DIY Hydraulic Press

I recently had a need to press a variety of materials with a significant amount of force. Since the commercially available presses were quite expensive and would still have to be modified to fit my needs, I decided to design and build my own.

I wanted a pressing surface of about one square foot. I also wanted a significant amount of force to apply which led me to some calculating. Figuring the 144 square inches of surface, I determined that a 6 Ton bottle jack would give me about 80 pounds of pressure per square inch over the entire surface. The force would be multiplied as the footprint of my workpiece decreased also. This would be plenty of force for my needs. I wanted a press that would allow me to make impressions over the surface of a plank of wood. The design of this press would enable me to feed a plank up to 12” wide through the press in 12” increments which would produce a uniform pattern through the entire length of the board. Trying to create this pattern by other means such as hammering not only would take much more time, but would be harder to keep uniform and be more labor intensive.

Once I had some sketches laid out, I made a cut list and got to work. I had several options for cutting the box tubing, but decided to cut the steel with a metal cutting carbide blade on a 10” chop saw.

The construction of the press was done in stages. The first stage was to construct the pressing surfaces. The two pressing surfaces were made using 12” x 12” x 1/4” flat steel reinforced with 1” x 2” box tubing. These “plates” would be pressed together with the hydraulic bottle jack. The two plates would be apposed each other and travel along a rail. The construction of this rail would be the second stage.

The rail consists of 4 pieces of 1” x 2” box tubing running vertical, while being supported at the top and bottom with 3” channel iron bases. The