It occurs to me that this subject could be salvaged to someone's potential benefit with a bit more information. To those of you doing player work and need gasket sets, or otherwise needing to cut multiple copies of some relatively soft substance, you aren't necessarily at the mercy of some supplier for availability. This is especially true in one-off situations where you're faced with someone doing a custom run for you. Many of you out there have the necessary equipment and skills to make your own dies, so here's another tool in your arsenal. Rule die is available as a moderately hard steel blade (Google it) that comes in yard long sticks. I use 0.030" thick X nominally 1" wide single bevel die stock. I cut it with a Dremel cutoff wheel, and build the shape I want in a frame of 1/2" Delignit scrap, bedded in epoxy once I'm happy with the build. If it's a die I plan on using more in the future, I'll make an aluminum ejector plate to kick the gasket material out after punching. Otherwise, I'll fill it with repeated punch strokes into the gasket material until the die fills up and I can easily pick out the last one. Repeat as necessary until enough gaskets accumulate. The punch is mounted on a half ton arbor press for the run. The die can be bent cold to large radii, or heated for tighter controlled bends, though you don't want to blast all the carbon out of it by heating it any hotter than necessary. Round cutters are available from the same source as the die stock, or you can make your own with drill rod, drilling out the center and countersinking a bevel on the inside to make a cutting edge. You can use the same processes to make custom dies to cut valve leather discs, felt punchings, with centered hole, to whatever size you require, or whatever your (our) febrile little minds desire. I've always enjoyed building tools I otherwise couldn't justify buying, assuming they were obtainable anywhere at all, and invariably learn something I find useful in entirely unrelated situations some time later. I recommend it. Now, good luck in finding gasket material to your specifications. That's another problem altogether. Ron N -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: rule die.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 43503 bytes Desc: not available URL: <https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/pianotech.php/attachments/20111011/74e94a64/attachment-0002.jpg> -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Gasket die with extractor.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 34617 bytes Desc: not available URL: <https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/pianotech.php/attachments/20111011/74e94a64/attachment-0003.jpg>
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