One of my vices is vises, Wells Bro's foot vise
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| thanks, Andre! |
The Wells Bro's were part of manufacturing boom along the Connecticut River, drawn to the area by the abundance of water power available. The Wells brothers were fired from Wiley and Russel in 1876 and started their own firm making tools for farming and backsmithing. The products labeled “Wells Bro’s & Co.” were made in the years after 1878- according to the site of The Museum of our Industrial Heritage, but this device seems newer than that. The site also provides an interesting graphic for tracing the ownership of the various companies along the river. (Bottom image)
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2 comments:
If anybody's feeling extra-patient, I'd like to know even a little about foot vises (feet vises?): how their internals work, even why they are so named. Most of the alleged foot vises I found online have no foot pedal, so, um, ???
Some, evidently designed for blacksmiths who make house calls, have a heavy spike for a base -- the smith bashes it into the ground, I infer, which seems like a perilously wobbly way to deal with a large hammer and a red-hot horseshoe -- while most of them are meant to be bolted to a work table's leg. Some seem to be handheld, with a length of farm chain to be tightened around a (?) cylindrical or irregular workpiece.
Preemptive thanks for any information youall can cough up.
Keep posting up mysteries like this one, Mr G, and I may become nearly as ... strange ... about vises as you are. And surely nobody wants that to happen.
This was the first one I've had occasion to study, they'd be designed to be used in cases where both your hands are always occupied. (Blacksmithing, as you say). I'm not sure if the vise locks when the footpedal is fully depressed, it would make sense. I must find more of these!
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