Record Vice

**paul.cleary** · 19th December 2016, 06:54 PM

Hi, I have a workbench with a Record 53&1/2E vice. It has the problem that when I screw close the jaws, the right hand side grips before the left hand side.
I've checked the wood faces on the jaws, and they are flat (25mm plywood that is only wider that the metal jaws by 10mm on either side).
So I measured the difference when closing the wood faces with nothing between them.
When the right sides of the wood faces are just touching, the left sides of the faces have about 1mm of gap.
Is this a normal amount of play, or has the vice got out of alignment or is worn?
A comparison with other Record vices would be useful feedback

Thanks
Paul

**Chief Tiff** · 19th December 2016, 08:17 PM

Maybe the mechanism has become damaged/bent through overtightening the vise with only one side in use? You can now buy big plastic feeler-gauge type shim packs that you put into the other end of the jaws to prevent this.

An easy fix is to either shim or trim the faces so that they are back in parallel again. Measure the same in the vertical plane too; ideally you want the tops of the jaw faces to touch a bee's winky before the rest of the faces.

**paul.cleary** · 28th December 2016, 06:30 AM

Chief, thanks for the advice. I did check the gap at the left hand end and it is only 0.4mm so time for some careful planing.
Yes, the tops of the jaws are closing very slightly before the bottom edges meet.
I took my spare 1950s 53&1/2 vice out of storage (bought for when I build a good bench and use this as the end vice) and checked it as well. It has the same very slight left to right rack but a smaller gap.
Guess it is manufacturing tolerances, so one of the things when adding faces to a Record vice is to put a slight gradient from one side to the other on a face.

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