A collection of questions I have about punches

[Nathan Kraft]

I apologize if these are oft asked questions, but I have been looking for a couple days now and haven't been able to find the answers I need. I am looking to obtain my first punch and drift (or drifts). I believe I want a slot punch, but if anyone has suggestions please don't hold back.

1. I would like to buy a punch so I have one that I know is well made and has good geometry. However, I have not been able to find anyone online that sells slot punches. Does anyone know where I might buy one? Also what size should I get (I am planning to do simple beginner projects like bottle openers, etc.)?

2. If I must resort to making one, are there any rules/suggestions regarding geometry, steels, construction methods, etc? 

3. Regarding drifts: What sizes are good to have/commonly used? What are some of the recommendations for geometry, etc? Should I make them out of the same steel I make the punch out of? 

I am sure theres something else I'm missing, so if anyone thinks of any other information, it would be greatly appreciated.

[Glenn]

Like many things that come in sets, you end up using only a few.  Take drill bits for instance, when was the last time you used all the drills that were in the set ?

Figure out what you want to do, what size you want to use, and what shape you want to use.  Research the geometry of those tools for your needs.  It is not all that difficult to make them.  Using a known steel, you have the proper heat treating for that steel.  Using a general steel, you can guess at the heat treating and many times get close.

It is easier to make the punch, drift, chisel, etc than get into the car, drive to town, and spend an afternoon trying to find what you want in a particular size and shape.

Accept the fact that you can make things at your forge that are many times superior to what you can purchase.  Have faith in yourself and your ability.  Make a few mistakes as it is part of the learning experience.  

[Frazer]

Once I tried buying a set of punches from the box store and they bent in half on their first day.... As always I couldn't have said it better Glenn.

At least for me, half the fun of the forging process is making the tools for specific projects. If you can't make a long round taper or a chisel or a punch you're probably going to have a tough time making a bottle opener or whatever your end goal is. 

I'm going to speak generally and based on my limited experience, but very often with a lot of these top tools, being in the general ballpark as far as material/geometry goes will be good enough to get the job done. And sometimes the "textbook" geometry for a specific tool doesn't end up being what works best for your project.

I will say that on almost every tool I've made and kept around, with the exception of a few drifts, I'm just using spring steel. It's generally pretty easy to heat treat and is tough enough to withstand extended use. 

It's getting harder and harder to buy high quality tools without paying a premium for them and as far as blacksmithing tools go wouldn't know where to point you.

My only recommendation would be to take just as much care/attention when making the tool as you would when making the thing you plan to use it on. Especially when you're still figuring things out like me. Also, if you're like me and you tend to forget what you did, "that time you made that thing" write things down in your own words so you know what you did. Especially when something works really well or really poorly. 

Soon you'll have a whole bucket of tools and your main problem will become finding the one you know you already made 2 of and is around here somewhere...

 

[Nathan Kraft]

Alright, I give in. I’ll make my own LOL. So just so I know, I just basically pound the end down flat and tapered, heat treat, and do some final grinding to clean up to make the punch, right? Also the drift is just a straight section of on shape/size bar with either a chisel tip or a round taper?

[Goods]

A drift is typically a long smooth taper about 1/2 the total length of the tool. Then a smooth section the size of the desired finished hole or slightly larger to compensate for shrinkage when cooled about 3/8 total length. Final section is a taper to the struck end for the last 1/8 of the length. This final taper allows it to fall through the finished hole to avoid the need to grad another punch to drive if through. The cross section of the drift depends on you starting hole and shape of the finished hole (round, square diamond, hearts shaped...). You can use mild steel for drifts, but they won’t last long. I’ll often just make a quick mild steel drift for a project and just toss it into the repurpose bucket when done, just to keep in the rhythm rather than stopping and looking for the material to make more durable tool. Normalized spring steel should last a long time.

