Pics of Squaring Dies for power hammers wanted

[windancer]

Will those folks who use squaring dies post some pics for me?

I am doing a little larger stock and finding a need to re-square periodically.

Will get better at this but for now the stock is too much money to just throw in the scrap pile :)

Thanks in advance

Dave

 

 

[knots]

How bout this ? However I think these would be more applicable to a press than a power hammer. Got my first power hammer in 1982 and have never seen such dies used in one. For dies you want the most versitile mulipurpose tool because changing dies is such a pain. On the other hand if you had a press in addition to your power hammer ------.

http://www.dfoggknives.com/Dies.htm

[Jim Coke]

Greetings Dave,

 

The only true answer is to have more than one power hammer ..   Myself I am lucky and have a KA-75 with flat dies..   This will open a can of worms butttt I will toss it to you....   When drawing out a large bar I found that if you work the bar and than ... wait of 10 seconds or so to turn it 90 degrees. The stock will heat soak ..  I think this has to do with the stock to bottom die contact and the lesser contact with the top die..  I have tried it many times and It seems to keep the draw out more square longer..  I guess this will depend on your power hammer , speed , .  This is also true when working on the anvil...   I am sure this will bring up a lot of input from others.

 

Forge on and make beautiful things

 

Jim  

[peacock]

Jim I agree about the contact time with the lower die.  I do 1/2 my draw then turn 180, do the other 1/2 of that plane then turn 90 and repeate the process.  When we turn 90 and hammer right away the sid e that was on the bottom die is a little cooler and does not move as much creating the out of square.

The real solution is a bigger hammer. If we have a large enough hammer to forge completly thru the stock the sides 90 degrees from the dies wil bulge out becoming somewhat round then you can turn the stock and set it on the die on the rounded sides to correct the out of square without having to hit the corner. As you get close to the desired size you hit with lighter blows to keep the sides from bulging.  The for going is the gospel according to Clifton Ralph.

[Jim Coke]

Greetings Peacock and Dave,

 

Yep we are saying the same thing..  I too listened to Clifton years ago and it sure is true...  Gospel !!!!!!!   The same is true on the anvil forging.  I have seen many smiths do the 90 dance and spend more time in correction than need be...

 

Have a wonderful day,

 

 

forge on and make beautiful things..       Jim

[781]

I always thought it was gospel according to Phil Cox. Phil is demonstrating next weekend in central Wisconsin.

[plain ol Bill]

Wish I could have been more help today Dave. At least after I beat on it some it had a different shape <_< .

[windancer]

I contacted Jeff to try to buy the material for the dies.

Thanks to all for the input.

 

Bill, I appreciate your try today. That piece is definitely a different shape now :)  No worse than it was- once it is broken you can't make it more broken. It is now under my welding table waiting for squaring dies or many, many more hours practice with the air hammer :)

 

I have been working with RR spikes [many, many, many] for the past month. I notice after drawing them out and 8 sided and then rounding, finishing the final rounding with a hand hammer, that the material is actually twisted some. After the first time having the cold shuts crack and fall off I am being much more careful to stop and clean them up right away.

 

I do the hit-turn just on two sides. When I try to do all four sides I end up with the diamond shape, for which I have no cure as yet.

 

I am going to make a spring swage for the squaring dies- WAY too time consuming to swap dies more than once every six months :)

 

Again- thanks. Would still likt to see some pics, tho- hint, hint.

 

Dave

[nonjic]

If I forge a rhomboid on the power hammer I just forge it back square by working a bit more biased on the corners.

 

When doing complex patternwelded stuff that has to be square for the next step of welding you find a way to make it right!

 

Ive heard a coupe of people say that spring hammers with loose guides are more likely to forge a diamond instead of a square as the top die has a slight 'see-saw' side to side motion.

[SJS]

Clifton would also say your half a bubble off level, one of the Damascus guys was complaining to Clifton that he was forging diamonds instead of squares on his small air hammer, and Clifton said your half a bubble off of level and that if you were dead level to the die and square to the front edge you will spit it out straight. He is also found of saying "feed the baby" meaning let the edge of the die do the work, don't bite off more than you can chew with the hammer you have... Clifton normally advocates for the biggest flat dies you can put on your hammer, but for smaller air hammers smaller dies seem to be more efficient. I have 3x5 flat dies on my 75# Bull, and I really need the smaller dies for most work, otherwise it was just too slow to draw material out. Too big a bit for my baby, and too much die as a heat sink... And a bigger hammer is a really good answer too. A Nazel B4 or larger would be sufficient:-)

[forgemaster]

"Squaring dies?", as the late great Grant Sarver would have said "squaring dies, we don't need no stinking squaring dies" "just learn to forge the suckers without getting a high corner".  Your problem is going to be that you will almost have to have one set of dies for every size you want to make (just like swages).  Just keep your work square, its called experience.  Do you still have training wheels for your pushbike too?

 

Phil

[windancer]

Forgemaster-

Yeah, yeah I know. all you guys with years of experience with power hammers forget what it was like at first. Grant shared many of his opinions [most of them critical] with me over the last few years before he left us.

Different people learn at different rates.

I didn't see pics of your squaring dies in your post- did you misread the title?

I am learning as fast as I can and absorbing as much as I can from suggestions.

That is all I can do :)

Dave

[basher]

I have always used squaring dies under a press, I think the level of construction needed to have them survive power hammer use would make them a heavy solid forging.

 squaring dies are just 2 v blocks to squash the long side of the diamond in, I have used press ones that have nested angle iron in them so that you can add a smaller piece of angle to work smaller material.

 I would be interested in any more information about not forging diamonds on a power hammer as it a re occurring problem I have on all my smaller hammers despite 20 years of obviously doing it wrong. I can fix it just fine but avoiding it would be great to know.

