Die only set?

[liliysdad]

I have a LOT of good US taps, both carbon and HSS, but I am pretty skinny on dies. Does anyone sell a set of good dies, without the taps? I know I can piece them together, but often times buying kits is cheaper.

HSS is definitely preferred, but a good set of carbon would do most of what I need.

 

[shawhite]

Are you looking for thread chasers or thread cutting? Round or hex? For HSS sets I don’t think you will like the price. Plenty of carbon steel die only sets. Irwin/Hanson comes to mind

 

[bwringer]

Metric or barleycorns? What sort of stuff do you usually do?

There are lots of thread repair die-only sets out there, but not much in thread cutting.

However, 99.948% of the time I'm using a die, it's for cleaning up a thread... I'm rarely trying to cut new threads with a die. (Both cleanup and cutting are fairly common with taps, of course.)

So if I had a similar hankering, I'd buy a nice metric (I rarely use inch stuff) thread repair set, and then buy onesies of the few I might need for thread cutting. Why look, that's exactly what is in my garage right this very second... a set of repair dies and several individual cutting dies.

But YMMV. Depends greatly on the sort of stuff you monkey around with.

And you might find that a tap & die set is cheaper, even though you don't need more taps. That's just how they're usually packaged.

 

[liliysdad]

Primarily thread cutting, and almost exclusively SAE , hence the desire for HSS..thread chasing is easy, and carbon dies are cheap. Typical use is for threading on the lathe when I don't feel like single pointing.

I just scored a set of US made NOS Craftsman Kromedge dies...that should tide member while I continue my search..

 

[bwringer]

Threading on the lathe... yep, that's a little different from my usual "fixing old busted motorcycles" usage!

Next question might be "what size range?"

And yeah, that older Craftsman stuff is quite nice. The core of my threading tools are several metric Craftsman dies and a metric tap set I bought 30+ years ago. I later added a Lang thread repair set and thread files that have been super-handy.

 

[liliysdad]

Typical size range for me is #10 up to 1/2, both fine and coarse. Occasionally larger and smaller, but those circumstances are pretty easy to address on a case by case basis.

After a lot of searching, it looks like single piecing it together is going to be my best bet for HSS stuff. Hopefully the Kromedge stuff will take cafe of most of my needs, and I will just build a selection as I go.

I wish I could find a pile of dies at a garage sale like I have taps. I bought about 75 US made HSS taps a while back, many of them still in the wax, for $10....I am set for life!