HWHII Posted February 1, 2013 Share Posted February 1, 2013 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Randy Posted February 2, 2013 Share Posted February 2, 2013 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! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HWHII Posted February 2, 2013 Author Share Posted February 2, 2013 Thanks Randy! Yes it is a 20 ton. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MG-42 Posted June 30, 2013 Share Posted June 30, 2013 That is a nice looking press. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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