Dore Westbury 5" machine vice?

Machine it from the solid, nice piece of Mehanite and you will be away.

John Stevenson advocated the benefits of the original vice, but I think John might also accept it's limitations. The very shallow depth of engagement on the shallow jaws is useful for small jobs. But for bigger jobs a bigger proper machine vice is needed.

The Dore Westbury has a long X axis, but this is negated by the original vice for lots of common operations.

So you want to do forked ends on an eccentric rod (sorry John for mentioning miniature steam locos). You clamp the rod in the original vice, and there is then insufficient Z movement to do the milling.

Most cylinder blocks for miniature locos require great ingenuity to mill the port faces and ports using the original vice.

In most cases a proper machine vice would resolve all these problems.

I havent found the moving jaw to be particularly 'precision' in operation - but perhaps mine is worn after 35 plus years. I have to add a bit of shim under the moving tongue underneath the static jaw.

On the bed is a nice slot, and it would have been a nice feature of the vice to have a tongue to engage in same for parallel work without having to DTI up the vice if removed for using angle plates etc.

My old late friend Albert North had a Dore Westbury which he used extensively for milling on miniature loco parts including 2 5"g Brits, a 5"g 9F, a 5"g Pansy, and a 5"g Firefly, and much else besides. He had a proper machine vice on his. The raised height required on the column caused no problems.

Cheers,

Julian

Julian,

I was putting it into the context of the time which would be about 1970 working out from when I bought one and the fact my two children were born around this time.

In 1970 all that was available were worn out 5" and 6" vices from industry. You had to kill or wait for someone to die to get a decent 4" vise.

Same applied for rotary tables, MES did 3 kits for these and I also bought one as I had no success in getting a small table from anywhere and I did have lots of contacts.

Would I buy a Dore machine vice or rotary table today ? No it's far cheaper to buy an import. There was a recent thread on here about a RT not being central and the owner was crying in his porridge and saying why for his measly £70 didn't they make them better before they shipped them halfway round the world.

However anyone care to work out what a modern equivalent of the MES RT kit would cost today ? Far , far more than the complete one shipped from China so treat it as a kit and you have saved a hat full of money

Edited By John Stevenson on 12/04/2017 23:40:30