A while back I broke the retaining bolt in my HF vice trying to tighten it too much. It pulled the threads right out of the casting holding the nut in place and cracked it. I looked at some of the Wilton BASH vices but read mixed reviews on them, so I got my hands on a mid 90s Wilton 450S.
The vice was mechanically sound other than a few drill starts along the top and some dents in the back jaw where someone beat on it with a hammer.
Thanks to the great information on the Garage Journal forum I was able to take it apart, clean it up and repaint in about six hours. Not a museum restoration I just wanted it to look nice again. The most difficult part and what took the longest was flat filing the back jaw to remove most of the damage. There are still three marks that weren't worth the amount of material I would need to remove for something that was basically cosmetic.
The vice is mounted to a hitch plate which slides into a receiver I welded to the bottom of the work bench. It lets me move the vice out of the way to use both benches.
I like keeping the original machining marks on steel or aluminum whenever possible. The shaft on the front jaw wasn't heavily corroded but wasn't going to wipe clean either. I used a nylon wheel on it which cleaned it very well without leaving any marks like a wire wheel or sand paper would.
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