel stock (axle or tie rod steel). Turn a shoulder on the outer diameter of the broached hub. Turn a nice handle per the patent drawing on another chunk of steel, forging the opposite end out flat in cross section. Bore that portion to take the shouldered portion of the broached hub. Heat & bend the handle so it is parallel to the vise screw. TIG weld the broached hub into the handle. This approximates the design of a "Balcrank' vise handle.

I've got some MG 600 TIG rod. One of those 'miracle' welding alloys that can weld tool steels and hardened steels. Pricey, but it does work. I've used it VERY sparingly over the past few years. I got that rod to weld a new spline into the hardened ring gear on BMW 'Airhead' motorcycle final drives. Tens of thousands of miles later, the welds are holding just fine. The MG 600 rod is made by MG Messer. It was demonstrated to us by a salesman when I worked at the powerplant. Probably has a high percentage of nickel and chromium in it as it can weld high carbon tool steels, chrome-moly steels, and seemingly any other types of steels. Has some ridiculously high tensile and yield strengths, and as-welded is too hard to be machined. A little 'walking the cup' when using my TIG torch and I can blend the welds on the vise handle to resemble forged fillets. About the only glaring thing is the color difference: MG 600 is silvery, while carbon steel is more of a gray color. No mistaking or hiding a weld run with it, even if ground and blended in. Run an air needle scaler over the shop made handle and it looks about like the finish on a "Balcrank" vise handle.

Making a handle for a vise such as my Wesson vise is more work than anyone in their right mind would do, but it's the kind of little job I enjoy. A few years back, I was at a used tool/junk dealer's place picking up a Lincoln engine driven welder for our railroad. The guy had a pile of odds and ends of machine parts, and I recognized a milling attachment for a Southbend 9" lathe. The guy gave it to me. It needed a handle. I made a handle using welded fabrication and cleaned it up to blend the welds. Sold that milling attachment for a reasonable price to someone who was quite happy to get it. I explained it was coming with a 'shop made' handle. The buyer was quite happy and wrote something to the effect he would not have known I had furnished a shop made handle.

Part of owning and working with old machinery is being able to reverse-engineer and make what isn't there, or is needed for a particular job. I suppose I take this to some other (I won't say 'higher') level by using 'found materials' such as auto or truck axles, tie rods, and transmission shafts.

The Wesson vise will see use for machining smaller parts, so is the right size for jobs I've got coming up in my shop. From the stubborn and hard to remove varnished oil (I suppose the antique people would call it 'patina'), I suspect this Wesson vise sat a LONG time un-used on a shelf in some machine shop. Mineral spirits, Hoppes Number 9 gun cleaning solvent, Marvel Mystery Oil, and a good deal of elbow grease removed most of the varnished old oil. I did not have any automotive brake parts cleaner, so went with what was at hand. The fact there were little to no scratches and no damage or signs of use on the vise has me thinking that I may have been dealing with the remains of preservative coating from when the vise was shipped as new many years ago.
 
Joe,

Sounds like one of those "fiddle projects" which are deeply satisfying even though they don't make hardheaded economic sense!

Why do "we" do these things?' Because the knowledge, skills, and intelligence needed to perform them is a deep part of our identities! And, we know when we are "working" and we know when we're "playing" !

To remove a dried oil coating, I would have tried gasoline first, working outdoors with suitable gloves, of course. Particularly if I thought some of the coating was Cosmolene, or the like.

( I learned about using gasoline to remove Cosmolene from someone on this forum ! )

John Ruth
 
Fairmont, Armstrong, Williams, Balcrank and probably others made very generic forged cranks in different standard sizes, all ready for a vise maker to package with the vise. The Hardinge TM or UM 4" jaw milling vise came with a 1/2" square hole forged crank with no maker name. It is rather short in the arm so that it can rotate 360 degrees when the vise screw is above the mill table. Drop forging is a complex process with expensive equipment, not expected to be part of the facilities of a company like Hardinge, or especially a small tool maker like Wesson. Someone may have a Wesson vise with the original crank, but meanwhile I am betting it was one of the standard purchased forged ones. They do turn up on eBay occasionally and like John Ruth, I pick them up when I can, just in case.

Larry
 
It is very common for patent applications to represent a form of the invention that does not make it into production. I suspect the prototype of the Wesson vise probably looked like the drawing and matched the patent specifications. On lines 13 to 16, left column of page 2 of the patent (and the drawing), it is said/shown that the crank has a (male) polyhedral end that fits a matching socket in the jaw screw and in the various angle adjusting fasteners. Joe indicated that his jaw clamping screw has a male 1/2" square end.

There is a beat-up Wesson vise on eBay at present that has a common style forged crank with it that looks like it may have a 1/2" square hole. No way to know if it is original.

Larry
 
Larry:

You are correct about the patent drawing vs the actual design used on the production run of the Wesson vises. Wesson used socket-head (internal hex) screws to clamp the vise in different positions. In the patent drawing, they apparently put a male hex on the end of the crank handle, so that the crank handle could be used to clamp/unclamp the angular adjustments on the vise.

