?????Leisenring Vise????????
Posted: Thu Apr 16, 2020 12:55 am
I was just going through my personal Fly Tying drawers to check for any critters and what not. Well I lost my favorite Starling Skin it was a beaut but now gone forever, lost a patch or two of hair and fur. Anyway I had to do a deep inspection and put the Enoz moth balls in the drawers and containers. I do this every year before I full time it up at Campfire Lodge sans the moth eaten starling and fur. In one of the bottom drawers I found my odd old tools and vises which contained this old hand made vise. The design and shape of the jaw just grabbed my attention and there was something very familiar about the vise.
So I take out the Leisenring Handwritten Manuscripts and Notebooks. In there is a section that has Leisenring's hand drawn with notes on tools. Apparently at some point he sent someone a "blueprint"of his Vise, perhaps Dick Clark or Pete Hidy, I guess I should check more thoroughly. I took the vise apart and put the Jaws on the blue print and they were the same size, and the vise jaws were pretty close within a 1/16th of an inch. Curiously there is a note that the jaws should only be cut 1 1/4 of an inch "to keep a strong spring". The jaws on this vice have been cut over 3 inches long. The shaft of the vise in the blueprint is also thicker. Curiously the shaft on this vise is as thick as the screw section on bottom of the vise in the blueprint. On this vise it is a 1/16 of an inch narrower and tapers down. Also the bottom of the shaft has been broken, conceivably this is where the screw threads would have been.
This is an old vise. There is no proof and I may just be chasing ghosts but the similarities are striking at least to me. Could this be Leisenring's first vise attempt? I don't know? I recollect that I bought this vise and one or two more on ebay probably 18 years ago and it came from Pennsylvania or perhaps Ohio, before I bought the manuscripts. I'm going to have to do some more investigating.
So I take out the Leisenring Handwritten Manuscripts and Notebooks. In there is a section that has Leisenring's hand drawn with notes on tools. Apparently at some point he sent someone a "blueprint"of his Vise, perhaps Dick Clark or Pete Hidy, I guess I should check more thoroughly. I took the vise apart and put the Jaws on the blue print and they were the same size, and the vise jaws were pretty close within a 1/16th of an inch. Curiously there is a note that the jaws should only be cut 1 1/4 of an inch "to keep a strong spring". The jaws on this vice have been cut over 3 inches long. The shaft of the vise in the blueprint is also thicker. Curiously the shaft on this vise is as thick as the screw section on bottom of the vise in the blueprint. On this vise it is a 1/16 of an inch narrower and tapers down. Also the bottom of the shaft has been broken, conceivably this is where the screw threads would have been.
This is an old vise. There is no proof and I may just be chasing ghosts but the similarities are striking at least to me. Could this be Leisenring's first vise attempt? I don't know? I recollect that I bought this vise and one or two more on ebay probably 18 years ago and it came from Pennsylvania or perhaps Ohio, before I bought the manuscripts. I'm going to have to do some more investigating.
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