I’m a sucker for quality made tools; at one point and time in this country a quality bench vise was considered a basic and essential tool that no man should be without, even if he had to clamp it to the coffee table.
It seems like modern society has lost the respect for quality. Growing up in the 60’s, it was all about quality…”we make the best”, and manufacturers competed to build the best. In today’s society, it all about cost… “We’ll beat anyone’s prices”, “nobody sells for less” it’s a race to the bottom.
Back when I first started equipping my shop, I had an imported vise, lasted about a year before the casting cracked. I started looking for an older American made vise, couldn’t find one to save my life (pre EBay, craigslist etc.). Finally a friend found me a vintage (mid 1940s) 4 inch Columbian swivel vise... since then I find them everywhere….quite often they come home with me…. Fortunately have a very understanding wife, she doesn’t understand my addition to old guns and tools, but accepts it with a half roll of the eyes.
I’ve given away quite a few to friends; friends don’t let friends use crappy vises.
In my shop… a 4 ˝ inch Reed is my daily use vise, my son has the Columbian, and there’s another 4 ˝ inch Reed for “dirty work” hack sawing, heavy filing etc.
There’s a 5 inch Parker, sitting on the shelf in the back of the shop, I really don’t have a use for it, but I like it too much to part with it. A 5 inch Reed is my farm vise, as noted before, it’s mounted to a steel pole, with a semi-truck brake drum full of concrete as the base, must weigh around 250 lbs… My son uses it for blacksmithing and I use It for repairing farm equipment out in the fields… move it around with the tractor.
Two Reeds in the garage… a 4 ˝ inch and a 4 inch.
Got a few of “Spare” vises that I picked up recently… A 4 inch Reed on a swivel base, a 4 inch American Scale & Vise Co. fixed base, and a Wilton Tradesman vise.
So all in all about a dozen vises, and I’m still looking for a 6, 8 or 9 inch Reed.
