A week or so there was a thread about vises, I should have posted this then. I found this little vise in the old blacksmith shop pictured below. The shop was in operation between about 1890 and 1930. Can anyone tell me about this little vise? What it's purpose was, when it was made, etc..

It's a hand vise, used to hold small metal objects like when filing or grinding on them or bending, anywhere you need to hold a small piece of metal securely while working on it.
Not sure about when it would have been made.

An early version of a vice-grip.

X2

I believe it was used to hold flat power transmission belts for splicing.

A neat looking old place !

From the looks of it I would guess that it was made some time in 1920's or '30's, but it could even be older than that.

That's an awesome anvil, you need to sift through all the debris in there, no telling what is under that stuff.

I have a couple hand vises like that one. A old one and a newer one. new and old they are nearly identical. Some of them have a small groove in the jaw, this was to hold pins or small screws to be shortened or somewhat modified. Like was said earlier, I use mine for holding small parts and hand filing those parts. Sometimes I will have a small part in the hand vise and then put the hand vise in a bench vise. Seems goofy but sometimes a bench vise is too big to hold a tiny part.

What happened to the anvil? Did it sell or did you keep it?

^^^^^^
It's still sitting there, it has a crack in it though.

Man, I'd love to get ahold of something like that.

^^^^^
It's about 350 miles from the closest road; it will probably be sitting there for a while.

Lots of other cool stuff there; old belt driven equipment like the grinding wheel pictured, lathes, huge band saws, drill presses, etc.

that's a awesome wet stone.

here is a photo of mine.

^^^^^^
Is there any demand for old belt drive hardware and equipment? I see you have some.

Lots of interest a few years ago my cousins auctioned off their dads stuff including an entire shop of belt drive tools and in many cases it bought way way more then the modern stuff

Frankly your sitting on a small gold mine there if you could get it out

lots of folks like that old equipment

I finally found a couple of other pictures from the shop. This is some of the equipment in there, the lathe is rusted up a bit, the drill press still turns but is a little rusty. Is equipment in this kind of shape still worth anything? I don't want to set to work salvaging any of this stuff if it's just scrap iron.

Yes if you don’t want to do it give me location and i will do it

Just a heads up the beltway at the top of that last photo is worth salvaging as well

Would there happen to be a power hammer in there?

Moosetrot

If it's over 300 miles from a road, how in billyhill did they get the stuff in there to begin with?