[TheForge] press vs power hammer/fly press

[Ries Niemi]

Of course you need all three.
You can never have too many tools, and even when I have three different 
tools that do the "same" thing, I often realize that a fourth one would 
probably do my particular job better.

But the advantage to a fly press is simple- manual feedback. It is 
essentially a hand tool, not a power tool, and it allows a much finer 
degree of control, since you are feeling directly with your own hands 
the amount of springback, or resistance. With a power hammer or a 
hydraulic press, with time you can learn what the right amount of force 
is, but it is a purely intellectual learning- you must experiment, 
observe the results, and modify your procedure.
With a fly press, you can feel it in real time.
In addition to that, there are a variety of situations where you want 
to apply a little bit of force, repeatedly. The power hammer and press 
are pretty much on/off machines. Yes, I can feather the strength of the 
blows with the power hammer, and my hydraulic press has a pressure 
gauge, in thousands of pounds. But both are still pretty powerful at 
their lightest.
With a fly press, you can chisel a groove in aluminum flat bar, or 
lightly bend a piece, with a degree of finesse that would only be 
possible with a CNC hydraulic press.
And it is quick and easy to do lots and lots of parts that COULD be 
done by hand, but would wear you out. I have seen people do ornament 
chisel textures on an 8 foot piece of flat bar with a fly press in 10 
minutes, while carrying on  a conversation. And with guides and stops, 
these are very precise and repeatable. By hand, with a hammer and 
chisel, or even a treadle hammer, you would be talking several hours to 
do the same job, less precision, and I, for one, would be plumb wore 
out.

Really, its all about extending the reach and strength of our hands. 
There are many different ways to do this, and each of them gives a 
slightly different result. When a true craftsman is given a new tool, 
the end results are not always predictible, but they are different with 
each tool. More arrows in your quiver, so to speak.

ries