David

[swedefiddle]

Good Morning Nathan,

Purchase a book or 2, 'the Blacksmithing Primer' is one that I use for my classes. It explains in simple terms what and why. A Punch or a Drift is meant to be used working hot material, use a medium carbon steel. It you Heat Treat the Punch or Drift, it will be an exercise in learning how to Heat Treat. The bonus of the Heat Treatment will be gone when the heat of what you are working, absorbs/transfers to your Drift or Punch. There is no such thing as PERFECT, except in your eye. Use what material you can get and get on with Learning!!

Enjoy the Journey, there is no Simple Road. Unless you wish to keep it Simple.

Neil

[Irondragon Forge ClayWorks]

As Frazer & Glenn have said, I make both drifts and punches as needed for the job at hand. I make most from normalized 4130 sucker rod. Where you are, sucker rod should be easy to get. I got lucky in that someone had cut up 700 pounds of rod and put it in the scrap metal bin at the city I worked for and with permission it followed me home. I still have about 400 pounds left.

[Nathan Kraft]

What is sucker rod exactly? And where could I find it? 

[Glenn]

A sucker rod is a steel rod, typically between 25 and 30 feet (7 to 9 meters) in length, and threaded at both ends, used in the oil industry to join together the surface and downhole components of a reciprocating piston pump installed in an oil well. 

[arkie]

Very good, simple description! 

[George N. M.]

While sucker rod is used in oil wells it is also used anywhere a reciprocating pump is used, such as water wells with a manual lever pump or a wind water mill.  A person might check with well service companies to see what they might have in their scrap piles.

"Sucker rod" is actually a misnomer because reciprocating pumps do not "suck" in the sense of the liquid moving from a higher pressure point to a lower pressure point.  A reciprocating pump repeatedly lifts a column of liquid, usually water or oil, up a bore hole to the surface.

"By hammer and hand all arts do stand." 

[arkie]

Sucker rod got it's name from oil field hands who had no idea *what* kind of pump was in the well, LOL.  To them, it just helped "suck" the oil out....

There is a lot of oil field terminology that has a completely different meaning than what is in the real world.  Similar to "coke" in smithing is not what one usually thinks of in today's world.  We were at a demo one time, talking about solid fuel and when we were talking about coke vs. coal, we got a lot of unapproving looks from some folks.

[George N. M.]

Arkie:  I was once visiting my folks in Chicago and asked my mother for the Yellow Pages.  She asked me why I wanted it and I told her I wanted to look up forging supplies.  She was outraged because she took the falsifying meaning of "forging."  I had to explain that it was the working metal hot meaning.

"By hammer and hand all arts do stand."   

[anvil]

Lol, yea, check out the looks you get when you say "Blacksmiths do it better with coke, black coke that is!" 

[BillyBones]

Made my first set of slot punches from cold chisels. Just ground the chisel points off so they were flat rectangles. The best? Far from it but they got the job done. 

[ThomasPowers]

Sucker rod for oil wells  is generally a higher grade of steel than sucker rod for windmills/water wells.  If a rod breaks downhole in an oil well it's a lot more expensive to fish it out thousands of feet down and HUGELY expensive to drill a replacement well.  So better steel and cycled so as to not fatigue and crack---why so much of it is available for other uses. (Fencing is a common one out here)

A lot of windmills actually used wooden sucker rod with metal joints; I grab all the joint ends I can find at the scrapyard as they make great langets for pole arms..

You can often find worn/broken jackhammer bits at tool rental places free or cheap.  They too tend to be medium carbon steel and good for drifts as are car/truck axles. Also the better rock breaker bars---finding a damaged one at the scrapyard can make a heap of tooling.

For punches I like high alloy steels like H-13 or S-7 that stay hard even when hot---tempering temps are in the GLOWING range!  They are much harder to work and heat treat so NOT suggested as starting out materials.

Learn how to spark test scrap metals and so know what they may be good for!

