tinbender Posted March 6, 2009 Share Posted March 6, 2009 Hello Folks, Has anyone tried drilling or punching holes and using a square/rectangular drift in brass? Heated or annealed? The object is to make precision holes without filework. Thanks Dave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jeremy k Posted March 6, 2009 Share Posted March 6, 2009 If that's what you want to do, then I would use a broach - nice square hole to the size you want - just depends on how far you press the broach through. - JK Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John B Posted March 6, 2009 Share Posted March 6, 2009 How many holes? What size holes? What size of material? (Size of material will determine how it can be accessed to punch, I am thinking of throat depth on a fly press or mandrel type press) I have used punches and dies but some cost is involved which is why I posed the questions as you have to amortise the costs to justify expense for the type of tooling you will make or purchase Whitney punches can be used for producing holes in brass sheet, or there are other methods/tools for producing punched holes in sheet materials. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tinbender Posted March 7, 2009 Author Share Posted March 7, 2009 No specific size piece in the original thought, could be a knife blade guard or something larger perhaps? In my mind it follows the hole drifted in say a steel hammer head which with a lot of work can be done by hand with good results or it can be done with a press to ease the workload. Just as I wouldn't drill a hole and file it to handle dimensions for a hammer it seemed a simple hand forming concept could be applied to a brass item. Nothing showed on a search so just thought I would ask. My first job long ago was at a silversmithing shop and I don't have trouble with filework. I like to forge my blades instead of stock removal and am just extending the concept to another part of the project. I'll play with it a little and see where it goes, thanks for looking. Dave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John B Posted March 7, 2009 Share Posted March 7, 2009 If it is only a one off, have a go at punching it through as you would steel, with a square punch with very sharp edges, start on a solid steel block until punch goes solid, then flip over and drive through, over a close fitting bolster this should shear off the slug pretty cleanly Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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