I'll have a 36P please Bob

For @oilyrag, here is a big old hunk of British steel as very solidly bolted to my workbench.

This vice was made by Record tools in the early 1970s as far as I can tell, although this particular design, the model number 36, was first created in the 1920s.  Back then it proudly said "Record Steel" on the side, "unbreakable" cast steel being a new thing.

If you want to get a feel for price gouging, let alone inflation, when the no.36 first came out, Buck & Hickman Ltd. in That London would ask you for £6 12s of His Majesty's finest currency, which is getting on for £350 in today's money.  Fifty years later it cost £25, or about £310 in today's money.  Yet Irwin tools, who took over Record, still makes a vice to this pattern, the T36: it costs £1000, plus or minus, which is ridiculous, and although Irwin is American their factory is now in China.

I'm entering it for MonoMonday's something you don't see every day (except if you look on eBay I suppose) because it's 50+ years old, and because a casual look down the shelves of B&Q* turns up nothing of this size, nor anything that would withstand a good wellying.

* who actually do sell the T36 – online, theoretically – it costs £993.

Work was reasonably relaxed today, but I spent it with a blanket over my legs and I was glad to finish.  It was -2ºC this morning and reached a balmy +2ºC at lunchtime. After work I went for a couple of miles' walk with an extra layer on, and I was nice and warm.