Latest Delivery

[Pete O]

I finally found a shaper vice. Spotted it on eBay and hit 'but now' with scarcely a thought of how I was going to retrieve it from Sydney; I was prepared to make the 2-day round trip if necessary. I booked a courier, they lost it, overnight courier ended up taking a week and I picked it up from their depot today.
   
   
Someone had gone to the trouble of locating it to the heavy piece of steel plate with a couple of dowel pins. I assume it's been used on a mill and that's the only way they could mount it. I removed the plate and mounted it on the shaper, here it is all dialed in parallel to the ram
   
The jaws are a tad over 9" wide and open to 9 1/2" before fouling the handle- could probably get another inch if I make a deep-socketed handle.
The square drive is the same size as the rest of the shaper which is handy- the straight handle that was with the vice gives better leverage than the existing crank and I've found that the ram adjustment has to be done up pretty tight to prevent slipping. This should make that easier.
   
The tag is almost completely illegible- I can just make out the name 'EXCEL' at the top.