For the manufacture of pipes by drawing, a number of preparatory operations are required, one of which is to obtain a gripper in order to pass the front end of the pipe through the hole of the drawing and ensure its reliable capture using the pipe clamping mechanism of the drawing mill. In this case, the capture can be obtained by using lever radial forging machines. The article presents a mathematical model for determining the forging force on a lever radial forging machine when preparing pipes for drawing for various cross-sectional shapes of pipe ends under conditions of cold and hot deformation. The dependences of the forging force on the wall thickness are obtained, a comparative analysis of the forging force of the pipe ends under cold deformation conditions is performed on the example of the selected pipe sizes.