Tap, Die, other tooling reccomended suppliers?

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DaveW

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Hello all. Relatively new to machining. Recently bought my first lathe, a 1941 Logan 200 that has had a threading gear box added to it. I've been following Quinn Dunki, Mrpete and others on Youtube with setup, aligment and project info and have found this community that looks like a great soource of info. I'm a retired electrical engineer and just finished a second career as a HS Physics teacher.

I'm looking to purchase some peripheral items such as taps, dies, drills, cutter blanks, tools, etc and am looking for reccomendations on sources. Amazon drives me crazy as many descriptions are inadequate, sources are vague and I'm not sure I can tell the difference on-line as to junk from quality. Any info wiould be appreciated, and I apologize in advance if this is covered already in a sticky or a turtorial somewhere - just let me know, possibly attach a link and I'll try harder next time to search!

Dave Walker
 
You came to the right place Dave ! :grin: Make a list . Oh yes , Welcome to H-M .
 
Right now I'm looking for taps and dies (1" round for use with a die holder) up to 1/2"-20 as well as 3/8" HSS tooling blanks.

Dave
 
You can get a lot of what you need from members here, but if buying new, there are several places you can try.

Shars.com sells a large variety of tooling, mostly from China, but most is decent quality for a hobbyist. I would recommend searching this site prior to buying any indexible tooling from them to make sure their version of it does not use proprietary inserts.

McMaster-Carr, www.mcmaster.com is an industrial supply house that carries high quality items, but they don’t tell you what brand in most cases. They are usually my first stop.

Www.travers.com has a large variety of tooling, some prices are good, others not so much, so you need to shop carefully. They carry many top quality brands. Download their monthly flyer from the website, many of the specials on there are only available if you enter the item number. Many times I have put something in my shopping cart and it did not have the sales price until I used the number in the flyer.

Kbc.com is another tooling source, but they don’t seem to have as much of a selection as Travers.

Those are the places I usually shop, I’m sure others will post their favorites as well.
 
I recently searched for 1" round HSS dies, and found the best deal on Amazon, "Drill America" brand. They work very well in 303 stainless and other steels. They're in the $8 each region.

For taps, I've been happy with YG1 taps from All Industrial.
 
DaveW said:
Right now I'm looking for taps and dies (1" round for use with a die holder) up to 1/2"-20 as well as 3/8" HSS tooling blanks.

Dave
Click to expand...
I’ve been happy with my Craftsman Imperial & Metric sets, but don’t think they’re available anymore. As a backup I bought a Husky combined set from Home Depot a while back for $80 (lifetime replacement like Craftsman, and like the Craftsman Imperial set has hex dies but I made a hex adapter for my tail stock die holder a few years ago). All of these are high carbon, but that is sufficient for my needs.

Like @Winegrower I have purchased Drill America bottoming taps as needed, as well as some extra long taps on Amazon.
 
Thanks for all the input. I have some looking to do. Anyone have feelings about Qualtech dies and Tap America taps sold by Drillsandcutters.com?

Dave
 
Great deals can be found on e bay if you look around.
Joe
 
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