mike-hr

I can't answer this, but it may help to take a multi-meter to your breaker box and state what your 3 legs are spitting out. My power reads 120, 120, 180. I have a delta type, 240-3phase box. Some sparkys are concerned if you have a delta, or Wye set-up. I don't know why about this either, but it might give a sparky on the forum some ammo to help you.

Having a buddy within easy driving distance is priceless. I had forge welding figured out, so I thought, teaching it made me think about why i can just "feel" when the fire is right...I can hear a roar from the coal, meaning the fire is deep and clean. I've learned from production runs, that drop tongs welds are subject to attitude, caffeine level, beer level, etc.. I started blind riveting stuff if I really need it to stick, so there's only one piece to worry about. On mild steel, I don't use flux if i'm in the zone, if I'm not 100% on task, a little borax makes me feel better. Probably doesn't help, but I feel it's mostly attitude, not flux that makes the weld stick. If you have a good fire, and know where the sweet spot is in the forge, you can do okay.

Look in the Iforgeiron gallery for Philsdrills. he's been inside of most all brands and has them painted up to match. I wouldn't motorize it, It doen't take that much longer to crank it by hand, and it you ever forget to shut the power down at the bottom of the stroke, it can break the frame.

When I first got my old mechanical hammer, the dovetail was about half broken off. I used a slitter wheel, grinder, then file, to cut it off in plane, then used a piece of hot roll mild square stock (1 inch or 1-1/4, can't remember), machined the dovetail angle, and drilled holes every 1-1/2 inches, tap drill size for 1/2-13 tpi. I then used the square stock for a drill bushing, and drilled the tap drill into the hammer material. Next drilled the square stock out to 1/2 inch and used it for a tap guide, so the tapped holes would go in straight. Anyway nobody told me I couldn't do it that way, and it's been working fine for 6 or 7 years now..I'd say you're on a good track.

Thanks Grant, I'd never heard that about soaking in heat either.. I've talked to you a couple times in the past few years at hammer-ins, you remind me of a human alka-seltzer tablet, effervescing little bubbles of information... Anyway, I usually guillotine fuller my bar to square dimension plus a 64th inch or so, heat to bright red going to yellow, and Phammer to the square fuller. When it gets to blood red, it goes back in the fire. I've found when forging to dimension, things work better for me to count blows, and I learned from Mark Aspery, forge all appropriate facets. I set my hammer up for about 260 beats/minute. The typical scenario goes: pull from forge, hit 3 times, spin 180, hit 3 times, spin 90, hit 3 times, spin the last 180, hit 3 times, check with calipers, back in the fire. Hitting 3 times per side is probably the only weird thing I do, I need to get pretty coffee'd up to spin the piece after every blow. When the calipers say I'm to the square dimension, I hit to octagon, same regimen, but softer, and maybe 2 blows per cycle. When i'm happy with the octagon, I spin to round, indexing a little bit after each blow, and helixing out of the dies. The piece in the picture was maybe 8 inches of 3/4 hot roll round, I was doing some ball and stick coat hangers. I forged the ball in a homemade trough clapper die, both ends, forged the remainder to 3/8, and then cut in half to get the right length. That's how I discovered the pipe effect. Last week when it happened again, I was making some reproduction horse-drawn wagon U-bolts for the leaf springs up front. I started with 3/8 x 1-1/4 HR flat, guillotined an inch and a half from each end, and forged those out to 1/2 inch round, so I could thread the ends. The pipe effect only happened in one out of four tenons, I found it when cutting the tenons to length. It must be something in my moves that caused it.. I think it's something to do with caffiene deficit early in the morning. I also wonder if this happens to other folks, but they don't have the occasion to cut stuff in half when it's done.

It very well may be a soak time issue. I'm using an 80# mechanical hammer with flat dies, hitting hard to rough square, and then softer to octagon, and round. I took a picture of the first one of these I discovered, it's 3/8 round, forged from 3/4 stock.. It's an interesting phenomena.

Mark, you're started on a slippery slope.. I've evolved to an outside rack for 20 foot stock, an inside leaning rack for 8 to 10 foot stock, a horizontal shelf for 1 through 8 foot pieces and another shelf for under 1 foot bits. I would love to scrap half of the smaller chunks, but think of all the decorative hooks one could make with 50 drops of half inch square 9 inches long. The affliction never goes away.

I've noticed this before, and shrugged it off. I did some powerhammering tenon-type operations this week and it happened again. Using 3/4 inch round, and laying off a bit of the end to make 3/8 inch round tenon, occasionally a hollow void will show up in the center of the bar.. about the size of a pencil lead. I assume it's from taking a few extra blows at a fading heat, but I'm pretty careful about putting back in the forge when it's still red. Anybody else notice this?

Time on the tool... you may have a 'draft' in your hammer swing. Maybe try turning the piece over while heating, solid fuel or gas forge. If one side is hotter, the hot side will give faster. Go out on a weekend morning with the idea of making 30 punched holes. I bet they will look good after #25..

Thanks for the video. I've heard tales about how controllable steam hammers are, but you knocked it out of the park.. do you have a rotary screw jack hammer compressor outside to run it?

