I am in the process of building a pin press,can anyone advise how powerful a jack i should use,planning on useing a bottle jack....thanks for any replys....

I never thought about using hydrolics for pins.
I think most use an arbor press or a pin punch and hammer.
I wouldn't think it would require any massive tonage or anything like than, just about any size jack would have ample power for pins, if you can figure out a way to use it.
I would be very interested in seeing how it worked, even though I havn't used pins in a while, now.(mostly screws)

I love the idea of finding a better way to do something. :)

A retired vise could do the job too...slower than an Arbor....but what da heck

I like this idea. I've been clamping my bolsters to the knife and trying to peen the pins off the corner of my vise with a hammer -- this is pretty unsatisfactory. I'd considered trying to press them in the vise but didn't think it'd have enough power. Maybe I'll cut off a couple of cheap punches and mount them across from each other in the vise and see if this works. If it's not strong enough jacks are cheap... Thanks for the great idea.

Dave

Pin presses are pictured in most of knife supply catalogs. By studying the pics you can build your own.