Thread: Beginner smith tap set

Glad I found this page. I'm a bit of an amateur Smith. I've been working on my own guns and some close friends guns for a few years now. Recently I was terminated from my normal job (Welder) and am helping a friend do some general repair stuff at his local gun store. I come across a lot of boogered holes and want to get a decent starter set of taps and dies built. I've came up with a list of what I think will be the most popular thread sizes found in firearms. Would greatly appreciate some more expericend guys and gals input on it.
3‐56, 5-44, 6-40, 6-48, 8-40, 10-32, 1/2-28, 5/8-24, 9/16- cant remember the TPI at the moment.

Brownell's sells sets of gunsmith taps in carbon steel. These are made so that when (not if) you break one in a gun part,they can be shattered with a punch and the pieces picked out. The individual taps are cheap enough to replace.

buy your little taps for scope mounts from Brownell's. I know they are more expensive than the Chinesium version but you will break far fewer.

With regards to British BA-sized screws, I have purchased taps in the past from here:

TAPS

Buy as needed or wanted.

If you try to buy a "Set", you end up with a whole bunch that you pay for but never will use, and pay, you will!

It's and exercise in spending money for nothing.

I've never seen a set of quality taps. Quality taps come individually.

To each their own, and I buy a LOT of "stuff" from Brownell's, but not taps...I find their quality to be way inferior as machinist grade tooling.

Everyone has their favorite for cutting tools, mine is Kodiak. As mentioned, you want carbon steel. I've gone from plain carbon to TiN coated because I do a fair number of hard-as-peckerwood milsurp receivers and the TiN coating cuts that hard steel better in my experience and longer life in general.

Originally Posted by mhajicek

I've never seen a set of quality taps. Quality taps come individually.

I have. The replacement cost was in the Thousands, not Hundreds of dollars.
The wooden box was nice though...

The shop I worked in was Military, and we had to deal with BA and Whitworth (Rolls Royce Jet Engines), Metrics, and inch fraction and Number sizes, in Coarse, Fine, and Specials, plus STI (screw thread insert) taps for about four different kinds of inserts in various sizes.

And lots of each set had never been used.