ForgeDad

Here’s the one I enable. Thus my name ForgeDad. We had what I call “Forged in fire garage edition “ this weekend 

We were able to have some friends forge with us as well. One friend brought his NARB forge. We want one really bad. It was AWESOME! 

Biggun gave a nice description. Generally speaking on a blanking cut the space between the punch and die would be 10% of material thickness. In the case of this thread 12ga or .105” it would be .010” per side. As an example if we were to make a .500 square hole the die would be a.520 square 

As a second point to put a visual on Frosty’s number of .0001. The average piece of notebook paper is.004 thick. We would need to slice the paper into 40 thinner pieces to get .0001

Even as a professional tool maker I almost never work in that kind of tolerance.

Frosty, did you add that many zeros on accident or did you truly mean .0001 clearance?

Before we get to worried about what steel to use for the blade some more important things for the success of the project. What equipment do you have available to use?  Are you able to work down to tolerances of .001?  What is the tonnage your press can generate? 

But back to your original question a good heat treat of 55Rc or better will work fine. A2 would be the choice in my shop. H13 is a high performance option for shock resistance better than S7  

Interesting point Holland Anvil here in West Michigan uses cast H13 for their anvils

Now im rambling  sorry.......

I’m a journeyman tool and die maker. There are many better steel types better for cutting than H13. It really depends on what you want to cut. Seems simple but as we have come to learn steel can be fickle. Happy to help where I can. 

This is what I was able to do with an equivalent 5 hp motor 

That is a 1” grade8 bolt 

I’m just new and having a hard time thinking the hundreds of dollars just to get there is worth it. Would someone help me understand what I am missing