Power hammer technique

[pike3e]

Below is a link to Murray Carter forging a kitchen knife on his japanese power hammer.

I have a striker 55 lb power hammer with flat dies that are about 2inches by 4inches.

I forge similiar style blades as Murray and would like to be able to forge them thinner and beveled as he is doing in the video.

What modifications, tools or techniques do you think would work to accomplish what he is doing.

Modified dies, hand held tools, power hammer spring swages, something else. Also how do flat dies typically hold up for use with tooling?

Thanks

John

[Nakedanvil - Grant Sarver]

You just need a top die similar to that.

[basher]

its a mighty quick hammer doing very little work but in an ever so controlled way . I can see its uses.
it looks like a slightly convex top die.

[pike3e]

Any idea's of tools that could be used with the flat dies?

[gearhartironwerks]

Any idea's of tools that could be used with the flat dies?

As Grant suggested: make a top die that emulates a hammer head, or make a spring top swage that does the same with your flat dies. It's he slighly curved

[Stormcrow]

One system of modular tooling for flat dies that I know of and am just making use of is to have a couple of holes that are drilled all the way through the dies. You build the tooling as a cap that fits over the die, and a pair of bolts or pins hold the tooling in place.

Here's a rather clever usage of such tooling:

So once you have the time invested in the initial setup, building different cap tooling should be fairly easy. Making a slightly round die like a hand hammer face is one of the ones I'd like to eventually make, in large part from watching Murray Carter's little hammer. Now, as has been pointed out, this is a light hammer hitting very quickly, and I reckon the rubber springs transfer less force than steel ones would. If you try to use the same on a large hammer without a lot of control, you'll likely screw up your piece. If you have good control or can dial back the hammer some way, it should be fine. Very rapid light hits is the key to efficiently using this kind of setup, I'd say.

[Jim]

Hello John,

Take a look at Old World Anvil and there KA-75 striking hammer there is a viedo for forging a knife blank this style die might work good on the Striker 55.

This should be the link to the viedo http://www.ka75.com/video_3/video_3.php

Regards
Jim Riddle
Mojave Southern Machine Works
(951) 654-5660
wwww.msmw.com

[ThomasPowers]

Just off the top of my head I can think of, oh, about 5000 tools you can build to be used with flat dies. It's how the "big boys" tend to play; so look for videos of Clifton Ralph or Steve Parker for example.

[Francis Trez Cole]

From what I have seen if you are doing a lot of the same work than it pays to have different dies but if you are only making 4 then you are better off with hand tools, spring tools and flat dies for the power hammer hammer.