I have had an AK parts kit laying around for a while now, and I'm slowly getting the parts together to finish it out. Since it's my first one I have been trying to sap up as much information as I can and one of the things that became clear is the need for a shop press. Now I could probably buy one from HF but it dawned on me that I build shit for a living, and not only that I had already been collecting scrap for a while and have about 90% of what I need already just sitting there waiting for a project. So why waste the 170+ buying one when I could spend that same money on some more AK specific tooling parts I need, and the side folder trunnion I still need.

I did some research on DIY build and found a design that I have all the parts for, except the main frame tubing. Normally I could just get the sawman to cut me a couple sticks in the length I need but apparently 7mm tubing is nearly impossible for us to get right now. Which leaves me with a bit of a conundrum. I have a pretty good length of scrap, but not one that would be the nearly 45 inches or more I need for each side. So I could replace the side frame parts with some 3/16ths channel I know we do have but It would make things more difficult.

The main reason for the height I need is, to press a barrel I assume I'll need the 16 inches, plus the length of the pusher bar and a bit of clearance room for the receiver which would have a rod running through the front trunnion area to keep the receiver from crushing when pressed. The rest are obviously just for pressing rivets and such.

But I'll have other uses for it but this would be the main reason. Cost is 0. I have all the channel, the plates, the bottle jack, etc. Just the side frame is needed.

Does anyone see any glaring flaw with my design here?


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Shitty illustration to show the purpose.
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Looks good to me. It is like my HF one it seems. I have already broke my HF one twice lol. The most bad ass one I have ever seen CEE has. The cylinder is mobile and he can move it around. It is in tis video but I cannot remember where in the vid:

It shows no pertinent dimensions- press tonnage or actual section chosen for the cross pieces and vertical members.

You say 3/16" channel, do you mean 4x5.4#?  If so just run your beam calcs to make sure it's deflection under load is suitable for your purposes.

I'm sure you already know this, but the squareness of a press's frame is critical to it's operation and safety.  I highly suggest drilling all the holes on a mill or using very diligent layout practices if using a drill press or mag drill.  Long, splindley objects as you have shown have a tendency to squirt out the side if not absolutely square.

Ya I would use the shop's drill press to do the layout holes either way. I'll be honest I don't know the exact dimensions just yet because I need to figure out what materials I have at my disposal before I lock myself into something. Mostly because if I change it to the U channel I can go taller and stick to the 21in width. But if I end up using the 7mm tubing I would need to be more exact so I'm not using anymore tubing then needed since were having a hard time getting it.

As far as squaring goes I'm really not worried about that part of it, on pretty much everything we weld were only ever allowed at most a 1/16th of error and fitting is second nature at this point.

The U channel hot roll we use is pictured below. I should have an easier time getting some of that but I still need to iron out the details. Basically my boss said to mock something up to show him, and we could figure out what I could get.
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