Marc

My big layout table is the floor of the other stall of the garage. Neither stall has seen a car since I moved in, one of the terms of my willingness to move. This table doubles as a chalkboard, and I also tune my bicycle and fix my lawn tractor on it. But for small stuff, which is 90% of what I play with, I got a 2-ft long piece of 15 X 2 channel from the scrap yard, back when they used to sell their stuff to hacks like me. This sits on my multi-purpose workbench. It works well as a chalkboard, welding table, and I store my measuring tools under it. One thing I still kick myself over is that at the other scrap yard that used to sell things to hacks like me, he had some 3/4" plate with 3/4" (if I remember correctly) holes drilled through it around 2" apart. He had all sorts of sizes up to around 2-ft X 4-ft. That would have been a great little surface, complete with all the dog holes I could need.

The League of NH Craftsmen is a juried member organization, and has a week-long fair every August. If I remember correctly, in addition to the subjective quality of the work, an exhibitor must be able to demonstrate the ability to craft his/her items repeatedly. Assembly line stuff is would pretty much disqualify, but the intent is to show ability vs happy accidents. They also look for durability, proper finish inside and out, fitted joints, etc.

You know, I have talked to God while in the shop and it does keep me focused. That makes things go so much better than using a lot of the same words in a different mindset. But somehow I forget and fall back to the old ways. Maybe the other side has my ear and I don't notice it. One thing I've noticed is that my temper is hugely worse when doing home repair/ carpentry things. I need to bring my talks to God there, too. Maybe I'll even work that in when something screws up on my PC. Although, since I believe that anything related to Micro$oft is a much more direct line to Satan, that may need a more intense concentration. Thanks for bringing up this thread. It'll steer me back to the right side and hopefully it'll stick this time.

I received an email from him just last week. He was in the process of moving his shop to a new place, so has been a bit busy. He was responding to an email I sent him in October. Apparently his spam filters have been a little too pro-active.

Trying-It, my name gets spelled wrong so often I hardly notice. There used to be a company, Meyer Machine Tool, that made a treadle hammer called The Mark. It was based on Clay Spencer's inline treadle hammer. I can't find any recent links on it, so they may have stopped. I used to get ad cards on it in the Blacksmiths Journal. I think they sold it for around $1000, and they had a pneumatic option that gave a one-hit power assist. Or maybe they *tried* to sell it for around $1000. I have never heard of anyone who bought one. I don't think that Clay's tire hammer is the same business model, though. I've only heard of him offering workshops where people pay in advance and build the hammer. They pay for the parts and his time and leave with a working tire hammer. I don't think he actually sells pre-built hammers. He also sells just the plans, too.

I'm not sure about the demo strategy. I don't see how a group would pay for travel and lodging to someone for the purpose of selling their product(s). Don't sellers usually pay their own way? Part of a marketing cost, I would think. Maybe if you offered to do a general treadle hammer workshop or demo using the Bigfoot - that would work. But I'm pretty sure the guy who bangs pots and pans together at county fairs pays his own way, including a seller's booth fee. I'm real curious about those advancements, though. I can certainly understand why you don't want to share the design details, but what do they do? How do they make the Bigfoot better than the designs out there today?

Electronics engineer.

Could the original post maybe be some kind of troll??

Yup, basically I would think that you do the simple physics lever calculations between the treadle and arm, and then maybe subtract for friction. So a basic swing arm, Oliver-type, would probably be the most efficient, as there would be fewer friction points. Personally, I like the inline, mostly because I've gotten accustomed to top tools and a swing-arm could need adjustment for different heights.

A friend of mine welds "pads" on the hammering end of the dies. These are just 1-inc X 1-inch, or so, disks. When the mushrooming gets too bad, he cuts it off and welds a new one on.

I like opening the doors or windows and just listening to whatever's going on outside, birds winds, rain, ... The propane forge drowns those out a little, but not too badly.

I would also suggest muscle spasms might be the cause of the pain. I had surgery about 12-13 years ago that required spreading a couple ribs. Ever since then I have had sharp pain on and off at the site. I just figured there was a nerve problem in one of the ribs. So when I finally asked my doctor about it just last year, he said the intercostal muscles are small and when they spasm, it feels like a cut. He suggested some stretching exercises and that really solved it. I still get the pains if I forget to stretch regularly, but stretching makes them go away almost instantly. Now I've got some nasty back, shoulder, and neck pain from shoveling snow, I've got about 3000 sq ft of driveway and my stupid tractor/blower keeps breaking belts. So that means lots of shoveling, and we were hit hard in Dec. Stretching there hasn't helped yet, but the hot tub feels good :)

The CO detector is a real life-saver. Mine, like habu's, gives off lots of CO until the forge gets good and hot. My forge is in a 2-car garage, and I replaced the doors with swing-outs, complete with opening windows. With the doors and windows closed, it'll get to over 250ppm in about 15 minutes. So I've got a Wally-mart variety pedestal fan blowing out one window and the window on the opposite side open. The CO detector stays at 0 when I do that. After a while, I can shut off the fan. But this forge is nothing compared to my lawn tractor. I had it in the shop to check something out and the CO went to 500ppm in about a minute.

