Here I am getting ready to forge. You can’t be too safe! Also a normal picture of me and Derek.

 
This is the $45 forge press. I made it using an eight-ton hydraulic jack, three railroad rail plates, some all-thread rod, and a few nuts. If I’m trying to weld up a billet that’s not as thick as the nuts under the top plate, I have to use the round stainless plate seen in the photo to make up the distance. On a larger billet, I would not use it.

  
We used an old 64 inch metal cutting band-saw blade and metal strapping that I found at a construction site down the road as the material in our damascus. We started off with two 4 1/2 inch billets consisting of eleven layers each. We alternated them in the forge and press until we got both of them welded up. As the billet was getting up to heat in the forge, I used a propane torch to heat up the top rail plate. This keeps the plate from sucking all of the heat out of the billet as soon as it comes into contact with it. I know the plate is hot enough when I can drop a drop of water on top of it and steam comes up.

  
In these photos I’m bringing the billet out of the forge, brushing it off, fluxing it, and putting it back into the forge. Pretty much your standard welding procedures. (Note that I’ve not documented all of the heating, pressing, cleaning, and fluxing what went on.)

 
Now I’m getting ready to put the billet under the press. My process here is to heat up the end of a bar of steel, quickly pull the billet out and place it on the heated bar, put the bar into the press, and get busy pumping.

  
Here are three pictures with the billet under the press. You have to work quickly after you place the billet in the press because it looses its heat quickly. I set the press open just enough to get the billet in prior to pulling the billet out of the fire. Once the billet is in the press, I’m able to get around five or six cranks on it before I can no longer pump the jack. By this time the billet has cooled and needs to go back into the forge.

Then I heat, clean, flux, and stick the billet back into the fire to bring it back up to welding heat. We were able to get the first weld made after taking it to the press twice. Once we got both of our billets welded, we let them cool, cleaned one side of each, wired them together, and went through the complete welding process again to end up with a 4 1/2 inch twenty two layer billet.

  
Here is Derek bringing the billet back up to heat and checking the welds on the anvil. All looked good. Now to the Little Giant to draw it out.

This is the finished product. We ended up with a 22 layer bar that measured 8 1/2 inches by 5/8 inch by 3/16 inch. It’s a small billet, but like I said earlier, we wanted some damascus for a couple of folder blades, and we wanted to test out how well the press was going to work.

In conclusion...

Derek and I had a great time, and the $45 forge press worked out great. The welds were perfect from one end to the other. I don’t believe the press will work for drawing a billet out, but it works great for welding. However, I’ve not tried it on a large billet. The press was kind of thrown together to see if it was going to work. Now that I know it will, I hope to come up with some ideas that may make it work better.

Any comments, ideas, and questions are welcome.
chris_crawford@yahoo.com