Ceilidh ... Ok, I'll go next...

Hydraulic Die Forming Forum

Ok, I'll go next...

Taking up where you Lee left off, I'm Phil Poirier, live and work in Taos, NM, as a goldsmith since 1973. I got into all this press stuff when Mark Paisin wrote his article for the "Metalsmith Papers",
( I think it was published in 1979), my first press was the front end of my Ford truck, using a 5 ton hydraulic jack and pressing 'til it lifted the front end (with the 460 engine I figured I could press a couple thousand pounds).
Come winter it was a pain in the snow.....so i built my first press frame.
Then we of the New Mexico Metalsmiths Assoc. convinced Mark Paisin to give us a workshop out here in Albuquerque. This was my first intro to the Bonny Doon press, with all its' bells and whistles, I must have put my name on 2/3rds of the tools he had brought, needed a bigger truck to get it all home...
20 tons was cool,
but if you can do this much with twenty tons ...what would 50 tons do?
So, Lee put together a package for me, so I'm now using a 50 ton electric which is quite a dream.
This last year I've spent a great deal of time developing "draw dies" to raise up vessels from sheet, I've got quite a lot of scrap metal now from experiments that went south, but I'm at the point now where everything is working incredibly well, I'll now include a link so you can all see the results....

www.newmex.com/gold/shoptalk.htm

Who's next?

Thu Jun 17