I really like this site, and especially like the category format. But one thing that's really impressing me is the Blueprints. Anvilfire has a nice section link removed at the request of anvilfire, but they couldn't keep that up, so it's been stalled for a few years now. The Tuesday night BP is doing a great job with fresh content. And the Wiki is a great idea. I hope that builds up. Thanks, Glenn.

I guess I'm guilty of over-engineering and over-building. What can I say - I really have fun designing things. I'm an electronics engineer, so it's in my blood. The over-building was mainly due to the stuff I had on hand. I've got this enormous I-beam that someone gave to me already mounted to a 5/8 plate. And about 500-lbs of anvil because it was free. I think I put maybe $50 at the most into this thing. Plans were helpful. Mine were Clay Spencer's inline hammer plans. They gave me some great starting points as to spring sizes, heights and lengths, etc. Then I took those and over-engineered from them. Woo Hoo!!! As for forging long items, I haven't done that yet with this, but I would probably use a stand to hold up the far end while I manipulated closer to the hammer. If you use top tools for drawing and spreading, then you don't have to move things around much. For dies I have my basic flat plates that I made out of 3/8" leaf spring and some drawing dies, which are just top and bottom fullers made of pieces of solid 1-1/4" round, forged with a slight crown to keep the edges from digging in. I use them for heavier drawing and spreading. For lighter stuff I use the flat dies and a top fuller/flatter tool. I find I like using this much more than the drawing dies. It's the only good thing for tapering, too. I'm thinking of making some kind of tenoning jig. My over-engineer is going to try something that I think is called "kiss blocks". The bottom die has a fairly sharp edge and some 5/8" holes in it for the kiss blocks. The kiss block acts as a stop for a top tool, like my flatter or maybe something with a sharper edge. I would hammer down until the top hits the kiss block, rotate and repeat. The kiss blocks will be 5/8" round, maybe something harder than mild, and be different lengths to accommodate different tenon, or really any type of shoulder, thicknesses. Another top tool I use all the time is a hack. It's basically a hot cutter made from some spring steel. With that and an aluminum plate on the bottom, I can cut 1/2" in two or three wacks. I've also got some other veining and texturing tools. The next thing I'm going to make is a can dispenser to drop a recycling bin's worth of cans one at a time, end-up, for recycling. OK, I'm only partially serious about that one :)

The right size for a workbench is 1 foot smaller in each dimension than your shop. Or maybe that's just how it seems.

