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Swage blocks.

The quote I got from metro machine works was $5000 that is far too expensive. I would need to use hardened steel in order to work steel, and my forge is only 8 inches wide, so I think it would make the most sense to do what janger suggested, and bolt together a number of 8 inch plates machine them, and harden them in my forge.
 
My dad found an old cutting edge from one of their large landscaping machines at work. it was one inch thick, one foot wide, and three feet long. I managed to cut it into three one square foot plates that I am working on to laminate together into the block that I need. As a cutting edge it is all hardened steel, and the plasma cutter had a lot of trouble cutting the one inch plate. Only my brand new cobalt drill bits were able to drill through it so I could bolt them together before welding them around the perimeters as well as a few plug welds. I don't know if a mill bit could cut this steel easy enough to shape it if it isn't annealed some how. Perhaps it could be softened a bit after I weld the p-lates and leave them to cool slowly, because neither my oven nor my forge are big enough to hold them.
 
Chris Cramer said:
My dad found an old cutting edge from one of their large landscaping machines at work. it was one inch thick, one foot wide, and three feet long. I managed to cut it into three one square foot plates that I am working on to laminate together into the block that I need. As a cutting edge it is all hardened steel, and the plasma cutter had a lot of trouble cutting the one inch plate. Only my brand new cobalt drill bits were able to drill through it so I could bolt them together before welding them around the perimeters as well as a few plug welds. I don't know if a mill bit could cut this steel easy enough to shape it if it isn't annealed some how. Perhaps it could be softened a bit after I weld the p-lates and leave them to cool slowly, because neither my oven nor my forge are big enough to hold them.
Click to expand...
Carbide tooling definitely not HSS should work lots of cooling and lubrication.
 
I managed to sever the outer swages out of two of the three 1 inch blocks of hardened steel. I can still clean the cuts with my die grinder, and after that I still need to weld the three blocks together to create one swage block before asking John to cut the iner swages with his mill. It may be better to only weld two blocks together for the main cavity two inches deep and use the last block for several other swages. However on the other hand it may not be very easy to use a swage block one square foot but only one inch thick.
 
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