Joe Henry

The guy at old world anvils really knows his stuff. He has experience using all the sizes he sells. I sent him an email, and he was able to answer my question pretty good. This was his response. ------- We normally use a #5 here in our shop and we use it almost every day so we have a lot of practical experience with fly presses. We do change sizes as we sell out of different presses so we have used them all and I have found that the 4, 5 and 6 are the most versatile and I personally would pick a 4 or 5 over a 6. The 6 will give you more power when you need it but I have fou

Thank you all for your help so far I'm leaning toward the #5 right now because its less than 2/3 the price of the #6. Would the #5 at least do significantly more work than a 4lb hammer at the anvil? 99% of the work I think I will do with it will be pretty light stuff. like forging 3/8" tenons, fullering, butchering, punching through 1/2" bar, chiseling lines, and splitting 1/2" bars. I'm not going to be selling hammers so it doesn't need to be super efficient at Punching eyes, but it would be nice if it had that capability, and could do it with more ease than I can do it at

I'm looking at fly presses but I don't know what size to get. I'm looking at the ones from Old World Anvils/Pieh Tool. Mostly I'm trying to decide between the #5 or the number #6. I have never used a fly press before so I don't really know what they're capable of, and I cant find any information comparing the size of the machine with the amount of work it can do. I Know the #5 and #6 are supposed to roughly correspond with the tons of force it can exert but I have no idea what that translates to in metal moving abilities. Would a #5 pretty much do everything a #6 can do just with a few more sw