The Home Machinist!

I've got a 5" Wilton "Bullet" vise with anvil and pipe jaws. Wilton called it a Machinist Vise.

This is a vice I got 30 years ago; it was already old at the time.

I only made a workbench to bolt it to last week.

I use this for pressing small things [and maybe medium things]. Sometimes I use a 3' cheater pipe. This thing is tough.

Have a look at the slider detail; it has upper and lower angled slider surfaces, and the slack can be taken out with the adjustment pinch bolt.

It says "Huer Front" on it. I think it's German. I didn't weigh it but I suppose it's 60lbs.
I'm not really a machinist so I guess it's not really a machinist's vise.

What's a machinist's vice?

Here's my $.02 on mill vises for what it's worth.......I was a journeyman die sinker for forty plus years in the forging industry making forging dies and impressions,,,,fussy work. A good mill vise is well built with what looks like box ways and very accurate. NO hammers should be used within 300 miles of a mill vise ! The jaws can be indicated and are repeatable. Kurt makes one of the best mill vises around, but they can be pricey. Usually in the $550-$700 range for a 6-inch. Jaws are interchangeable for specific mill work. The screw is not exposed to chips like a bench vise or in-expensive Chinese" knock-off mill vise. A small Tormach mill vise (3 inch wide jaws) can be about $250. Little Machine Shop has a nice generic 4-inch mill vise for about $120 for home shop use and looks like it would be great for home shop use in our hobby.

Was I supposed to bolt it to the bench?

Yes, but do not do what I did once. After drilling the holes in the bench and bolting the vise down I realized it was too far in, to let me clamp a long part vertically extending below the bench level.

When I came to this country I barfed at the typical design of the American bench vise. The Front jaw is the moving jaw.
I was accustomed to a vise were the mowing jaw was the rear one and it was sliding on dovetail. The dovetail was long enough to keep the jaw parallel.
Steve started this thread talking about bench vises, however I can not justify mounting a $700 vise on a $1,200 mill used for hobby.
I have a 3" grinding vise, and in 13 years of model work it has never been short of doing the job, accurately and securely. During the same time I felt the necessity of dragging out the 6" Chinese monster mounted on the rotary base only twice to handle a big part with minimal accuracy needs. Buying the 6" Chinese Kurt Impersonator was a beginner mistake.

Where do bench vices normally have a moving rear jaw?
I've been around, and I visit workshops in every country I go to, but never seen one like that.

Mine has a sort of dovetail [see photo above], better than most bench vices I've seen but not like a machine tool.

In Italy bench wises have the rear jaw sliding on dovetails. The fixed part has a bottom that "wraps" around the bench and is designed to be lagged to the bench front plus two screws in the rear that go down into the bench top.

https://www.google.com/search?q=morsa+c ... x3c-GtrSMM:

If the link does not produce the picture try googling "morsa coda di rondine" which is the translation for "dovetail vise"

I see one there with a dove tail and fixed front jaw. I like that design. What does the pedal do?

Never seen one like that, with the pedal. There is a graduated scale (red) on the side. You adjust the opening with the bar as usual but the final clamping can be done with the foot lever. I suppose is for repetitive production jobs.

So it's a variation on this:

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/408068416218947035/

Yes, allowing for time lapsed. Man hate repetitive work and has devised all sort of contraptions to minimize it, culminating in computers and CNC.