Making Dies for the Blacksmithing Hydraulic

@rhettbruck and I are considering making some new dies for our blacksmithing hydraulic press. The base plate is 4"x8" 1/4" plate. The dies rest atop the plate. Here are some dies from the manufacturer of the press.

The dies that we have currently have been mishapen so the first order of business might be to refurb them, but I think it would be cool to mill some new ones, too. Here are some examples:

1-4 texaswindie





Rounding die

My question for the machinist in this group are how hard would it be to mill the different dies?
I know that there is also some welding involved @Mrholthaus, @FriendlyTitan.

Lastly, I think there is some 1/4 steel plate in the metal shop. @rlisbona do you think we could take some from it for blacksmithing to make dies? The plate is 8" wide I believe.

The priority would be to make another set of flat dies. We might need to acquire some 5160 metal to make them, but as long as only hot metal is pressed almost any metal should work.

1/4" seems too thin for backing plates to me, I think I saw something thicker than that last night. We are working on a new welding table, see what you can find in our metal pile and then check with @Mrholthaus . I have some 3/8x6" C channel I could donate

I think the slots are 1/4 “ but they are sometimes stacked. I’ll remeasure next time I’m in.


got some great steel for some dies, is anyone here that can change the dies to i can soften this steel?

This would be a very straight forward job for the haas but I don’t think it’s alive yet.
The straight line die would be possible on the knee mills.

Yeah the welding should be fairly straight forward and easy. Not too sure about milling it out though. I do agree that it needs to be a bigger base plate. Probably 3/8ths?

I think 3/8 “ plate is a better choice but you can see some have stacked the plating, too. I’ll measure more carefully when I’m in next.

Anyone else should feel free to measure, too if you like.

There is a piece of 1/2 on the floor. It’s been plasma cut in both directions but you could salvage some of it