I just received a 4" version branded Shop Fox, through Grizzly Industrial. Very likely manufactured is the same plant as Wen. I cleaned mine in the kitchen sink using regular blue Dawn detergent and very hot tap water. The hot castings dry themselves quickly after a hot rinse and brief towel-off. Used a rectangular plastic bin to avoid scratching the sink. I ran a file over the sliding surfaces to remove any burrs and/or heinous high-spots, and filed the sharp ends of the gibs. One surface on the dovetailed ways was painted! I simply filed it smooth. Reassembled with silicone grease on the sliding surfaces and lead-screws, and it seems useable now.
Yes, I'm sure many of these are made in the same factory. The old saying "you get what you pay for" is appropriate for these. $100 doesn't get you machinist quality tools but will suffice for most backyard mechanics and tinkerers (like me). Your wife must be very understanding. I'd be living in my shop in I cleaned mine in the kitchen sink. hahaha - Thanks for watching and commenting.
I’m not a machinist. I’m a ‘that might work’. You can’t stick anything to Teflon but you can bond it (kit 25$) I’m in the process of making a wen machinist vise slide smoothly. Step 1. I reckon I can bond some 20 thou Teflon on the metal / metal surfaces, put some PTFE lubricant (bicycle oil) on them. I think it will help. Why do it? well I watched you guys and I thought... hmmm. How much compressive squish will you get from 40 thou Teflon, you may only need one side. One you load it with the thing you’re working on, you can adjust it so it doesn’t move in any way except what you want. Maybe if I can make it work I can get an x-y I can afford and ... well get it where I need it. +/- 10 thou side/side over 3/4 inch fighting a Dremel! . Don’t laugh. Anyhoo the bonding agent and Teflon are out there, maybe that’s useful into.
Got one of these myself and immediately noticed the roughness of the slide action. Time to disassemble! Is there a specific reason you clean it with kerosene? I don't keep any around. Could acetone work?
I use kerosene for cleaning a lot of things like this. I will clean and leave a light film of protection from rust and a bit of lubrication. I wouldn't use acetone on this. Acetone basically removes all the grease and it will rust. I use acetone all the time to clean metal when I need a really clean surface for painting. Good luck with disassembly/reassembly. Thanks for watching and commenting.
I definitely would not recommend acetone indoors at all. The flash point is -4F. In any normal environment your acetone is giving off enough vapor to be extremely flammable. It’s not as bad as gasoline but still. If you want to use it you would probably be ok outside, to stop things rusting, on the last clean, you can mix the acetone with oil. At 1 acetone to 4 oil its basically wd40. Oh and make sure to toss any acetone(y) rags in a bucket of water. If it is warm enough they ignite very easily. Hope this helps.
@@johnfry4501 Interesting insight. I have never heard of mixing acetone with oil. Does this just slow/prevent evaporation? I love acetone for it's non-residue cleanup, but of course, that implies some pretty intense vapor floating in the air. It's easy to get too comfortable with unsafe practices for convenience sake, but it's certainly important to ground yourself and be aware of certain dangers.
@@untipoverable pretty much yes mate. Acetone will dissolve oil very well so when you’re cleaning something the acetone is dissolving the oil and it leaves the muck ‘unattached’ so it falls off. Acetone evaporates, presto clean part. If you increase the oil there is a point at which the acetone can’t dissolve any more so the mix becomes oil with bits of oil/acetone mix in it. When you use it the acetone doesn’t see the air for a while so it gives you some cleaning but mostly penetration cos that acetone/oil is way thinner than oil and will sneak into the rusty bits - hence wd40. On a clean part it’ll sneak on the bare metal and cover it. All good. The mix lets the oily acetone do the sneaking and drag the oil with it. Then the acetone evaps slowly and leaves clean oil - no rust. Think of it like Purel. Alcohol on its own is great at killing germs but it flashes off so fast it can’t - it needs minutes to hit the 99.99 number by the way. . A nurse 8n CA figured if you mixed it with a gel like Vaseline not only did it not flash off, thereby allowing it to kill the germs, the Vaseline moisturized the skin cos the alcohol dries it too much. Purel is about 75% alcohol. The rest is moisturizer and very slowly evap gel. Plus or minus dilutions and fiddling you can try it but again, acetone is ridiculously flammable, so please be very careful. Like don’t go cleaning the cooker when you’re making breakfast.
I bought same one about 3 years ago. It was so bad that I set it aside to deal with later and forgot about it. Just today started fixing it. The gibs were bent and not machined. The base was ground but never got any final machining so the mid slide would barely move. The dovetails on the mid slide were not straight. I haven’t even gotten to the top yet. I spent all day wet sanding and filing to get everything true. Certainly not worth $90! Thanks for the video.
I agree. For $90, I wasn't expecting top quality but thought I'd get some quality. Not impressed. I have not used it yet but hopefully will be able to get some use out of it to make me feel better about spending $90. Thanks for watching and commenting.
