I bought eyelet dies from weaver (T-1227 and T-1226) I assumed the bottom die would be 3/8th in diameter but it isn’t and doesn’t fit my press. They don’t list the diameter on the website for it and I’m wondering if anyone knows of any adapters or anything that works?
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heres what my current project looks like for anyone interested. Kinda unrelated but ill be welting it today. they are inspired by work boots from the 1910s
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Ugh. That’s annoying. But also pretty typical.
Can you post a picture of it? Maybe try to measure the diameter roughly with a ruler? I’m only guessing, but I’d guess 12 mm or ½″.
I’m aware of a handful of tooling interfaces used by various machines and manufacturers. Fortunately, bottom dies have been easier to figure out than topsets, because the ones I’ve seen have nearly always been solid, round shanks.
@milokolb, I just checked my notes, and those setter tooling item numbers match SKUs from Ohio Travel Bag, from before it got bought up into Weaver.
The ones I’ve seen in person were marked “Made in Italy”, which can be a bad sign for the old, non-standard ¼-24 threading used by USMC way back when. But I’ve heard reports from a few others that the Italian twist presses OTB imported and sold to work had the more modern M6 metric threading on top. Either way, 12mm shaft on the bottom.
If you’re near a hardware store like ACE, you can take your topsets to the hardware section there and use the bolt checker board or pull a nut from one of the boxes to verify the threading. If your tools are standard M6, an M6 bolt should thread right on. That will tell you for sure the threading of your topsets.
If the bottom dies / anvils are 12 mm shaft, give us a quick pic of your press.
Frankly, if your tools are 12 mm shaft and M6 thread, the best thing might just be to buy a cheap import hand press threaded that way.
The top set is actually fine because weaver sells a threaded to 3/8th adapter for that. My only issue is the bottom set, thx for sharing that it’s 12mm. The hole for my press on the bottom is 3/4th I’m not sure if there’s a converter I can use for that?
Betting that’s a typo—I would never!—and you meant 3/8.
If so, the concern with any adapter will be vertical clearance. A 12 mm shaft can’t fit down a 3/8 inch hole, so even if you find the perfect adapter, you’re going to lose vertical space in your press, at a minimum, equal to the height of the shaft of the anvil. Most commercially available shaft adapters I’ve seen also have relatively tall female ends, which will cut even more space.
As I mentioned, for price, you might be better off confirming that one of the cheaper presses available online takes M6/12mm, rather than dealing with adapters.
Here’s a 3/8 to 1/2 adapter from McMaster…for almost $60:
Meanwhile, here’s a whole press on Amazon Prime for $45, which I strongly suspect is M6/12mm:
You would want to confirm the interface before ordering.
I told myself not to look into this, but I couldn’t help it. I suspect that particular QWORK press takes M8/19mm shaft. I’m reorganizing my wiki notes to make it easier to list presses with the various tooling interfaces.
Thanks so much for the help! I did make a typo earlier, I meant to say 3/8th. I will buy a press if I need to but my friend says he can help me turn it on the lathe and bring it down to 3/8th. Thankfully my school has a metal shop, I just haven’t taken the advanced metalworking class yet. It definitely seems like a handy skill to have.
If you’ve got access to a metal lathe, or someone who knows how to work a lathe, turning a shaft down isn’t a complicated job.
I’m not sure that otb sold imported upper thread pitch machines with m6 threads, mainly because the dies they sell are 1/4-24, I’ve ordered their eyelets/boot hooks for a couple years now as well as their die setters and they fit my imported machines. Although Otb used to sell two different setters from their old catalog maybe one had the m6 thread? I’ve been collecting 1/4-24 hardware for a while.
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I definitely don’t want to speak too broadly for Weaver. I heard from another that they press and tool combo they got was M6 threaded, but that could have been true just at the particular time they ordered. It’s also pretty hard to tell M6 and 1/4 threading apart.
Unfortunately, my experience has been that even pretty responsive salespeople and customer support staff from companies selling online may not understand what’s going on or have the right figures. They often know that the presses and tooling their buyers source are supposed to work together. And they often do. But over time or across suppliers, it’s a crapshoot.
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