Fly press stand for the fab shop

Here at gun lab everything is generally made or re-purposed to go with the project at hand. I have a small fly press that I obtained at a yard sale for real cheap. I wanted to use it in the fab shop for punching hole and pressing designs. So it was time to spend some time making a stand for it.

I found an old lathe that some one had dumped in a field. After some checking in the surrounding businesses t was determined that it was just a midnight drop off. I took my old truck and trailer over and picked it up, much to the appreciation of the property owner. and drug it home. It set  in the fab shop for a number of years where it gathered dust and rust and generally was in the way. There was no fixing it and bringing it back to it’s glory days so the next best thing to do with is to re-purpose it.

I took it apart and saved the gears and anything that I could use.

This leads me to the base for the fly press.

When we made the hydraulic forging press the center plate was saved.

That material was then cut for the base.

A nice fit to the base.

two extra holes were located and drilled.

And the plate bolted to the base.

Next a piece of scrap from the hydraulic power pack for the big press was machined to hole the fly press and allow an opening to drop out the slugs.

The press was mounted to verify proper alignment.

A piece of 6″ pipe that I managed to scrounge up was cut to length and welded to the top plate.

After welding up the top and bottom plates the fly press is mounted ans ready for use once the special tooling is made.

Another weekend project completed.

This is it setting next to the forging hammer I built.