I just received a 4" version branded Shop Fox, through Grizzly Industrial. Very likely manufactured is the same plant as Wen. I cleaned mine in the kitchen sink using regular blue Dawn detergent and very hot tap water. The hot castings dry themselves quickly after a hot rinse and brief towel-off. Used a rectangular plastic bin to avoid scratching the sink. I ran a file over the sliding surfaces to remove any burrs and/or heinous high-spots, and filed the sharp ends of the gibs. One surface on the dovetailed ways was painted! I simply filed it smooth. Reassembled with silicone grease on the sliding surfaces and lead-screws, and it seems useable now.
Yes, I'm sure many of these are made in the same factory. The old saying "you get what you pay for" is appropriate for these. $100 doesn't get you machinist quality tools but will suffice for most backyard mechanics and tinkerers (like me). Your wife must be very understanding. I'd be living in my shop in I cleaned mine in the kitchen sink. hahaha - Thanks for watching and commenting.
I’m not a machinist. I’m a ‘that might work’. You can’t stick anything to Teflon but you can bond it (kit 25$) I’m in the process of making a wen machinist vise slide smoothly. Step 1. I reckon I can bond some 20 thou Teflon on the metal / metal surfaces, put some PTFE lubricant (bicycle oil) on them. I think it will help. Why do it? well I watched you guys and I thought... hmmm. How much compressive squish will you get from 40 thou Teflon, you may only need one side. One you load it with the thing you’re working on, you can adjust it so it doesn’t move in any way except what you want. Maybe if I can make it work I can get an x-y I can afford and ... well get it where I need it. +/- 10 thou side/side over 3/4 inch fighting a Dremel! . Don’t laugh. Anyhoo the bonding agent and Teflon are out there, maybe that’s useful into.
Sounds like an interesting solution. Hope it works out for you. Thanks for watching and commenting.
Got one of these myself and immediately noticed the roughness of the slide action. Time to disassemble! Is there a specific reason you clean it with kerosene? I don't keep any around. Could acetone work?
I use kerosene for cleaning a lot of things like this. I will clean and leave a light film of protection from rust and a bit of lubrication. I wouldn't use acetone on this. Acetone basically removes all the grease and it will rust. I use acetone all the time to clean metal when I need a really clean surface for painting. Good luck with disassembly/reassembly. Thanks for watching and commenting.
I definitely would not recommend acetone indoors at all. The flash point is -4F. In any normal environment your acetone is giving off enough vapor to be extremely flammable. It’s not as bad as gasoline but still. If you want to use it you would probably be ok outside, to stop things rusting, on the last clean, you can mix the acetone with oil. At 1 acetone to 4 oil its basically wd40. Oh and make sure to toss any acetone(y) rags in a bucket of water. If it is warm enough they ignite very easily. Hope this helps.
@@johnfry4501 Interesting insight. I have never heard of mixing acetone with oil. Does this just slow/prevent evaporation? I love acetone for it's non-residue cleanup, but of course, that implies some pretty intense vapor floating in the air. It's easy to get too comfortable with unsafe practices for convenience sake, but it's certainly important to ground yourself and be aware of certain dangers.
@@untipoverable pretty much yes mate. Acetone will dissolve oil very well so when you’re cleaning something the acetone is dissolving the oil and it leaves the muck ‘unattached’ so it falls off. Acetone evaporates, presto clean part. If you increase the oil there is a point at which the acetone can’t dissolve any more so the mix becomes oil with bits of oil/acetone mix in it. When you use it the acetone doesn’t see the air for a while so it gives you some cleaning but mostly penetration cos that acetone/oil is way thinner than oil and will sneak into the rusty bits - hence wd40. On a clean part it’ll sneak on the bare metal and cover it. All good. The mix lets the oily acetone do the sneaking and drag the oil with it. Then the acetone evaps slowly and leaves clean oil - no rust.
Think of it like Purel. Alcohol on its own is great at killing germs but it flashes off so fast it can’t - it needs minutes to hit the 99.99 number by the way. . A nurse 8n CA figured if you mixed it with a gel like Vaseline not only did it not flash off, thereby allowing it to kill the germs, the Vaseline moisturized the skin cos the alcohol dries it too much. Purel is about 75% alcohol. The rest is moisturizer and very slowly evap gel. Plus or minus dilutions and fiddling you can try it but again, acetone is ridiculously flammable, so please be very careful. Like don’t go cleaning the cooker when you’re making breakfast.
Mineral Spirits works great
I bought same one about 3 years ago. It was so bad that I set it aside to deal with later and forgot about it. Just today started fixing it. The gibs were bent and not machined. The base was ground but never got any final machining so the mid slide would barely move. The dovetails on the mid slide were not straight. I haven’t even gotten to the top yet. I spent all day wet sanding and filing to get everything true. Certainly not worth $90! Thanks for the video.
I agree. For $90, I wasn't expecting top quality but thought I'd get some quality. Not impressed. I have not used it yet but hopefully will be able to get some use out of it to make me feel better about spending $90. Thanks for watching and commenting.