Dale, I wish I had thought about your method to make the square tool hole when I made mine. I cut four corner holes, then used a hole saw to cut out the middle. Then a lot of filing. The thing is, I've used that method to make square holes before. There's something about the memory being the first thing to go, but I don't remember what it is. In case Dale's explanation about the arm pivots isn't totally clear, let me try to muddy it up. If you look at his first picture, in the message that started this, you'll see that the left end of the spring/arm is pivoting on an assembly that hangs down from the top horizontal support arm. That assembly also pivots at the top. So when the hammer comes crashing down, you will see the left end of the spring/arm swing in and out while that vertical assembly swings left and right. This is basically Clay Spencer's inline treadle hammer design. I bought his plans and found them to be a great resource. I strayed from them quite a bit, sometimes because of what I had on hand, others to "tinker", but the basic measurements and operation were very useful. Someone cleverer than me could probably just look at the picture, though. Some improvements I tinkered with: Springs - I use just barely enough spring to hold the ram to its top resting spot. Then I connected a real short, maybe 4", spring with a chain. That spring only comes into action at the bottom of the ram's travel to give it an extra boost for the return. This makes for an easier push down and less energy, but still a quick recovery for faster blows. Bruce Freeman, of Grasshopper fame, suggested this and calls it a "kickback", I think. Guide - I mentioned it above, but I used some UHMW as bearings. I got a 4-ft rod from eBay for about $10 after shipping. And if you look at the hammer head closeup I posted above, you'll see what looks like hockey pucks. They are indeed hockey pucks with holes drilled in them. I use them as bumpers for when the ram returns to the top. Hammer - I kept it light, at 35 lbs. My reasoning is that a heavy hammer takes too long to return, unless the springs were real strong. Since I mostly work in small stuff, 5/8" and smaller, I didn't feel I needed all of 80 lbs or so. And since a whole lot of work was done in earlier times by a striker with a 16-lb sledge, I think my 35 lbs is sufficient. I used it to make a hand hammer and it performs very well in punching the eye and forming. I even upset the 2-1/4" round 4140 to get the length/weight ratio I wanted. I gave up a whole lot of sweat making this, but energy is energy. No matter what hammer weight you use, the end result is the work you put into it. More blows with light, or less with heavy, as long as the hammer mass is up to the task, it will probably turn into a similar amount of work on your part. Treadle - I curved a piece of 1-1/2" pipe for mine instead of fabb'ing one. That's just because I thought it would be cool. One could argue that it lets you stand at any angle, but it really doesn't make a difference. However, the tinkering thing I did was to connect it to the connecting rod using a leaf spring bent in an elongated "C" to make a shock absorber. The TH's I've tried had too quick of a stop at the end for my aging knees. The ram's arm is a leaf spring, but it's too short to absorb enough shock. This added C-spring feels nice to me. It does add a little response delay from when you press down, but that was easy to get used to. And on small, repeated, blows, I can get a really nifty rhythm going. Bottom line on this project - I've said it before and will probably say it again, but the only thing I'm disappointed with on my TH is the time it took for me to get it done. I use it almost every time I'm forging. As a third hand, it's now become indispensable. For bigger work, it's no power hammer, but for a part-time hacker like me it's so much better than a hand hammer. Drawing, spreading, and cutting are done in 1/2 to 1/4 the time, saving heats. It lets me spread the work around the different joints in my body instead of just my elbow and shoulder. For a tool nut like me, just building it was fun and rewarding. And it really does a great job on cans :)

And here's another guide method. It's so interesting to see how one set of plans can be altered to suit whatever's on hand. I used the tube-in-a-tube, but my bearings are 1" UHMW round rods tucked in some pipe 1/2-nipples. The bolt in the pipe cap is used to adjust the UHMW rods. For lube, I used some Teflon/Silicone lube squirt. That stuff is pretty slick.

I was on the forums when Paw Paw passed away. The zinc fumes were "the last straw" for him. I don't remember the specific illness, but he had some real respiratory problems and his lungs may have been at a very reduced capacity.

In my previous shop, it got well below freezing during the winter in there and I used RV antifreeze. I used two gallons of it with about 14 gallons of water. When things got really cold, like -20F, the tub would get slushy, but never froze over. I found the smell to be pleasant and it didn't seem to affect the quench at all. But I only used mild steel. I don't know how it would be with any water quench higher carbon steels. My new house is on a hill and the shop (formerly a garage) is about half-way into the ground. This is enough to keep the inside from freezing, even when it's -20F outside.

I would guess that the feet probably don't make all that much difference. The hammer force should still be transmitted to the feet pretty nicely. The biggest problem with feet would be the flexing of the piece between the feet. I don't think the anvil would be flexing much at all from the force of a hand hammer. But maybe the feet on a stump could present a problem, as they're a much smaller surface area. The pounding could cause them to dig in a bit more than a flat base.

Personally, I like the hot spot. I don't make blades, so don't need the even heat. The hot spot gives me a tad more control over the heat area. Not as nice as coal does, but good enough. The concentrated heat gets the spot hotter quicker, and back to the anvil faster. A friend of mine built a highly insulted forge using a glass-blower's ribbon burner. He put the steel in and waited a few minutes for it to heat up. When he looked in, there was just a puddle on the floor of the forge. He said it was a pain to clean out. I guess the only problem with welding in that one is knowing how not to get past welding temp :-)

Hi, Justin. Yep, that was the same meet. Lucian is a pretty smart guy. I learn something new from him every time.

A pretty good blacksmith up in VT, Lucian Avery, suggested to use your full name, or at least last name, as a touchmark. He said you can't Google a logo.

Don't leave hot work on the anvil, or any other benign place, while you go answer the phone. You might jab your thigh with the anvil horn, curse a little, then lean on the hot piece, thinking it's still a cold anvil, or other cold benign place, and then curse a lot Seriously, though, never leave hot work unattended anywhere but a place always used for hot stuff. I've got a couple firebricks on the floor in an out-of-the-way place that everyone knows could have hot things on it. And on a completely unrelated note - The Ubehebe Crater, in Death Valley, is a whole lot steeper going back up than it is going down.