York Woodwork vice - hard to open

[Emstuv]

Hi, so I have (a while back) made a Sellars style bench and installed a York vice (not much else is available in Norway).

This has been bothering me, again a while now, and I have decided to remedy it.

The quick release works nicely, always has but trying to pull it open is a struggle. I have degreased the "support bars" (or what they are called), but when I try to push it back in all and I mean all the grease is removed. The rods were bone dry when I pulled the vice back out.

Has anyone had any similar issues? Any tips on how to fix this?

Happy New Year all.

 

[Awac]

Hi, so I have (a while back) made a Sellars style bench and installed a York vice (not much else is available in Norway).
Has anyone had any similar issues? Any tips on how to fix this?
Happy New Year all.

https://paulsellers.com/2015/12/27339/

"Yes I have experienced this issue with ten out of twenty such vises made by York in the recent past. I too expected these vises to last for a lifetime simply because the design is a good one and the metal parts seemed (at least at first) to be comparable to my Record versions. Unfortunately that was far from the case. It didn’t take very long for me to regret installing them because after even only a few days the cast iron mechanism crumbled away inside. York vises are made in the Czech Republic We let York know and they replaced the parts but did not improve them so we don’t really recommend them as good vises. Until I here back from York as to what they plan to do about them I would advise people not buy the York vises.

The place to check is inside mechanisms. There you can see if you have powdery swarf inside from the casting and also if the threads are even still there.

A second problem we found with the York vises was that when both bar aligners each side of the threaded mechanisms were fully tightened the vise no longer functioned as a QR vise. We had to leave one of the bars loose and this then tended to rattle. We ended up using thread dope to stop them from loosening.

I use old Woden and Old Record vises for my school workbenches and am about to replace many of them with larger vises. They seem never to go wrong although a nut or bolt can sometimes come loose. I doubt whether any one of them is less than 60-80 years old and they are still going strong".-Paul Sellers

Only one thing to add. Don't grease as wood dust clings onto this, get some wax. This thread was from 2015, you could email him to ask if anything was sorted.

 

[Cabinetman]

Well I must’ve been one of the lucky ones, fitted a York vice last year to a bench in the US when I was there, seemed perfectly good enough to me. As Awac said don’t use grease on the bars, I just give them a light spray with WD-40 – actually I don’t do that I spray WD-40 onto some kitchen towel and then wipe that onto the bars then you don’t get slippery floors. Ian