I've got the bug for a press after seeing the hydraulic press that the club bought recently, but I don't have $3,500 lying loose at the moment.  Would a 20 ton air-assisted hydraulic bottle jack do the job if mounted in a press frame?  I have a large press I built 35 years ago, and adapting that jack to the press can be done in short order.  One drawback is having to manually release pressure on the jack each time to get it to retract.  For the difference in price, I think I can handle that inconvenience.

I know folks have experimented with that in the past, and hopefully someone with hands-on experience will chime in.  I've done some research on it and I believe the consensus is that the major drawback for the air over hydraulic presses is actuation speed.  Better than nothing, but hardly the equal of a true hydraulic forging press.

OK, thanks.  I'll probably give it a shot.  If nothing else it will be better than the manual bottle jack I've been using on the press for other things.

As you said, Latticino, it's slow.  But it's faster than trying to move heavy metal with a hammer.  A bigger/better compressor might improve the speed a little.  Even having to turn the valve to retract the jack, I can still get 2 - 3 squeezes to a heat if I work fast.  I'm working on a piece of 3/4" coil spring in hopes of turning it into a knife-shaped object.  So far I have the blade portion down to about 3/8" thick after working for about an hour this afternoon.

Agreed it can work, just no where near as well as a real hydraulic press.  Not sure it is that much faster than a hammer though if it takes you a full hour to turn a 3/4" coil into 3/8" flat stock (depending on length of course).  

I promise I am not mental, but have you thought about using a cheap $120 jack hammer  to actuate the hydraulic jacking leaver. It would take a bit of handle reinforcement and it would have to be choked up on the handle quite a bit but it would make for infinity faster jacking. Loony or feasible?

 

There is no substitute for a proper hydraulic cylinder and pump and air assisted is sort of slow.

What about hydraulic assisted? All you need is an electric motor and a hydraulic pump and both can be had second hand. Needs a bit know how and safety measures but should be much faster with the appropriate flow. 

If budget is a proplem have you looked at a rolling mill they could be made for a small amount with some talented scrounging and from what I have seen of them they work very well

I just saw one of those at Harbor Freight and wondered the same thing.  I can see them being slow.  

How bought using a log splitter as the heart?

 

This topic has perfect timing. Last time I posted here was in 2008 about this very same thing. I ended up building one back in 2008 and in fact I'm still using it but not by choice. I have a few pros and cons to say about this press. First pro is that it's very cheep to build and does ok with forging if your looking for somthing to help move steel/damascus faster then you can by hand. I have used my press a lot and I mean a lot and don't know where I would be right now with out it. All that being said it is slow and has pushed me to building a full size press. I just don't have the time to waste waiting for this press any more. My shop has become quite busy and the press is the bottle neck now. It's the one tool in my shop that every time I use I feal like such a newb and can't believe it's still around. But if your just using it to make damascus for small knives here and there then it's ok. It also does not take up much of any space. This was a big thing for me in the past. All my shops in the past where tiny but we bought a house last year and built a 20x40 dedicated knife shop this year.

  A larger air compressor will not make it run faster unless your compressor is so small that it can't hold pressure while pressing. As air pressure goes down so does the speed and force. You want to extend the release screw out into a T handle and mount the air valve on the floor so you can operate it with your foot. I have made a TON of damascus with mine and yes it's slow but much better then nothing.  I weld up rather large billets with mine and the larger the billet the easier becaus of the mass of hot steel. Once you start getting thinner it gets slower. With flat dies you just take tiny bites around 1/2" at a time. Drawing dies work good as well but thy need to be small to really move the steel. Mine are made from 1" Diamater HSS endmill shanks welded to 1/4" plates. But thy are really aggressive and distort the damascus pattern so use them accordingly.

Hope my insight helped you out. If you have any questions I'm more then willing to help. I'm going to be around a lot more in the future. Looking for other forums to spend my time. Not saying anything bad about the forum I have been on sence 2006 (I think). I just find that this place has more like minded people like my self.