Restoring finish on new leg vise?

[Twilight Fenrir]

I picked up a new 6" leg vise the other day to replace the 5" in my shop currently. It's a nicer vise almost all 'round, but it is fairly rusty. While my old vise has that nice black patina.

Obviously, I know how to blacken steel with heat and oil, but the vise is a little too big to go in my oil can :P Heating it with a torch and rubbing it with beeswax would, I imagine, get me an odd, spotty coverage as I could only work small-ish portions at a time.

Is there another way to make this look nicer? (I don't want to paint it)

Thanks.

[oldgoaly]

have you wipe it down with a oily rag? some do that but that seems to attract dust!
future floor wax  aka anvil wax is ok, so is the flat acrylic clear coating.

[Aunt Phil]

Rust ain't complete enough to go with phosphoric acid treatment.
You could probably disassemble and get it all in a barrel on top of a turkey cooker burner and do a parkerizing job on it.  That might not come out even though. 
You could break it down and completely clean it using oxcalic acid solution in a barrel to get to bare metal.  Then you could get a fairly decent black finish letting it flash rust and phosphating it.

Cheapest & easiest would be cleaning the vise and then hitting it with stove polish.  You can even go True Path and make your own polish with Linseed oil and carbon from an exhaust manifold. 

Big question might be how will the wife unit take to using her oven to dry the stove polish?
If that won't fly, start watching curbs for a used water heater you can cut the top off and convert to an oven.
 

[Twilight Fenrir]

Rust ain't complete enough to go with phosphoric acid treatment.
You could probably disassemble and get it all in a barrel on top of a turkey cooker burner and do a parkerizing job on it.  That might not come out even though. 
You could break it down and completely clean it using oxcalic acid solution in a barrel to get to bare metal.  Then you could get a fairly decent black finish letting it flash rust and phosphating it.

Cheapest & easiest would be cleaning the vise and then hitting it with stove polish.  You can even go True Path and make your own polish with Linseed oil and carbon from an exhaust manifold. 

Big question might be how will the wife unit take to using her oven to dry the stove polish?
If that won't fly, start watching curbs for a used water heater you can cut the top off and convert to an oven.

Haha, no wife to worry about here! It's MY oven :P

Stove Polish, eh? I'll have to look into that. Thanks :3

[Twilight Fenrir]

Alrighty, I had nice weather today, and felt a little ambitious, so I went ahead and took some stove polish to it... It looks pretty good :3 It's not quite what I hoped to recapture on it, but I think only 200 years of existence will give me that finish. I certainly like it better than spray paint. Next time I feel ambitious, I think I'll take the same stuff to my little rivet forge n.n

I also found, that my vise is actually stamped! o.o This is the only leg vise I've seen with a makers mark on it (Aside from Columbian vises of the late period) It's marked "Warren Tool & Forge Co. QwikWerk" And all the parts seem to be original, as the mounting plate has "W.T.&F. Co." stamped into it, while the strap, and every other piece of the vice have "100" stamped into it.

[gibsontool]

That's a big improvement,it looks really good. Nice work.

[Aunt Phil]

Chill the dam ambition thing, yer making the rest of us look bad.
You should have it out of your system by now for 2015 anyhow.

Did you bake it after the polish?  That may change the finish some.

You can also try scrubbing the polish with some linseed oil on a hunk of carpet.

[Northwoods]

Looks good!  That's some heavy metal!

[Twilight Fenrir]

Chill the dam ambition thing, yer making the rest of us look bad.
You should have it out of your system by now for 2015 anyhow.

Did you bake it after the polish?  That may change the finish some.

You can also try scrubbing the polish with some linseed oil on a hunk of carpet.

Ambition? It took maybe an hour all tolled :P Ambition is when I rebuilt the rear suspension on a car I got cheep out of scrap iron, or the restoration job I did on my anvil, of which I'll post pictures in that thread in a few minutes...

[Yadda]

Any one of item on that list of accomplishments makes me look extremely lazy in comparison.  Nice job on the leg vise and the anvil!  Now back to the couch.  All this typing has made me extremely tired....

[turnnut]

 I like the new look on your leg vise, thanks for sharing.

 shhhhh, don't wake up Yadda !