I did take a look at the Wesson vise currently on eBay. It is a mess, with the seller describing a hard-used vise with some brazed repair. I believe 279 dollars is the asking price (no 'or best offer'). My Wesson vise is as close to pristine as it gets, and for 216 dollars, was a good buy. The small Wesson vise is really not made for heavy work, but the one in the current eBay listing looks like someone really 'rode it hard and put it up wet'.

Wesson made the vises before the CNC era. Probably relied on some adaptations to precision grinding machines to finish-grind the curved surfaces which allow the vise to swivel thru vertical angles. The base casting looks to have been finished on a rotary surface grinder, or a surface grinder with a vertical spindle. Other than a few rough as-cast surfaces, the majority of surfaces on the vise are finished by precision grinding. In the pre-CNC era, Wesson had to rely on the 'grinder hands' (machinists who spend their careers running precision grinders and have s sixth sense for shaving off a tenth or less). The fact there are small matching numbers on my vise (which have no relevance to the serial number) would indicate the parts of each vise might have been 'fitted' (ground to fit) . I doubt Wesson ever made these universal vises in any kind of large numbers, since the parts were likely ground to fit to insure close sliding fits on the working parts of the vise. Once I got the varnished oil cleaned off, I was amazed at how smoothly yet how close and tight the sliding surfaces work on the vise. I know I will find use for this vise and will enjoy using it instead of relying on shop-made fixturing to machine certain angled surfaces on jobs. Nothing requiring a sine bar and Jo Blocks, and this vise will be handy for what I do.
 
There is a semi-rare compound table "Angle Computer" capable in same manner but full rotation, but near impossible to handle without mechanical assist. But it's a inspection device with a matrix of large tapped holes, not ideal machining features, OK for grinding and scribing. My all-angle vise, don't know name (maybe News-Yuasa) has seen more use as described above, on surface plate, than milling possibly in it's entire life.
Best test of a compound fixture? Rigidity in a radial drill.
Dang sure why tilting vise blocks have so much mass.
 
I believe a person can never have enough good tooling, and every so often, I have to confirm my belief. I'd been wanting a universal milling (or grinding) vise for some few years. I could not get myself into a mindset to buy one of the new imported vises that flood eBay. Every so often, a job comes along where a universal milling vise would have been handy. I'd machine some sort of angle block or angled fixture and get by with that. I had seen the Wesson Universal vises from time to time on eBay. Most were beat up and the pricing seemed quite high for vises that beat up (or chewed up by milling cutters or grinding wheels). Browsing eBay recently, I saw a Wesson Universal Milling Vise in what appeared to be very good condition. The seller represented it as being 'dirty' and having some scratches that they attributed more to storage and handling than use. I got the vise for about $ 215.00 by making that as an offer. Shipping was reasonable (Fedex). The seller did a very good job of packing the vise, and I was pleasantly surprised to find the seller, if anything, understated the good condition of the vise. Mostly, it was a case of varnished oil. If the vise was ever used, it was slight, and there is not a stray mark or ding on it. The vise base has one faint imprint from a flanged nut or washer which had bolted it to some previous owner/user's machine table.


I cleaned up the vise and am really impressed with the fit of the parts. Most of the vise parts appear to have been finished by precision grinding. The vise has a jaw width of 4 inches, and a relatively shallow jaw depth. No manufacturer's address nor model number appear on the vise, just the patent and serial numbers and Wesson's name.
To put the cherry on this sundae, the vise base has got keys on it that are a good fit in the tee slots on my Bridgeport. All that the vise lacks is a handle, but I plan to make one in the near future.

The vise appears to have been built by fitting the parts, as there is a small number (74) stamped inconspicuously on some of the mating parts. With a good cleaning and some oil, the vise moves smoothly, with no perceptible slop in any of the angular adjustments. The vise can be adjusted for incline to the horizontal, and has two swivels about the vertical axis, one being between the mounting (base) and the rest of the vise, and the second between the vise and the vertical angle swivel. Interesting that this vise has three possible angles it could be set to. I would imagine this vise, being small and having those three angular adjustments, was the kind of thing found in a toolroom or R & D shop. As such it would not see the kind of use or abuse many old milling vises show.

I am quite pleased with the Wesson vise, and feel I got a good deal on eBay. I am curious as to what the history of Wesson was. I know the Wesson name is still alive in the form of a manufacturer of indexable cutting tools. There is no address for Wesson on the vise, and I suspect the current incarnation of Wesson has relocated from their original plant.
I'd appreciate any information as to age and where Wesson was located when this vise was made.
I just picked up a WESSON NO1 serial 545. It is just the vise no base. Some rust very little use. I can not get the screw to detach from the moveable jaw. After removing the jaw face there is a counter sunk hole with something in the center that rotates free of the screw. HOW is the screw attached to the jaw.
 
I will have to take a look and see if I can answer your question. The Wesson vise is down in my machine shop, and we are just back from a road trip, engineering jobs are backed up for me to get to, so might be a little time before I get to the Wesson Vise.
 








 
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