Rooster's Revenge

My die guy friend and loyal reader of past articles and current blog posts, Greg from Spaulding & Day Tool & Die emailed me a question yesterday.

He responded with a “thanks” email and suggested I write a book on modern die practices, mainly because the books out there now are quite dated and have, for the most part, lost their relevance due to transfer presses, solid modeling, and NC machining.

Most of you do not know the story, so I agreed to share it here.

Last summer, I gave away all my die books to Eric Kam. Except one: the one I wrote.

That’s right. I wrote a treatise on modern die engineering and construction theory and practice. It was ready to be published in 1999.

As with all my other attempts at finding a need and filling it, the venture fell short because of factors beyond my control.

At the time, I was writing for FMA as a columnist in Stamping Journal and occasional contributor to The Fabricator.

My vision was to create an elegant book. It had to be hardcover with lots of stunning 3D full color graphics. I wanted it to be the best looking book on dies ever published with relevant, easy to understand content.

In my mind, the best publisher to put out this level of quality was FMA.

They gave me a contract – probably the most lucrative contract a first time author ever had. I gave them the manuscript.

A few months into the project, the entire editorial staff bailed for a dot com startup that promised to triple their salaries.

My book instantly died and their new careers lasted only six months.

I talked to PMA, but that went nowhere fast.

Then, the SME came along. They wanted to publish the same garbage that is out there now – old content (they wanted to borrow material from their other books and use cheap black and white 2D drawings).

At this point, I have about 5,000 hours of writing time and a couple years effort invested to find a publisher. We come to a half-assed agreement and get started.

The book was going to be a stripped down version of what I had. We were going to put out a book on transfer dies only, then revamp their Die Design Handbook, then rewrite their Progressive Dies book.

This lasted about a month.

The economy tanked and they shut down their new book publishing operations.

Not one to give up easily or when I should, I pressed on and talked to a few more publishers.

They were all the same. The publishers wanted to put out what I considered to be junk and give me a 3% royalty. No thanks.

It was not the money. It was the quality. It had to be the best or be nothing.

I chose nothing.

Actually, I did pursue self-publishing so I could control the quality, but I did not have the distribution channel.

So, I decided to turn some of the content in this spiral bound manuscript into articles for MetalForming magazine.

Perhaps I should update the work and try to get it published. I don’t know. I barely have time to blog anymore.

The book is here and chock full of cool content. It sits in my desk drawer, always within arm’s reach, simply titled Die Theory & Practice: Engineering and Manufacturing Production Stamping Tools.

It is book shelved, just sitting here waiting to be read. All 20 chapters and 500 pages of it.