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Old 10-12-2008, 05:44 AM
paul66 paul66 is offline
Steel
 
Join Date: May 2008
Location: Australia Vic Horsham
Posts: 73
Default Pauls Tutorial:Making a Punch

(If you would like to comment on this submission, you may do so by posting a reply in this thread. Thanks! Kaitlin



This should be titled NOT GETTING ANY WORK DONE (I am easily distracted)
While looking for more copper wire, which I remember drawing up some in my trade school years, I came across a stamp I had made.
At trade school there was a week of graphic drawing and part or that was coming up with your monogram in some design, two of the designs I thought could be made up into a makers stamp, and while at work one day (easily distracted ) I fashioned one from a nail. This was carved held in a vice, using a hand loop small dental drills and a setting graver.Although it turned out OK it is totally unusable as it is too large for most projects and not sharp enough, but it was at the limit of my tools at the time, it did however earn me a credit at trade school.

So here I am several years later looking fondly at my stamp, thinking I should now be able to make a better smaller one, lets give it a go.



First step was to locate some 3'' 3.5mm dia plain steel nails, you dont want galvanized or stainless steel, as these will need different heat treatments, plain steel is fairly easy to heat treat and experiment with. I am no expert but I routinely re-temper setting punches and other tools, There is plenty of advice on the net for specifics but mostly is just a case of experimenting and giving it a go, If you a working on old tools that are not much good, you have nothing to loose.

I started by heated up the nail with a torch to a bright red color and let air cool, this will soften the metal and make it workable, I then cut off the pointed end and filed the end to give a nice flat working surface.
A handy hint that I use to test a tools metals hardness is to just rub lightly a file across the metals surface, if it glides over it like glass the metal is hard, if it wants to bite in the metal is annealed and soft, this is handy when you a tempering a metal as you can check if you have gone too far and softened it again.




I found my original art work for my punch ideas, I decided to try and cut out the circular design this time, and plan to make the punch about 2mm wide.



I am going to outline the design on the nail using my gravergraph machine, This has a scale reduction of up to 6 times.
As I want the punch to be around 2mm, I scaled my design down to 12mm wide, also remembering to reverse the design, as the punch has to be in reverse, to print the right way.



well that all the freedom I could afford today, will try to finish this up in the next day or so

Yours Paul