Hex bar - how is it made?

Found this ...

More likely this ...

Henry

When I was a lad it was cold drawn on bar drawing machine or a draw bench. On of the factories in our group when I first started work was called Sankey Wire Mill in Warrington. It closed down in the early 60's.

Gosh, watching the utube clip brought back memories particularly seeing the operator chucking wire drawing lubricant into the die. Believe it or not the lubricant was pure soap!

Don't try this at home ...

Any thoughts on the practicalities of drawing say 6mm and smaller A/F hex bar in a good tin bronze?

Ta,

Peter F

I don't know what the A/F means but you can certainly draw hex bar from 6mm tin bronze by hand. Years ago I made jewelry and drew a lot of special shaped wire from sterling silver and "German Silver", which of course has no silver in it. Though I didn't draw any hex as large as 6mm I did draw ribbon which had roughly the same amount of surface. Starting with round wire and pulling through many different holes. At least 30 holes. Even the sterling silver would get quite hard and resistant to more deformation fairly quickly so frequent annealing was required. Pulling the wire through the die holes quickly worked better than a slow pull. Eric

I've certainly run into the other options mentioned and used drawing dies occasionally but you might want to look at "turks heads" as one way to produce sections. I think for small scale use you would be best off with draw plates and a draw bench of some sort.