[forgemaster]

Oh I can still get a high corner (diamond) easy as the next guy, the trick is getting it back square, there are various ways, if you are way still oversize, flatten the stock a bit more than usual to get a rounded edge then when you roll the steel up onto the rounded edge you will have a good chance to get it square again (as like with a round back you can adjust the angle on the round surface). And I usually find if I go 90 degrees back and forth I can get a high corner pretty quickly, I find if I go 90 degrees and keep going round in a 360 I will cancel out my mistakes, as it seems that you will normally make the same angle error back and forth, where as that doesnt seem to happen in 360 degrees.  The last resort is to put the job up on its corner and take a run along it to square it, the trick here is to realise that you are out of square before you are near your finishing size, otherwise you now have a square with 2 corners missing.  As you run along the edge try to hold the job over on the angle that it just is able to forge on without twisting back down onto the die.  Once you have a high corner and are down to size holding your job  of the bottom block on about a 5 degree angle will not accomplish anything, other than to make your wrist sore.  As I say to apprentices "son there is 250kg of good british steel that is going to twist that job back onto the bottom die, and you are not strong enough to resist it"," make sure you are square before the job gets down that close to finished size."

 

Its hard to explain this sort of stuff in words, I'll see if I can get some video of correcting high corners tomorrow and post it here (same as I did for danger dillon for his rolling discs with shingling tongs).  Watch this space.

 

Phil

[peacock]

I agree with all that forgemaster said. I will say this if you can move the ram of your hammer side to side or front to back by hand when it is near the bottom of the stroke it can be very difficult to get a square forgeing. The methods that me and the other Phil & others describe are dependant on hammers with tight ram guides. die faces that are flat and true with each other in every plane.  If your hammer is not in the best possible condition you CANNOT do quality work,  lthe less experence you have the better your hammer needs to be.  The ram will take the path of least resistance. If the guides are loose the ram will move one way or the other and once it makes one sidewise movement each one after that only makes it worse.  Turning your work end for end will help if done early and often.  

[basher]

As I said correcting is quite easy . however if you are working damascus by the time you are correcting you have smeared the pattern from one side over the other 90deg face . and squaring dies help prevent this a little.

 Im always happy to see videos of how other people work.........lots to learn.

[windancer]

It is in the high 80s here this week. Can't stand the added heat of the forge. I will get out there early in the AM tomorrow and try out the 'bubble' idea, taking much greater care with flat, level and square to the dies on each strike. I started yesterday with flipping the stock 180 instead of 90 degrees for the second strike on each flat.

 

My hammer is a Kinyon style with I think about a 75 pound ram. The guides are good and flat, with almost NO play either direction.

 

I will check and see if I can find anything on YouTube about correcting out of square. Correcting it should be the same for hand or power hammer, right?

 

Again, I appreciate all the help. I remember years ago learning tennis feeling like I would never be able to follow all the things that go into one strike on the ball- start to the ball as soon as the opponent hits it; feet in position, weight balanced, hips square to the net, transfer your weight to the back foot, get your racquet back as quickly as possible, open the racquet face, watch the ball until it leaves the racquet. hit completely through the ball...... looks like this is very like that from my end now,

 

Thanks

Dave

[Ric Furrer]

Phil,

As Owen says...pattern-weld is different as getting out of square is bad and overforging the corners to bring it back is worse.

You have less time to move the stock, less powerful blows must be used and other factors come into play beyond normal forging of single steel billets....unless you like to start over or continue trying to weld at every heat.

It simply is a different animal.

 

Dave,

I suggest angle iron under the press and solid blocks under the hammer (depending upon size of the hammer...a 50 weight can be used with angle iron dies). Support the angles how you see fit...doubling them up, bracing them with other angle on wither side turned 180 degrees 90 degree solids welded to a plate etc.

 

You can forge with them or use them to bring the billet back to true...I have sets from 6" down to 3/16" in small increments and use them often.

 

Ric

[Alan Evans]

I usually keep things symmetrical by turning 180˚ then 90˚ then 180˚ and etc. but had not actually thought about the chilled surface mentioned by Clifton to realise why it worked.

 

I gave up trying to flick back and forth between blows when I started forging heavier bars, just seemed like a lot of unecessary effort. The other advantage of just working one side at a time is the ease with which you can read the regularity of the taper from the width of the top flat.

 

I was going to suggest the diamond correction system that Forgemaster described of flattening hard one way and rocking on the radiused edges but he has already done that! Useful for taking out a twist also...

 

My other thought was how useful and attractive (in this context) a chamfer was...I realise that would not be appropriate for damascus billets and probably not for the elements Forgemaster is producing to spec. but great for my work!

 

Alan

[windancer]

This is all helpful stuff for me. I appreciate the time everyone is taking from theor own work to help me with mine.

Still too hot to light the forge.

Dave

[Jim Coke]

Greetings Dave, 

 

And to think all you ask for is pictures of square dies...  I knew I would open up your request...   LOL..

  Look at the tool Bob Bergman offers ...  Half round on a stick ..  I made one years ago for the treadle hammer BUTTT I use it on both power hammers as well..  Works well for tapers and such...

 

Forge on and make beautiful things

 

Jim

[windancer]

Jim, did a search for Bob Bergman and could not locate the tool.... another hint, please?

Dave

[windancer]

Found his web site but found no tools there.....

[Will. K.]

I think he is referring to old world anvils website showing the power hammer tooling they sell

[Jim Coke]

Greetings Will/Dave,

 

Yep that's it...  Sorry I thought everyone knew Bob...   Bob and Terry sell those tools for the KA 75.    Great Folk,

 

Jim