When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
He carved his name into every tool he ever bought. On these two he didn\'t bother, and I\'ve spent longer than is reasonable thinking about why.
TWO VISES NOBODY SOLD THESE A MACHINIST MADE THEM ONE CUT FOR ROUND STOCK
- SHOP-MADE
- MILLED FROM SOLID
- SOLD AS A PAIR
- UNPOLISHED
- 30 DAY RETURNS
Every commercial version of this tool is a casting. Neither of these is.
Two small toolmaker\'s vises, each milled out of a solid bar of steel. A U-channel with a fixed wall at one end, a screw threaded through the wall at the other, and a loose block that rides between them and drives the work tight. Nothing to break, nothing to adjust, nothing about it that needs explaining.
They sit flat on a bench or a surface plate, stand on their sides, or go straight into the jaws of a bigger vise. They\'re for work that\'s too small to hold and too fussy to let move — filing a flat, stoning an edge, drilling a part you\'d otherwise be pinching between two fingers and hoping.
The second one has a semicircular relief cut into the movable jaw. That isn\'t a feature. That\'s a man who had round stock to hold on a particular day and went and made the jaw that would hold it.
FROM AWAY
I almost didn\'t stop. The barn was coming down on one side and the sale looked like three tables of nothing, which is what most of them look like, and I was already doing the arithmetic on the drive home.
Then I noticed that everything in that building was in its place. Not tidy — organized, by a man who\'d spent a working life as a machinist and had never once in forty years put a tool down somewhere it didn\'t belong. The Starretts. The Lufkins. Every one of them with his name carved into the steel in the same hand.
His retirement cards were still in the toolbox. Decades old. Kept.
These two vises are the exception in that barn, because he didn\'t buy them. He made them — and as far as I can find, he never put his name on either one. A man who marked every tool he\'d purchased apparently saw no reason to mark the ones that came out of his own hands. I don\'t know what to do with that except tell you about it.
I bought his toolbox and I\'m keeping that until I\'m done. There are two or three things out of that barn that aren\'t for sale at any number. These didn\'t make the list, and only because a vise nobody clamps anything in is a paperweight with a screw in it.
CONDITION, NO SOFTENING
Used, and not lightly. Surface oxide and staining across the flats, scratching, the rust bloom you\'d expect on bare steel that sat for years in an unheated building in Maine. I\'ve knocked the loose dirt off and left every bit of the rest.
I could have run them on a wire wheel and made them photograph like new tools. They aren\'t new tools, and cleaning them up to look like something they\'re not is a claim I can\'t back.
Both screws run their full travel without binding. Both movable blocks slide clean in their channels. The jaws close flat against each other.
What I can\'t tell you: whether they\'re ground parallel to any particular tolerance. Nobody stamped a spec on them and I won\'t invent one. If that matters to your work, put an indicator on them the day they land — and if the answer disappoints you, send them back on my dime.
MEASUREMENTS
Dimensions for both are in the photos against a rule. Ask for a specific number and I\'ll go measure it rather than estimate it at you.
Return Policy A month. No explanation required.
You\'re buying an unmarked tool from a photograph on the word of a stranger. That\'s a real ask, and the only fair way to make it is to put the risk on my side of the table.
So take thirty days. Indicate them. Put them to work on something. Decide at your own speed whether I described these the way they actually are.
If you want them gone, one line does it. I don\'t need a reason, a photograph, or a conversation about it. If I got something wrong, I pay freight both directions. If you just decided against them, I pay it anyway.
WHAT ISN\'T IN HERE
Restocking fees. Condition disputes. A definition of \"as described\" written by somebody paid to make it favor me.
A policy gets long when the seller is planning for the argument. I\'m not planning for one.
Shipping Policy Steel is heavy. Boxes are not.
Two solid blocks of steel loose in a carton will find a corner and go through it, and then the tool is somewhere in a sorting facility in Ohio and neither of us is happy. So they go wrapped separately, immobilized, boxed inside a second box, rated for the actual weight.
Insured and tracked. It costs a few dollars more and I\'ve never once regretted spending them.
Until the box is in your hands these are still my tools. If they go missing, I chase it. You won\'t open a claim, you won\'t photograph anything to satisfy a stranger, and you won\'t spend an hour proving a loss that was mine. You\'ll hear from me first.
Anything that arrives wrong gets fixed by me, immediately, without you having to ask twice.
Who I Sell To He made two. I\'d like them used.
I go to three or four estate sales a week and have for years. Most of them leave nothing on me. That barn did. I\'ve sold a lot of what came out of it and I\'ve been slower about it than the money would suggest is smart, because a man who carved his name into every tool he owned was telling you something about how he expected them to be treated after he was done.
So I\'d rather these go to somebody who\'ll clamp work in them than to somebody who\'ll shelf them. That\'s a preference, not a condition. I\'m not going to interview you.
Twice in my life a man sold me something for less than he could have gotten, because he\'d already decided where it ought to end up. Neither of them mentioned it at the time. It took me years to understand what I\'d been handed along with the object.
Some of what I find never gets photographed at all. It sits on a shelf until the right person asks, and if that takes a season it takes a season. There\'s no clock on any of this.
Which doesn\'t make me a curator or an authority. I\'m a man who drives too far on Saturdays and owns more shelving than furniture.
Deal straight with me and we\'ll get along. Ask anything, take your time, tell me plainly what you want them for. Almost everyone clears that without noticing it was a bar.
The Fine Print You\'ve read all of it. That\'s the trick.
Nothing above was adapted from a larger seller\'s boilerplate. No attorney has been near it. There\'s no clause here whose function is to protect me from you.
Every term is written out in plain words, in the order I\'d say them standing at a tailgate.
Two people who intend to keep an agreement don\'t need many words to write one.
About Me Thirty years of writing promises that some other company had to keep. Now there\'s nobody behind me to blame
It pays worse and takes more out of me. It\'s also the first work I\'ve done that I can describe to a stranger without first deciding how to describe it.
None of which means I\'m good at it. I overpay routinely. I\'ve walked past things sitting in plain sight. I\'ve sold two objects I should have kept and I still think about both.
I buy from estates, from barns, from lockers, from people clearing out a shop with their jaw set against the job. I clean what needs cleaning and leave the rest, because the wear on a tool is the record of the work and erasing it isn\'t mine to do. Then I go find the next set of hands.
I answer every message myself and at more length than anyone asked for. If you\'re chasing something specific, or you\'re new at this and would rather talk to a person than read another forum thread, write to me. Tell me what you\'re making and where it\'s giving you trouble.
He stood at a mill one afternoon and made a tool that didn\'t exist yet, because the job in front of him required it. Then he did it again, differently, because the job changed. Forty years of a trade compressed into two pieces of steel you can hold in one hand.
He\'s gone, and I\'m the man who turned up afterward and put a price on it, which is a strange job and one I\'ve stopped apologizing for. Everything I sell outlived whoever cared about it most. The only question still open is the scrap bin or a bench.
These were made to be used. They go back to a bench or they don\'t go.
© 2026 CHICKEN OR EGG, LLC.
