A bladesmith friend of mine asked me if I could rebuild his forging press and here are some photos of how it came out. Sorry I don't have any before pictures but they some how got erased from the camera. Just a suggestion, don't let you kids borrow your camera ;) . The press was first built from the James Batson plans and had the pump, motor, tank was on a seperate cart and the press sat on the floor mounted on a plate. If you look at the photos all the rusty material was previously there. He wanted the press to be mobile so I cut the plate off the bottom and mounted the press, tank, motor and pump, on a platform with expanded metal and casters. He also did not like the hand control lever so I borrowed a play out of Randy McDaniel's play book and made the foot levers. The original press had no plattens on it and all the dies were bolt on. So I made plattens, a set of quick change die holders and new set of dies. He was very concerned about fire, so the hydraulic hoses have fire sleeves on them and a shroud to cover the tank and motor from hot metal and mill scale. Now it's ready to go back to work.

Great job, Harold! What is it? About a 20 ton? Only thing I didn't figure was that tonage is per square inch so if you try to push something like a 2" x 2" you've lost a lot of power. Most of the time it will still do a great job. More than enough for a knife maker. Good to see all of the safety you put into it. Now he can have fun making tooling for it!

Thanks Randy! Yes it is a 20 ton.

That is a nice looking press.