twcoffey

Bigfish, You may find that the counter weight is too light. I had to increase the weight to 11.5 lbs to minimize/eliminate sideway walking vibration. Someone else on another thread made the same discovery. With the toggle arms attached and the hammerhead disconnected the counter weight should allow the tire to stay in any position that you set it without the brake on. This is a static balance that I found necessary. Ted

In 1985, having read John Vlach's account of Philip Simmons the Charleston Blacksmith, and while on vacation with my wife in the south we went to Charleston, SC to see and photograph(not a trivial task) the ironwork of that famous city. I had Vlach's book with me as a reference but on a whim I said to my wife do you think we could meet Philip Simmons. We found his address and went to the house and his wife most graciously sent us to the small shed in the backyard. There was Philip and a couple helpers. He immediately focused on Marj and I and asked us what he could do for us. I explained that I was beginning in black smithing and wanted to meet him. What followed was amazing. He carried us through his beginnings and talked about many of his projects and his mentor Peter Simmons. He even showed Peter Simmon's worn out anvil on his scrap pile. His shop was more primitive than any of us smiths today can imagine. A fire pot built in a cutoff barrel with fire clay and a swayback anvil and a oxy-acytylene outfit laying in a trailer. He took us to a small office and showed us drawings of some panels for the Charleston airport. This was a new project and he was most excited about it. Philips signed my copy of John Vlachs book (see the attachment). Later that day Marj and I went downtown and in a bookstore found several old copies of "The Early IronWork of Charleston" by Allen Delas 1941. We went back to Philip's house and I showed him the book. He said he had never seen it before so I gave him a copy. To my surprise he said "please sign it for me". A great man.

Try this website: http://www.calsmith.org/library/videolist.html or http://www.umbaonline.org/library.html

Somehow I managed to lose my last post. If it shows up forgive the duplication. Attached is a photo of a locomotive drive wheel. The wheel has a built in counter balance which balances the weight of one end of the connecting rod and coupling. Dynamic running balance is not necessary because the piston pushes and pulls the connecting rod with the same force. The tire hammer as well as other similar hammers( Little giant, etc.) which lifts the hammer head with a large force and releases it with a much smaller force operates with an inherent imbalance. The heavier the hammer the less the vibration would be noticed. Ted

I figured that you cannot balance the mechanism with the hammer head attached because the crank lifts the head weight(about 50 lbs) and drops it on every revolution and therefore dynamic balance is impossible. I did a static balance with the hammer head disconnected. That is the yoke, toggle arms, and spring are installed along with the recommended counter balance then check to see if the wheel will rest at all locations then add or subtract counter balance weight until it does. Its easier if you block the treadle so that the brake pad and motor are not in contact during this check. In my case the balance was achieved at 11.25 lbs for the counter weight. One reason for my weight increase may have been caused by some changes I made to the crank plate. With the 7.75 lbs recommended counter balance my hammer vibrated sideways as well as vertical which lead to my changes. While running the hammer head will make the assembly vibrate up and down which is unavoidable. If the static balance is bad then you should detect some side way vibration. Ted

I guess your question was "How to Adjust?". The principle of adjustment of a swing type treadle hammer is that you want the hammer to contact the piece or tooling as close to the vertical tangent of the arc as practical. For the simple swing arc hammer you have to reach a compromise of somewhere around 1" above the bottom die. For the modified design(ABANA/Hans Peot) you can adjust that point easily for pieces or tooling as required. With the inline hammer adjustment is normally not required except for the initial alignment of the hammer.

Basically the swing type treadle hammer pivots from a fixed location on the column. The only improvement that can be made is to have that location adjustable. That is what Hans Peot realized and redesigned the basic swing type to provide that flexibility. Clay Spencer also had a version of the adjutable swing hammer but then moved on to the inline version. No matter what you do to the swing type the hammer head still strikes with a glancing blow instead of a direct vertical blow. With some modification to the swing type hammer your can convert it to inline. You already have the base, anvil, and column. You need to apply Clay's design to your hardware.

The modified swingarm type plans from ABANA is the Hans Peot designed modification. It is height adjustable for variable height tooling and a definite improvement. I prefer the Clay Spencer Inline Treadle Hammer since hammer path is vertical and doesnot travel in an arc and does not require adjustment for a large range of applications.

On the subject of using a hammer as a fuller, I can be done by annealing the hammer head end. In reviewing some of the old literature, I agree with Bentiron1946 that it appears to be a coppersmith tool based on the style of the hammer forging near the head. Also, There is insufficent material around the eye and the peen length is a too long for heavy steel forging work.

That is a forged(not cast) straight peen hammer used in light work such as sheet metal or saw blades. It could also be used as a top fuller.

I don't think that will be a problem since I am only adding 1.4 lbs near the pivot and have counter-balanced it with .5 lbs of lead to an assembly that has a total weight of 49.3 lbs. Nevertheless I am using a 1.5HP 3 phase motor so that I have speed control with a VFD and more than enough power.

I like the idea of being able to remove the tire from the rim for fabrication ease so I made holes in the crank plate to permit the a socket wrench to access the lug nuts after assembly. Unforunately when this is done you weaken the area around the crank pin. I resolved this by adding a 3/8" 3" x 5" plate and rearranged the spokes as illustrated in the attached photo and the drawing. A word of caution: I haven't run the hammer yet so I may have changes to this scheme.

Your work is the best. Could you describe the purposes of these tongs. What are they designed to hold? Ted

Dkunkler, Thanks for the suggestion on the chamfer. Ted

Frosty, I don't think a little increased weight at that point is important. We shall see when I get things together. That is one item that is easy to replace. I thought that the welded spring bushings might give problems of bending of the 3" washer weld area after thousands of repeated blows. By the way I found in my set of plans several dimensions that are probably typo errors. I have a first edition so maybe they are fixed by now. I will list them when I get through cutting and fitting. Ted

Attached photo of the turned spring bushing mention in item 3 above. This part is beefed up a little over the original and will require about 0.08" notch in PN 210 arm to allow for more clearance for the thicker rim of the bushing at the top edge only. Ted

This jig keeps rod end parallel in both planes during welding. Just something I came up with while trying to solve the parallel problem. I am sure someone has thought of this before. Ted

Rakessler, If you are using a steel plate as a crank welded to the rim per Clay's plans, having the wheel with the front out may interfere with the plate. Also the hub may stick out to far for the plate. Other crank schemes could get you around that problem. Another way to move the wheel back is to go with the Northern Tools alternative axle/hub since that setup allows you to move the tire closer to the column. Ted

I just wanted to point out a few things I encountered and what I did. 1. In my area the auto scrapers for the most part eliminated their inventory of the 1980s and earlier vehicles when scrap price peaked about a 1.5 years ago. Also some of them are keeping the temp tires and using them flat on the ground to lay their inventory on. I found some temp wheels for free at repair shops where they have to pay to have them hauled away. As far as the hub I opted to use the recommended Northern Tool axle and hub instead of spending time and money on a snipe hunt for a used auto axle. 2. In making the tie rods I found that schedule 40 has an ID that is too large for 1" OD bushings. One could use Schedule 80 or in my case I made the rod ends from 1-3/8" shafting that I happened to have. 3. I changed the spring ends from a fabrication/weldment per plans to a solid piece out of solid 3" shafting. I will add future items as I continue on the project. Ted