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Ed Caffrey's Workshop Talk to Ed Caffrey ... The Montana Bladesmith! Tips, tricks and more from an ABS Mastersmith.

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Old 05-12-2005, 06:00 AM
potterknives potterknives is offline
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Round forming dies

Ed I have a guestion about forming dies to round stock from square stock .I need to make some dies for my 150 ton hyd. press {the Blue Mule} I've made drawing and flatting dies.but have no ideal which would be the best way to go from square to round.What would be the easiest and best way ? The first batch of damascus that i made turned out great ,the press worked super.I started with 15 layers of 1095 and L-6 and ended up after the folding with 360 layers.and i tried to forge it round the best that i could,and then twisted it and then flatting it I think it turned out good.Thanks in advance


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Old 05-12-2005, 07:51 AM
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Ed Caffrey Ed Caffrey is offline
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The easiest way that I've found to make a set of round dies is to take two pieces of 1" or thicker die stock (I just use A-36 hot roll) X whatever length and width you need. (since the press concentrates so much force, you'll have to use really heavy stock to prevent the dies from collapsing) Place the two pieces on top of each other, then arc/wire feed weld them together with one weld bead on each end. Put those welded together pieces in a drill press vise with the seam between the two pieces facing up. Using whatever sized drill bit that you want the final size of the damascus stock to be, drill a hole all the way through, using the center seam where the two pieces meet as the center of the drilled hole. Now, grind the weld off each end to seperate the pieces, and you will have half the diameter on each die. MAKE SURE you heavily radius out the front and back edges of the hole, otherwise your material will get stuck in the dies during forging. I have several sets of dies like this that I made for the power hammers. I don't really like to use rounding dies in the press, as it just doesn't work as well as doing it in the power hammer. You have to be fairly close to the correct dimensions using the press, otherwise the material will "squish" out between the flat portions on the press dies and you'll wind up with "wings" on your bar that are hard to correct. I'll try to get a photo or two of my rounding dies and post them up on this thread.


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Old 05-12-2005, 09:28 AM
potterknives potterknives is offline
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Thanks Ed that is a lot of help.I do belive I can do that.But you make it so easy don't know why i didn't think of it.But I guess thats what it is all about .Helping each other.Thanks A Bunch.Billy


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Old 05-29-2005, 06:36 AM
winstonknives winstonknives is offline
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I made my rounding dies just as Ed described. To prevent the "wings" on the round bar always give the work piece about a 1/4 turn as you advance it in the dies. You will have to go back to the end and continue pressing and turning to get it nice and round. This can all be done in one heat but you have to get on with it.


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Old 05-29-2005, 10:48 AM
plain ol Bill plain ol Bill is offline
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I have made dies as Ed describes for my press also. I made the hole eliptical in shape (relieved the sides as well as the front an rear of the holes). They work OK if you are fairly close in size before using them. I have gotten to the point I generally just put a spacer block between the flat dies and just keep rotating the work as it progresses through the dies. Like Ed mentioned the rounding dies seem to work better under a hammer than a press.


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