Dead die

I suppose life is a lesson.

Most dies are either carbon steel (lower cost) or one of the HSS's.

So they are at best cutting something lessor to themselves.

Buy a good name brand and be sure you have HSS when you buy. You are cutting some unusual steel for them to cut as it is.

Why not buy a stick of 1/8" weldable rod at a hardware store.

You might try the die 'backwards' - that is from the other side first. You didn't bugger up them. Not as easy due to the lead-in.

Mart> I have been using a Mastercraft 6-32 die to cut thread on a 1/8 welding rod

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A die is a tool that cuts metal. A drill is a tool that cuts metal. Rock and hard spot.

Ya can't saw wood with a saw made of similar wood.

I was kind of hoping that the steel was not going to be as hard as all that and that all the cutting would have been done by the little round diamond head. I have a set of diamond core drills where the shank is something like brass! I can bend it with my fingers.

The reason I liked the drill for the purpose was that it looked good in the application, including the blob at the end.

I do not think it is worth spending enormous amounts of money on this, I shall go back to the welding rods which cost pennies.

Thanks anyway.

I don't know what the body material is for diamond core drills. Maybe it's high-speed steel, or maybe not.

Have you tried annealing it? HSS is not easy to anneal, but most other alloys are. You could try heating it with a propane torch until it's cherry red and then plunging it into some fine wood ashes to cool slowly (I save ashes from my charcoal grill for this purpose). Then try cutting it with a file -- preferably an old one that you don't care about. If it doesn't cut easily, you've got something difficult to deal with. If it does cut easily, it shouldn't be much harder at that point than your welding rods.

But if it's any kind of high alloy, including HSS, it may still be harder to cut than the rods, for a couple of reasons. It may be worth a try, however.

-- Ed Huntress

Always try a file on a piece of steel that you want to cut with a tool. If the file cuts easily, your cutting tool should work ok.

Now why did I not think of that? And I am not being sarcastic. Why is the best answer always sort of obvious. Jeez, I even carry a small file around with me at the garage sales for that purpose...Oh, well, old age is beginning to take its toll...

BTW how about spark-testing?

Michael Koblic, Campbell River, BC

Ooops. I overlooked the diamond part. That shank could be anything. You may just have a bum die.

Out of curiosity -- is the die hexagonal in shape? If so, it is what is commonly called a "rethreading die" -- high carbon steel, not HSS (High Speed Steel), and make for cleaning up damaged threads on something which already has been threaded once.

Not sure about what the shank of your diamond drill is made of. Some would be mild steel brazed or welded to harder steel, and then coated with the diamonds and a metal film to hold it in place. Others may have been started from HSS.

But also, the diameter of the shank may be a bit larger than the welding rod. Hmm ... a 6-32 should fit a 0.138" clearance hole, and thus be just a little smaller -- not as small as 1/8".

Anyway -- before you try your replacement (and hopefully HSS) round bodied die on it -- you should first see whether you can file the shank with a standard metal file. If it just skates over the shank, you can't thread it with your die. The only way to thread it would be to grind threads into it -- a rather expensive thing to set up to do.

Good luck, DoN.

I'm a big fan of spark testing. It's a big plus if you have known samples of different alloys so you can do instant comparisons.

I know that the re-threading dies I see for sale now are hex shaped. I don't know if there is a later standard for die shapes but I have quite a few hex and 12 pointed dies that are not rethreading dies, including a complete set of HSS taps and split-adjustable dies bought from Snap-On. I think they were made that way so you could use a box wrench or socket to turn them if necessary.

Don Young

The die is round.

I tried reversing it - no luck. The drill shank diameter is 3.12 mm (.008mm less than 1/8"). If I want to use it in future I shall just glue the damn thing in :-)

But it still puzzles me that one fairly gentle use (I gave up pretty quickly) killed the die so completely. I expected at least some effort to cut the welding rod which it did very easily before.

Maybe it is indeed a homeless die (we are not allowed to call them bums here any more...).

Today I took a trip to the neighbouring town of Comox. Both Home Depot and Midland Tools there stocked Irwin dies only and *they were hexagonal*. Nothing on them said that they were for re-treading only. Either way, they did not fit my handles so it's to Canadian Tire or Acklands tomorrow...