mike-hr

I spent a lot of last week taking it apart, fixing a few worn things, and painting. I thought i would post some tidbits I discovered in case somebody wants to fix up one of these in the future. -There's two gooey thick flatwasher type spacers on the crankshaft, turns out they are actually thrust bearings, and have a tiny hole to inject grease into. -The clutch disc is made from cork gasket material, works real good. -The top dies are threaded in, 1/2-20 tpi Left Hand threads. A little set screw on the ram snugs them in. Handy having a lathe in the shop for making new dies. It doesn't hit very hard, but I was able to victimize some bits of oil drum lids with good success. I'll try to attach a couple pictures. mike

I'm proud to admit i consider Mark Aspery's system of education one of my lifes high points. I have the tools and technology to to mig weld and blend in leaf and vine work, and i admit, it happens, depending on the budget for the job. The wierd thing is, I always hear this Welsh accented voice in the back of my head telling me to jamb it in the fire and do it right. As I progress in this trade, I find i can do the same work with increasingly less power tools. You're correct, very few folks can discern the difference, but the whole piece has a very different flavour when done in the fire than on the fab table. most of my new client sales pitch is slanted to educating folks on the differences. We're not losing the old ways at all, it's just a mental (and economic) struggle to incorperate them, and still get paid.

Certain things in life should remain sacred: Let the M.D. deliver the baby, have the tax lady do the taxes, get the dentist to pull the sore tooth, pay the spring shop to make springs.

Thanks Glenn for helping me with the pictures! Thanks for the replies, I'm starting to come down with that old iron endorphin buzz, you guys know what i mean, it feels good rescuing equipment from a slow death as a yard planter. I got lucky and scored a tech manual this morning, buy it now on ebay. Has this hammer right on the cover!

Drove by the local auto salvage place and saw what looked like a little helve hammer in the parking lot. Price was right, now it's in my parking lot. Using Grant Sarvers logic, 'buy the darned thing, then figure out what it's good for'. The casting says, 'High Speed Hammer #3A-HD'. We fiddled with it a bit, got the clutch working, and got it de-goo-ed and re-lubed so it cycles easy by hand now. -It has a wood beam helve design, with rubber cushions that are in good shape. -It has about 5/8 inch throw, from bottom to top of cycle. - There is a secondary pulley from the main driven crankshaft, that runs a small belt to the hammer guide, the belt turns a gear gizmo that slowly rotates the top die as the hammer runs. (Why?) -The bottom die table sort of rachets down,with some bolts in tee-slots, to accomodate different stock sizes, with such a short throw. -It appears I could use it like a pullmax demo I saw at a conference, maybe make a mushroom top die and generate bowl-shaped widgets with it. -Anybody know anything about this little thing? It needs a driving motor and pulley, I did some math, and with a 1750 rpm motor and 2.5 inch driving pulley, the beats/minute would be around 800. I guess the High Speed moniker was aptly named. I'll try and post some pictures, might take a few trys to get it. Thanks, mike

Howdy from Oregon! I appreciate your service, Happy to help you any way i can. Stop by for a beer when you get stateside, dinner's on me.

Dragon's lair got the handle to this shovel. Depends on what we're doing. I've heard said, and said myself, the human brain is the best tool in the shop. Keep it out of the lacquer fumes. I've been promoting my shop as a waystation for regional smiths, stop by on your way thru, stay for a week if you want. One of our club elders, Dick Fedder, stayed with us last week, we were busy 14hrs/day plus re-hydration once the forge cooled off. Okay, re-hydration started before the forge cooled off, but Uncle Dick's 71 now, he re-hydrates with o'douls NA brew, keeps us on track. It's interesting visiting other's shops, and more interesting having career smiths come to my place, and see what they take a shine to in my digs. Some of the stuff Uncle Dick liked was: my 54x72 inch platten table, it's machined flat within a couple thou's, so everything that's clamped to it stays flat. The 12 inch verticle pedastel gringer with 40g PSA disc, and adjustable angle table, and 1 hp farm duty motor.I'm envious of the belt grinder crowd, and I will make one soon, but the pedastle grinder has a firm foot in the door in my shop. I have a lathe and vertical mill. I'm good on a lathe, but i'll toot my horn and say I'm darned friendly with the milling machine. I machined all the parts for an H-Frame guillotine tool one afternoon, 1 inch thick base plate, and 1 inch sq slide rails with 1/2 inch slot for the dies to ride in. Makes a darned near indestructable guillotine, but hard to nest all the chunks together without a mill. Dick liked using mine, and he gave my wife one of his copper roses on a steel stem, in my opinion,the flowers he makes are among the best on the planet,( Dick's flora is given mention in Aspery's book) so an afternoon of slot milling is worth it for a buddy. My old mechanical power hammer makes me available to work bigger stock than hand hammers do. We made some beautiful splitting wedges from a chunk of 3/4 x 3 inch agricultural leaf spring I found in my kinfolks scrap pile for a client of Dick's that makes split rail fence products. It was hard seeing those wedges leaving my shop. I didn't think to get a picture, but they had an old world feel to them that you can't get at the local farm and feed store. To summarize, after all the jibberish above, my favorite shop tools are: Coffee maker Beer cooler Satellite radio, and 4 big speakers, focusing on the forge.

