I don’t know if you’ve made your choice yet but if you managed to break the Wheeler vise then I would guess it’s probably technique. I have rebarreled perhaps a hundred or so rifles, many of them using a Wheeler. I have used a few other vises also. I think we had 4 or 5 different ones in the shop I worked in. My procedure was to soak the barrel shank area overnight with Kroil, inside and out, and if the receiver was drilled for bases I would fill the screw holes also. The next day I would degrease the barrel shank with acetone. Using shims of leather, lead or brass annealed to a dead soft state and powdered sugar on both sides of the shims clamp the barrel in the vise and torque it evenly as tight as I thought the vise would stand. I would then attach the action wrench using a thin leather shim and more powdered sugar and torque it to around 125 foot pounds. Then using a 4 pound brass hammer I made specifically for the job I would hit the end of the action wrench handle as hard as I could swing. Usually one whack did the trick. In addition to the aforementioned Wheeler, I have used vises from Brownells, a Short Action Customs, a Viper and another commercial one who’s name escapes me along with a couple of shop made ones. The Viper is a pretty nice vise but I think it’s a little light for removing factory barrels, the rest of them will get the job done. In all the barrels I’ve removed over the years I can only think of a couple that didn’t succumb to the above process. If the barrel you’re removing is not something you want to keep then you can just make a cut .010 or so in front of the action with a parting tool on a lathe and they will unscrew easily.
