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I Forge Iron

Making new dies


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made one pass, then stated to go a bit deeper and the die slipped out of the vice completely ruining the carbide end mill. So my plan was to make a fixture to hold the die at the proper angle and get a new end mill to finish the job,



Instead of making a fixture, could you not reposition your vice 90 degrees and tilt the head on the milling machine to the required angle, then go in from the front as you should have enough travel to go halfway along the workpiece.
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Tilt the head sounds like a great option I will have too look into that for the next set of dies, (I myself don't know jack about mills)
Thanks for the input guys, I got tied up with all the mothers day stuff yesterday so I never got to forge anything but I will have some time after work this week, I gave it a dry run and it looks like every thing is good, I was not sure how tall to make the dies and they ended up being about 5/8'' taller

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I finally got around to digging out the other set of flat dies because I have a job to do where I have to taper a bunch of flat bars on edge drawing them out without edging them. The edges did not line up but I found another top die that did line up. The faces met in one corner with a significant gap opposite and I planned on machining the top die to match the bottom. I then decided I should take the time to true up the bottom die before machining the top one. Turned out the bottom die was out of parallel by about 3/32". After surfacing it and making it parallel the dies met pretty well, there was a small gap on the front probably about .015", I can live with this for now especially as the parts are tapered. I ground a 7/16" radius on the edges this evening and will be trying them out in the morning.

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Nice Clinton-
I was hoping to see pictures of the water jet too.

My mill is older than the hills- round shaft/no tilt.... But it works for me :D Mostly ;)



That's what I thought, I was looking at the brigeport at work and it does have the x-y tilt and I did not think that Fe's machine did
I can post some pictures of the water jet, we cut stuff every day, on saturday we put a 20' x 5' 1/2'' thick piece of 316 stainless on there to be cut for deck supports for a custom house, amazing machines the Foreman told me he has cut 6'' thick steel, the hardest stuff he worked was some kind of carbide panel that is used for armour on helicopters and such, took 45 min to cut 1 1/2'' and the stuff is only 3/8'' thick
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7/16" radius corner dies are working really well after this job is done and I have some time I am going to make them 1/2" I just wish they were a little wider 1/2" off each side takes them down to a 2 1/2" flat. Before I increase the radius I am going to clean up the face of the bottom die because I have been C cutting the ends of bars and my shoes are a little heavy.

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Did a little test run on the hammer last night, one of my buddies wanted a fire poker so I had a horse head that I made out of 3/4'' stock and I forged a taper and split the end for the poker, the hammer did a pretty good job I still need to do a little more work on the keeper for the top die it worked itself loose a couple of times. I am very happy with the dies, thank you Fewood for all the work that you put into them. This picture is a little fuzzy, it was getting dark by the time I finished working on this
post-10376-071408400 1273842144_thumb.jp

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Ironstein- it does make some noise but I doubt there are any dishes rattling, I am not pounding on stuff till 3 in the morning either
Fe- get hammering on that thing or I will have to come up there and break it in myself! (insert smiley face)

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