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Ode to the Drawplate

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Categories: Instruction and information; Projects and equipment

Word count/read time: 424 words; 2 minutes

Drawplates are used to make wire. They have successively smaller holes to gradually decrease the diameter of wire. Crappy ones are plain steel. Better ones have carbide inserts. In a shop setting there are few metals suitable for this DIY equipment: precious metals, copper, and some others.

They are used for reducing the diameter of tubing, too. It is easier to pull than wire for any given size. When either one gets too thick it is time for a drawbench since it is not feasible to pull it by hand (a mechanical sled for drawing wire). You'd still need a drawplate, no getting around that.

Another use is for making chains. The drawplate compresses and homogenizes them into something remarkably better than they started. There can be oodles of flaws in the undrawn chain - people are even lazier with these chains than for chainmaille - yet it still comes out looking OK (not good, but OK).

While metal drawplates are required for making wire, they can (will) damage chains. Hardwood works well for Viking Knit chains since it doesn't experience high forces provided the holes have small increments. Don't skimp here; get oak or something serious to minimize the possibility of it cracking.

Loop-in-loops are a different story. Tough little buggers, I've split 1" thick oak drawplates. Fortunately, a well-made chain doesn't need to be molested. I make exquisite raw chains. No customer has requested it once they understood what was happening. Besides, relying on a random process to "fix" the chain when there's nothing to fix is an invitation to disaster.

Anyway, I ditched wood altogether in favor of Delrin. A CNC mill precisely bored the holes, one side of which must be tapered. It didn't help that I marred a blank getting everything dialed in.

The matching set of four with 112 holes has increments ranging between 0.002" and 0.010". The Viking Knit version has 61 holes ranging from 1/16" to 1" in 1/64" increments. I can't believe how much time it took to arrange the holes even with a computer program. Measure countless times, reposition repeatedly, get everything to fit into the plastic blocks.

I'm making the mother of all drawplates in 303 stainless steel! It will draw down everything "strong" like tubing, heavy duty chains, etc. Each hole has a 3deg taper and an extended constant diameter section unlike a regular metal drawplate which has a very thin orifice. With 1/128" increments from 1/8" to 109/128", it should do it all. Machining it will neither be timely nor easy.

Posted by M: May 2, 2024

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