Brass work for Gladius in process.

[Titus Marius Secundus]

I have been trying to make the cross hangers with the design I'm copying off the Porto Novo locket plate, with two concave grooves and in between a convex groove with a concave ridge. I have successfully made a male and female punch, but the vice doesn't come together well, ( my big vice) on some scrap metal I'll try it on my smaller vice but hopefully more accuracy on the punch, so one groove won't be deeper the the other. Also, I'm having trouble, which has been mentioned in Crispvs' blog post that, it's difficult to make the grooves run straight. This is mostly because the metal is so long, and gets in the way of the table. I'll have to turn the punch around so the metal strip is horizontal. So if anyone has any advice on stamping metal strips, I could do with some help.

Sam