I’m not at work today so that I can hang out with my good friend and ABS Mastersmith J. Neilson who will be down visiting my  other good friend  and neighbor Butch Harner. Additionally, I will be getting the rest of the steel I need to get my first few sets of dies up and running from the great folks at Riley Welding here in Hanover. With any luck I’ll be up and forging again in no time!

So, the first sets of dies that I’m making are pretty much the basic “required” set in my mind. There will be:

• Drawing Dies (which I do a little differently than some due to my exposure to flat die forging on power hammers)
• Flattening/Straightening dies
• 2″ Squaring dies
• 1″ and1/2″ combo squaring dies

The reasons for these being the required set are pretty simple. First off, you need to be able to draw steel out and straighten it, so the first two should make perfect sense. Second, re-squaring things when they’ve gone a little cockeyed can be a huge time saver. I also need to work up a functional hot cutting setup since the piece of small gauge RR track I was using for this before went with my last press.  Assuming these sets go well, some steel will get made and then I’ll get on to some more dies. The list of other dies I want continues to grow, but looks something like:

• 3″ Squaring dies
• 4″ Squaring dies (once the new forge is done)
• 3/8″ and 1/4″ Combination Laddering Dies
• Raindrop Dies
• Rounding Dies with various sizes of round holes to work with
• “Texas Wind” or something similar
• Some various “olde tyme” patterning dies similar to what were used in Solingen in times past
• Other off-the-wall, half-baked things floating around in my head.

I’m going to have to build a decent sized table to hold all of these for sure. Odds are that it will be built over the pump and tank of the press. That way the space they take up right next to the press won’t be entirely wasted. I also get the feeling I’m going to need to be shopping for a decent MIG/TIG welder sometime soon. All I have right now is a stick welder which I’m passable  with, but I’d prefer to have the versatility of a wirefeed as well. Oh, and a TIG while I’m at it for doing all of my Ferry Flip setups that I pay the welding shop for right now…