A Cyclopaedia of Die-Making, Punch-Making, Die-Sinking, Sheet Metal Working, and Making of Special Tools Devices and Mechanical Combinations for Piercing, Punching, Cutting, Bending, Forming, Drawing, Compressing, Embossing, Forging and Assembling Metal Parts, and also Articles of Other Materials in Machine Tools, including Special Sections Illustrating and Explaining the Making of Cartridge Shells, Wire and Bar Steel Drawing Dies, Press Tools for Making Hydraulic Leather Packing, the Making of Paint and Chemical Tablets, Manufacture of Pens, Pins and Needles, Jewelry and Eye-Glass Die-Making, Spoon and Fork-Making Dies, Sub-Press Die-Making for Watch and Clock Work, Drop Dies and Drop Forging.
 

This book has been written and compiled by a practical man for the use of all practical men who are interested in the working of sheet metals, the designing and constructing of punches and dies, and the manufacturing of repetition parts and articles in presses. The designer, the machinist, the tool-maker, the die-maker, and the manufacturer of sheet-metal goods - or the producer of any other articles that may be manufactured advantageously by means of dies in presses - will find in this work a book of reference on the art of punch and die-making, tool designing, and sheet-metal working, that will fill a place that has heretofore been vacant in the field of literature devoted to practical mechanics.

The favorable reception accorded my first volume on this subject - "Dies, Their Construction and Use, for the Modern Working of Sheet Metals," - has been sufficient encouragement to induce me to offer the public a new work - or a second volume on this interesting mechanical art. The present volume is broader and more comprehensive than the first. It is a work which, instead of dealing with and treating of the fundamental principles of construction, and exhaustively detailing the numerous methods of procedure for constructing punches and dies in machine tools, deals with many more branches of the art and treats in a less detailed manner of the methods of construction. It is a cyclopedia and work of reference for the mechanic, the designer, and the manufacturer who has mastered the requirements for successful tool-making as set down in the first volume. It is also well to state that it is my further purpose eventually to give this branch of practical mechanics a complete and exhaustive literature distinctly its own, covering in succeeding volumes other special branches of die-making and die-sinking, together with the working of heavy sheet metals and other materials in presses.

Throughout this entire volume it has been my endeavor to eliminate all obsolete processes, designs, and methods; to confine myself exclusively to the design, use, adaptation, and operation of the numerous sets of tools illustrated, and to make as brief as possible the descriptions relating to the most modem and approved methods for constructing such tools. The fundamentals have been fully and comprehensively covered in the first volume.

When it is considered that all other branches of practical mechanics enjoy a wide and extensive literature, it is indeed strange that until lately this branch possessed comparatively none. For many years all mechanics interested in the use and operation of dies, presses, and other sheet-metal working tools in modern use, were without any work that treated of these subjects in a thoroughly practical manner. The wide circulation of my first volume demonstrated the widespread interest in the subjects and the need for other works that would cover the art carefully, authoritatively, and entirely. Therefore, I beg to state that in this work I have striven to deal with the subjects which come within the scope of the book in a thoroughly practical manner, to the exclusion of all that is technical or that might appear in any way ambiguous to the practical man. A large number of valuable and interesting processes, rules, formulas, and designs have been embodied in the work, and it is believed will be found of inestimable value in connection with the construction, use, and adaptation of dies and press tools which form the subject matter of the book.

A large number of the tools illustrated and described herein were designed by myself; others have been selected from published articles written by myself for the technical press. For many other descriptions and illustrations I am indebted to the kind courtesy of the Editors of American Machinist and Machinery J respectively; who readily signified their permission to the use of extracts and engravings taken from innumerable articles on die-making and sheet-metal working contributed to the columns of those publications. It is indeed a pleasure to state here that it is largely to the enthusiastic manner in which those two journals have, editorially, constantly advocated the discussion of these subjects, and the great amount of space they have weekly and monthly given over to illustrating and describing processes and methods of die-making, that we have any literature to-day at all on this great branch of mechanical art. I therefore also beg to extend to the writers of those articles my thanks and sense of deep obligation, and trust that they will also take pleasure in learning of the assembling together in permanent and readily accessible form of the “meat” of their many valuable communications.

Trusting that the reception to be accorded this book will be such as to cause me to persevere to complete this series of works, I hopefully surrender it for the perusal of my fellow workers.