I thought I might share something a bit more on the tooling side of this topic and so I have dug out a picture of my vice.
As usual it comes attached to a story!!
After my first year at college we had ten weeks until we started again in the September of '76 but of this we had to spend six weeks in the workshop doing Vacational Training. (Not vocational!) This entailed two weeks in the electrical workshops, two weeks in the machine shops and two weeks pulling big bits of machinery apart and putting it back together again.
At the end of the day it is a very simply made peice of engineering that has proved to be a significant part of my model tool box for most of my life.
The first two weeks was in the machine shop and we were given a drawing and told to make the attached. I tried to take my time and do the most carefull and neatest job I possibly could but all to no avail. I still finished the dam thing in four days!!! The last day of the first week I decided that it would be nice to use the thing so I decided that it would be usefull as a stand for modelling so I fabricated the tin plate base for it. The next week I messed about and waited for the third week to come along!
That vice in its base has sat on my modelling bench for the last thirty years and is absolutely invaluable. I put tweezers in the jaws and use it to hold things that are drying or setting, I put clothes pegs in the jaws holding parts waiting for paint to dry and I put all sorts in the jaws to simply support things. It is like a third hand. All it was in the first place was a machining excercise.
The two weeks pulling machinery apart was pretty uneventfull but the two weeks in the electrical shop was a lot more interesting. We were given a pile of materials and a drawing and told to make an electric motor. The motor had a wooden rotor with a metal frame around which the coils were wound, the commutator was a piece of copper tube glued onto a broom handle then slots cut in it with a hacksaw, the brushes were made out of pieces of bent shim brass and it was all held in a steel plate frame. Mine looked rather neat and spun quite nicely but the culmination of the project was to connect it up to a monstrous great Rayovac resistance bank and apply the required 12 volts.
We all tried our respective pride and joys to our great satisfaction and then promptly looked for a bit more amusement. Obviously the Rayovac was set at 12 volts but it would certainly kick out a hell of a lot more so I wonder..........
Engineers have two categories of testing namely NDT, non destructive testing, and fun! We applied liberal amounts of oil to the steel pin running in the plate frame and start to wind the Rayovac up. We took them all up to a point where they screamed in agony before some component or other let fly and the rest disintegrated in a flash and a bang. Mine soldiered on to some ridiculous speed before the avalanch of sparks ignited the smoke coming from the oil and it went up in a very satisfying "whooff" of smoke and debris.
I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed college and the fact that we were allowed to play with some serious toys!!
Since then the vice has had numerous coats of enamel, a few vice jaws, I prefer the cork ones, and a few different finishes to the handle. I think it is about time for a new coat of paint, I think the black must have done about 15 years now!
No vices then!! 
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