The Mayflyer
Anyone have this vise. It is rather unique. Has a base of bronze and was billed as one you could tie on the stream with. Has a strap to hang it from your neck and the base would rest against your chest....not that I would want to use it on the stream.....just part of the maker's claims.
Anyway, I am not sure of the material of the jaws. It almost looks like copper, but I don't believe it is copper.
Wonder if any of you might know?
Nice vise. The jaws look bronze to me.
Gordon
Live every day as if it were your last.
im not a metalurgist, but my guess would brass, i think copper would be to soft and the jaws would crack after very little use
They aren't brass or bronze. Might try a close-up pic. Nobody have one of these?
Last edited by Byron haugh; 02-02-2014 at 01:08 AM.
i wonder if its a discoloration caused by heat treating
John, but discoloration of what metal?
I would suspect that you are being mislead by the surface finish. Unfortunately for you if you handed me a piece of that material, and asked what it is, I would touch it to a grindstone. I'm sure you wouldn't appreciate me doing that with your vice! That's how I learned to tell as an apprentice. Traditionally a blacksmith would tell the difference between high carbon steel and wrought iron by throwing the bars on the floor. The steel would ring while the iron would clang. If you could hang a piece of the jaw assembly up from a piece of string, tapping it with a metal bar should give you some indication. You will not be able to tap it well enough for me to hear here (plus my hearing has suffered from too much time around jet engines), so you will have to set up comparisons with known materials.
Other than that you would be in the realms of NDT (Non Destructive Testing) which would tell you, but all NDT methods have one thing in common. They are all expensive. The question is "how much do you want to know?" The cost would make destructive testing the cheaper option.
I knew someone who has one, but have never seen it in anything other than pictures. It is doubtful he would let me near a grindstone with it.
One thought just occurred. Touch it with a magnet! If it sticks that will tell you it is at least iron or steel (or has a high nickel content). If the jaws were bronze they would quickly deform in use.
Cheers,
A.
I am not a metallurgist either. I do work with a wide variety of metals.
I would say that they are some sort of brass. From the color of the jaws, it has some copper in it...so at least some sort of copper alloy.
All brass is not the same.
There are a lot of types of brass out there. In the electric power industry, a lot of connectors are made from brass because of the corrosion resistance. They are very strong.
I could imagine that some sort of brass could effectively be used for jaws of a vise.
Beautiful vise! Steel hardened and tempered could produce that color. Blacksmiths and knife makers temper steel after hardening it by watching the colors change after heating it AGAIN to a to red and watching the color change as it cools. When the desired hardness is reached the metal is quinched in oil or water. A bronze color is hard but not brittle. tHE COLOR WILL BE ON THE SURFACE OF THE METAL ONLY.There are other methods of coloring metal also and iT APPEARS TO ME THAT THE STEEL pARTS OF THE VISE WAS COLored by some other method to match the bronze base. Please excuse my sticking shift key!
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