Most of the punches are either usable or completely broken. - GWE

Jon Elson wrote:



Grant Erwin wrote:

I got around to inventorying the punches and dies that came with my
'80-ish ironworker. It looks like this unit punched a lot of 3/8"
and 1/2" holes as there are a lot of dies in those sizes that are
very beat up.

Logic says if I have a 3/8" die that is all beat up around the hole,
that I should be able to machine it larger, to make a usable e.g. 1/2"
die. Is this possible? I see that a die is about 11 bucks, so it
isn't worth spending a ton of time on. It's just that I seem to have
about 10 unusable dies, and I'd like to use them.


Sure, you should be able to do this. Be warned that the dies are
hardened, and so even carbide tools may find it very hard to cut.
You may want to anneal the dies first, cur to size and then harden
again. A fair amount of work to do it right. If you were just going to
open them up a few thousandths, you could grind them in the hardened
state.

What condition are the punches in?

Jon