Be careful hammering on the thin end of the wedge. A little too much hammering, what do you know.. it's now the thick end, and won't drive thru, no matter who's your uncle. I've done Grant's slide hammer bit, works good. I got tired of slide hammering, ( had a fairly stuck wedge), so I drilled a 3/8 hole in a bit of scrap, welded it to the wedge, tightened a nut&bolt thru the hole, and used an air chisel against the bolt head. bu-bu-bu-bu-bu-shoooo! Out she popped. I immediately made a new wedge, but this one is a good 4 inches longer than it needs to be, with a bygod 3/8" hole drilled by the fat end, ready for the air chisel next time. Whoops! This was on my bottom die, the thread's about the top die. Don't know of a proud wedge will crash into the top guide workin's or not, feel free to ignore!

Wow...can't think of anything else to say.. not like me, I know.

One of my buddies built a portable rig like that for a big ranch in the area. He used a chain going to a cable overhead and back down, and a small boat winch to control the tilt, working on the theory that each wood fire is unique, and more heat control is better.

The second pic loads, but won't show up. I'll try once more, then call it a night.

Trying again

Trying another pic

Thanks Glenn, here goes..

Thanks for the replies, I never would have guessed that. I did take some pictures of it, but haven't been able to figure out how to post them since the IFI gallery slumped. I could e-mail pics to someone who can post them here, if someone wants to message me with an e-mail address. mike

Thank you all for the information! It's hard for me to imagine 1952, it seems like most of the name brand anvils i've seen are 1890-1920. Can I assume the base was still wrought iron this far along in the century? The base is arc welded together at the waist, it looks to be a 2-pc construction from the factory.

I really like the piece. I'm aspiring to push my imagination that far. I've been stuck for decades on the addage,' It's real pretty if it holds cattle in' ag mentality. I just gotta ask, did you sketch this piece before making it? 3 views doesn't seem like enough. I would have trouble drawing it from your pictures, which are pretty good. Way to stretch the envelope, thumbs up!

Weld a piece of 1 inch pipe for a handle, it will stick to 7018, stick better to 11018 rod, makes a respectable linoleum scraper. I made a couple for an outfit that does rental management 15 yrs ago, they bring them back every so often for resharpening, still going strong.

A new student scored 2 anvils last weekend, one of them is a little Fisher, with a few features that's got me puzzled. It weighs 20 or so pounds, by my right arm reckoning. - It has a legible '2' cast into the base lip under the heel - It has a big '4' cast under the bick, in the curve of the waist - It has an eagle cast into the near side, bick to the left - Underneath it has two round casting divots, approx the size of beer can bottoms (riser, sprue?) - Here's the strange part, under the bick, on the base lip, 'FISHER' is cast in, but in mirror image..REHSIF, but with backwards letters. - The edges are beat up bad, but I can almost make out a 1/4" to 5/16" thick plate on the top. It has approx 60% rebound with a 1 inch ball bearing at 15 inches drop. At first I suspected someone recast this thing, using a real fisher as a pattern, but the rebound suggests it does have a tool steel top. any hints? Thanks, Mike

A new student scored two anvils last weekend... The bigger one is a 100 lb 'Trexton', stamped inside a diamond, farrier pattern. Had a brain numbing ring till we bolted it down to a stump with some belting in between, it's workable now. The serial # is 224976. Good rebound, really crisp edges. She's pumped up about starting forging, I told her I would ask you folks about the date of manufacture. I think I heard somewhere that Trexton was made by Trenton, is that true? Also, when did Trenton stop making anvils? Thanks, Mike

I guess I could add one semi-entertaining tidbit... we would let our chickens out into the yard every morning to range around. Our son was 5 at the time, and had a hen he decided would be a good pet. Well, he was chasing it across the driveway so he could give it a ride in his Tonka truck. I was watching, the hen had a heart attack in the middle of the driveway, died right there.

My personal preference, feel free to disreguard... I would take the last inch of the top rail of the spring fuller, and bend it up about 15 degrees. This would ease feeding hot stock into the system. Carry on.

I took a power hammer workshop a couple years back with Frank Trousil, Czech smith working in CA. What he did,is weld a piece of H-13, (1/8" x 7/8") to the bottom of a removable plate, Clifton Ralph style, that sat on the bottom flat die of the hammer. He also welded some bump stops to this plate that he could push the blank in( North-South), and locate center with another bump stop(East-West). Bang, bang, turn over, bang, bang, and out popped the slug.

I love the pistol grip hamon line outfit, that's a knife a fellow could take to church on Sunday! Imagine the work you could do if you'd stop holding the hammer in the left hand.. (kidding). Beautiful stuff!

I'll step out on a brittle limb here, and say that Steve (IronWolf) is THE GUY on the west coast that I trust implicitly for Gunter process anvil repair. I did an old trenton anvil with the stoody rod 10 yrs ago, I got so tired of working on that thing, I could have made out mowing lawns until i had money to buy a new Nimba. It seems every year Steve brings a Peter Wright to a hammer-in that's honestly good-as-new. Then he shows the pictures of the before, boy howdy! I don't know where he gets the patience to do that kind of work, but I'm glad he enjoys it..