The Wilton C-1 vise

Sometimes, when I feel I have been a good boy, I like to reward myself with something a bit self-indulgent. So I bought a Wilton 4.5 inch C-1 contractors vise, the one with the pipe clamp built into jaws. Wilton makes cheap vises that sell for 50 bucks but this is a real machine tool, it lists for about $600. You can see that the slide is more like a machine way than a loose fitting nested box.

I had a decent 4.5-inch vise, a cheap Babco made in China, and by China I mean Red China, not Taiwan. I used this vise on my welding bench as you can see from the white zinc that has boiled off the galvanized parts that I have welded. You might notice my homemade chipping hammer made from a railroad spike and a piece of conduit, a little trick taught to me by my reggae Samoan pal Etene Fau. Now you may say that for someone that uses a vise as rarely as I do, especially in a miserable service like a welding bench, well it may seem excessive to put in the Wilton. I think that if walking up to that Wilton makes you feel like a master welder, well, you are one step closer to being a master welder. That is the same reason I buy used HP/Agilent, Tektronix, LeCroy, Keithley and other great test equipment. It is solid as a rock and you just feel better using it.

As a bonus I will include a couple pictures from my Vietnam vacation, and some dramatic copywriting that shows how I feel about Wilton. Once I decided to upgrade my vises it did not take long surfing the internet to see that Wilton was the ne plus ultra of vises, at least if you spring for the C-0, C-1 or other contractor models. The big ones will go for over a thousand dollars, but I really did not need much more than the 4.5-inch C-1 for my Harley Sportster fabrication work. The Machinist vises are nice as well but I really wanted the pipe clamp jaws you can see down underneath the main jaws. I have looked on eBay for used Wiltons but they are usually beat up. I found this new one on the Internet for 275 plus 40 bucks shipping and I couldn’t be happier, or prouder. Sometimes you just want to own the best.

The old Babco vise that got replaced, it was OK, but the Wilton is a machine tool, not a chunk of iron.

A dusty road alongside an irrigation canal in Long Xuyen Vietnam….

…..and even they know the value of a Wilton vise.