Well, Tom, here are some photos to lend a bit of clarity to the discussion...
It appears the rails are press fit into the movable jaw and peened over. There's no drift pin that I can discover:
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bar ends.jpg [ 469.06 KiB | Viewed 15261 times ]
As you can see here -
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bar free ends.jpg [ 267.96 KiB | Viewed 15261 times ]
there's about 1/8" misalignment of the free ends where they (are supposed to) mate with the rail holes.
Now here's the odd part. I carefully cut a block to fit between the rails at the free end which should be a no go where they're fixed into the sliding jaw. But they appear almost perfectly parallel along their entire length!
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guage free ends.jpg [ 259.69 KiB | Viewed 15261 times ]
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guage fixed ends.jpg [ 262.49 KiB | Viewed 15261 times ]
So anyway, I tried prying the rails apart using my farmstrong techniques and a bit of scrap iron I had lying around ...
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spreader.jpg [ 302.56 KiB | Viewed 15261 times ]
At least I managed to get the rails into the fixed jaw. But then when I went to assemble the screw and half nut, I'm completely baffled by this. It appears this is either the wrong half nut for this vise or I'm missing something about how it's supposed to go back together. So help me, I'll swear the threads are backward on the half nut.
Frankly, I think I only paid $25 for the thing at a junk store. It may be work $2.00 at the scrap yard. I'll put it in our upcoming garage sale for free. (grin)
End of my end of the conversation. (hehehe) Oh, it's free to anyone who wants it. Now don't all call at once!
OOps can't add more than five attachments. To be continued.