For folks with Uncle Al's press????

DanGraves

DanGraves

Knifemaker / Craftsman / Service Provider
Joined
Mar 5, 2006
Messages
2,696
I have one of his presses and when making Damascus it makes the billet smear the steel sideways. In other words if you had a deck of cards on a table and you pushed one edge it would make the cards still stacked but would no longer be a rectangle. I hope this is making sense. The billet ends up being a TRAPEZOID. Is anyone else having this problem and is there something I am doing wrong?
 
Dan check and make sure that fixed plate is square to the frame and then check to make sure that the ram side is square to that and that the ram is square to both. Sounds like something is way out of square to me.

Hope that makes sense and helps, you may have to get a hold of Uncle Al
 
Dan,

Run the press til the dies just touch. If they have a gap to one side, something needs to be re-aligned. Check out the die plates and the seating of the plates, etc., as Mike says.

If the dies meet up well, there may be a technique problem.

I have an Al's press, and it presses straight.

John
 
Its dark now and cant check the plates but the dies do mate up. I have thought that something is not square and from what both of you say I may have a problem. Thanks.
 
Hi Dan,

I have used a press where the plates lined up but they were out of square to the ram and frame and it did what sounds like yours is doing. It was making parallelograms. It won't take you long to check for squareness and make sure the plates are making full even contact.

Good luck and keep us posted.
 
Today I will be checking the squarness of the plates and looking at the dies more closely. Thanks.
 
Keeping billets square is a learned process, despite the equipment we use. :)

Sometimes it's not a bad thing to let a billet go where it wants to ;)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top