We took the young'un to Legoland in South Cal last winter. The park on the whole was a large yawn for me, but they did have a ride that placed 2 folks in a cage on the end of a big robot arm, and did a routine of trying to get my corn dog and chips to leave unexpectedly. I bet they could fling pumpkins a long way.

Make a meatloaf.

FE, If you get the 16 inch diameter discs figured out,I'm gonna drive down there and watch you.. I've been trying to spin 16 inch steel discs for about 3 months now, I've tried 16Ga, 18Ga, 55 gallon drum lids, even a door skin from a chevy S-10 pickup ( I thought they might be a deeper draw steel..) The sombrero effect is driving me crazy.. I get after it, and pull it to the form, the outer third of the disc whangs backward towards the tailstock. I push the sombrero brim back, and it wrinkles up like a many-fluted ashtray. It's still fascinating, and I have enough wrinkled ashtray shaped rejects to keep me in rifle gongs for years to come.

Howdy Bill, I live over the hill in K.Falls. I'd be happy to have you stop by sometime if you need further confusing.. take care

Thank you for taking this on, We all need to take responsibility for teaching kids stuff not found in books. Excellent project!

Thanks! Mark, the pivot is just a short piece of 3/16 round, sharpened on the top side, stuck into blind holes in both pieces. The vane spins around darn near effortlessly. It's a lot of fun watching blackbirds try and land on the vane, sometimes they get almost half a rotation before they can take off again...

I made this as a mothers day present for my yard art loving mom. The wind vane is made from 3/4 inch round. The stand is 5/8 round with vine texture on most of it, the circle is made by pinching bits on the near left corner of the flat dies of the power hammer, then wrapping around a piece of pipe fixed to the platen table. The bird is 3/16 inch plate, made from the instructions in Mark Asperys new book. He made this kind of bird a few years ago at a hammer-in, I really liked it, but didn't take notes. It was great seeing a step-by-step in this book. Sorry for the shameless plug on Mark's new book, but it's a pretty good book... Take care, Mike

I measured my burner this morning, same specs that Charlotte said. I've been playing with different size Mig tips for the gas orifice, Currently I'm running a tip drilled to .073 inch. I've changed the blower out for a quieter one, and then changed pulley sizes to get it to run faster. Each time I got more air to blow, I could use a bigger gas tip. My burner, at 10 inches long, has smaller flame tips at the holes on the end. McraigL did some thinking on it and when he did his, he took a holesaw cut-out that matched the inside diameter of the air feed pipe, did some slitting and twisting, and made a nifty propeller shaped disc that got welded between the gas inlet and the burner box. He's getting really good air/gas mix and gets consistant flame in all the holes. I'm still quite happy with the forge, except that it pumps out a lot of CO during start-up, so I have to open the big door for 15-20 minutes. That becomes an issue on cold winter mornings, but the shop warms back up fast when I close the door. Once it's at running temp and tuned neutral, the CO meter reads zero all day. Thinking about your 4-1/2 foot long forge, I don't know if you could go longer burner and less rows and still get fuel/air all the way to the ends. A long thin burner may be more prone to cracking over time. I don't think you need the whole length covered with burner, mine heats the forge very even throughout , but 4-1/2 feet is a long tube.

Mark, that's a fine blade.. Just try and not lose it so I can see it in real life next time I catch up with you..I'm sort of remorseful you had a lot of time to finish this as opposed to working in the trades and getting capitol to finish your shop. My grandfather told me, 'Tough times don't last, tough folks do.' That's been my mantra this spring...See you around.

Great base Frosty. You guys are going to have a lot of good times together. I sort of hate to bring this up, but, we all know you're going to eventually have to hot slit a hole in the siding to get that last little bit of that 12 foot long forged cap rail to fit under the hammer.. the upside is, the wee window makes for a great trap door to get rid of old coffee, both processed and un-processed. Stay safe.

I try to keep grinding and smithing operations near the big overhead door for smoke and dust evacuation, and put the mill and lathe in the back as far from the grinders as possible. Wallspace runs out before floorspace.

When I took the 1 inch plate certification class, 7018DC, the teacher had us keep a 400 degree F tempil stick around, and wait for a while if the weld area got over 400 degrees. Can anyone verify this? I still weld between 300 and 400F, and been having good luck. Also, the weld Charlotte describes will warp the 1 inch plate towards the weld, maybe some 90 degree gussets would be appropriate, and welding smaller length beads here and there, as opposed to running the entire 4 inch fillet at once.

Congrat's Frosty! I know how excited you are, I got antsy when I got my basket case hammer in the shop, and got antsy again as fire-up time got near. I didn't know anything about smithing when I poured the shop floor, so I don't have any extra foundation other than the standard 5-1/2 inch slab. I anticipated it would crack my floor all over, so I used an abrasive blade in the skilsaw and cut a approximately 2 inch deep cut around the timbers the hammer sits on. I figured if the floor failed, maybe it would act like drywall and break at the scored line, saving the rest of the floor. 6 or 7 years later, all is still well. Let us know how the install goes..