Note: I need to buy a vehicle  can you tell me if the vehicle I need to buy needs to win Formula 1 races, or carry 16 passengers, or 16 tons of gravel, or cross open water?   Well it's hard for us to know what your slot punch will be used for too!   Light sheet metal? Heavy large stock for massive gates?, Tool making?  The more details you can provide when asking a question the more likely you are to get answers that apply to you and what you want to do.  Otherwise folks might assume you are wanting to do what they are doing.  We have a bunch of smiths here and so you can be sure some folks are doing some pretty strange things in very odd ways!

[Glenn]

Avoid sucker rods that have been used around sulphur.

[ThomasPowers]

Sour Gas wells, the sucker rod  absorbs hydrogen sulfide.

[George N. M.]

Thomas and Glenn;  That is interesting.  I did not know that.  Do you know if the sulphur/sulfides penetrate deeply into the metal or if it is just a near surface thing?  Still, that is a good to know factoid and may affect whether a person decides to use/acquire sucker rods from an area with sour gas production.

"By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

[BillyBones]

I hear a lot about using sucker rod and to avoid those that have been used in a sour well. How do we tell if the rod came from a sour well?  

[ThomasPowers]

I don't know the speed of penetration; but I do know one factor would be temperature! 

Like migration of other elements into steel it's not a sharp cut off but a fade.

Probably avoid it by odor except that H2S shuts down the odor receptors in your nose.  I used to have to run daily tests of H2S detectors on a well I was logging and you would mix up the solution but only get one wiff of it before you couldn't smell it till the next day.  (One reason it was so dangerous!)

[Frosty]

If you smell rotten eggs while you're walking up to the pile turn around. Yes? 

Is there a way to flush or clear H2S? When I worked for Tuboscope in the north slope we drifted then brushed rod from sour wells outside with respirator masks before rolling it in to run through the scope and magnaflux positives. The welding racks were very well ventilated and we still had welding shields that fit over respirators. 

Dead of winter, -50f and you could smell rod from a sour well driving past the rack. They were typically behind a gate with warning flags and tape. 

Tuboscope was a large company in the business so we had drums of stuff to clear H2S but I'd be very surprised if a garage blacksmith could even buy it due to cost and Hazmat requirements. 

Frosty The Lucky.

[George N. M.]

Billy:  Besides odor you could do several other things:  If you live in a gas producing area you could call some of the well service companies and ask about H2S in the area.  Or you could call the state geological survey and ask.  Or, if there are gas processing facilities in the area notice if there are piles of sulphur outside.  The sulphur is separated from the methane before the latter is put in to commercial pipe lines.  Different areas produce various degrees of sour or sweet gas depending on the geology.  I would avoid sucker rod from an area which consistently produces sour gas.

H2S is pretty dangerous stuff because, as Thomas says, in dangerous concentrations it paralyzes both the odor receptors and suppresses the breathing reflex.  I have heard stories of before H2S detectors were common of the whole crew on a drilling rig being wiped out when they hit a area of H2S concentration.  It is nothing to mess with.

From a blacksmith perspective I would worry about how any sulphur absorbed by steel would affect the properties of the steel.  I doubt that the steel could absorb enough to create a hazard in the shop other than a stink but it could do weird things to the steel.

"By hammer and hand all arts do stand." 

[ThomasPowers]

Sulfur makes steel hot short and was one of the major issues they had when trying to convert from smelting iron using charcoal to smelting it using coal.  Abraham Darby figured a way to do it by first coking the coal in the 1700's so about 500 years after they started using coal to forge with.  They still had problems and that is where the addition of Manganese to iron during smelting was figured out to scavenge sulfur from the mix.

(Phosphorus makes steel cold short and was more of a problem using the shallow bog iron ores back then.  You will notice that when you read a spec for a steel both Phosphorus and Sulfur are listed as mandatory to have *less* than the stated amount.)

[JHCC]

I always thought that sucker rod was the round bar stock available at the big box hardware stores: it's priced so high, only a sucker would pay that!

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