youngdylan

I guess I like it, then again I'm bound to; you've almost totally ripped off (stolen?) my work. No imagination then? Couldn't you at least modify it just a little? Actually the only thing you've changed is you didn't give the slight dome/3D effect to some of the curves. Beyond you? http://www.verdigris...%20railings.htm http://www.verdigris...0balustrade.htm Well they say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Me? I just see it more as thieving. I wonder what my solictor would say.

TomC. No book will ever teach you to be a blacksmith, as everyone says you just go do it, suck it and see, make mistakes etc. ..... buuuuuuuut if you lean towards the creative side, I can't recomend highly enough Peter Parkinson's book "The Artist Blacksmith". Maybe's not the best for learning the basics from but worth looking at with an eye to the future. I've had the fortune to go on a class run by him and years later I still draw from it. Very nice bloke and so inspirational design wise.

iron may not care but your suppliers probably do Me, my first priority is putting food on the table a roof over the head for the family. Gotta have an eye on the business side of things to do that. Anything over that and being able to do so by playing with my lovely toys tools whilst being my own boss is a luxury I'm always very grateful I can enjoy.

Thanks for the replies re silicon bronze. Kinda wondering if it's much more expensive than the aluminium bronzes or am I being screwed. I can find plenty o suppliers for ally bronze (CA104). They typically quote £9/kg. I can only find one supplier (in the UK) for silicon bronze (CS101) and they're talking around £14/kg for a bar or 2 and £11/kg for a few 100 kg.

Bob feel free to pm me if needed

Me? I'm a total air devotee. Go air if you've a big enough compressor. The way I see it is your gonna need a good anvil and tup +guide system for either type of PH. With an air hammer essentially all you then need is a sutiable cylinder, valves and plumbing .... less moving parts and things to go wrong than a mechanical. If you want to build a junk yard hammer it's probably not much of an advantage but the "air" side of things are readily available off the shelf; less time rummaging round junk yards. Other advantages are more control (with appropriate valving) and wider range of height to get tooling under. Use a 300mm cylinder, doesn't cost much more than a 250mm and make the height of the pilot valve adjustable. See my thread on improved control for Kinyons for a few other tips learned through 10 years of experience tinkering with a Kinyon. Disadvantages: exhaust air noise and higher power consumption. Bear in mind I've never run a mechanical and I'm very biased (and opionated)

"Republicans understand the importance of bondage between a mother and child." ~ Dan Quayle, former U.S. Vice-President ~

wish my tool had the same effect

Monster ........... why do you have the sexiest tools?

Right then, lets make amends for some of my "less" than serious comments. Here's something you Kinyon boys (and lets not forget the ladies) might find useful. Years ago I built a Kinyon air hammer. Was quite happy with it for a long time. Till recently the only other power hammer I'd used was a Wallace and Grommit style Blacker (for ages I thought all hammers looked like that). It was only when I had a play on a Sahinler I realised how little control the basic Kinyon had. Somewhere on the internet I picked up that the reason they lacked control was because they were inherently unbalanced and reducing the pressure to the "top" chamber of the cylinder would improve things. Tried it, worked wonderfully ............. at low throttle openings. Unfortunately the down side is you loose a lot of ooompppph at full throttle. Didn't like, built a switchable bypass for the regulator, ok but a PITA to reach over and switch midway through something or other. Scratched parts of my anatomy, 2mW bulb flickered. I linked the bypass valve to the throttle so as the throttle progressively opens the bypass valve also progressively opens. RESULT! You get control at low throttle and phoaarrr at high. Gotta be worth you trying, you'll have to tinker with the ratio of throttle to by bypass "leverage". Pictures may explain things better. PS one useful tip is keep main airlines as short as possible. Airflow is SO important on these hammers. This is especially so on the exhaust. Seen lots of hammers with many cubits length of microbore airline to the exhaust valve. Not good. Better to keep the ex valve as close as possible to the main valve and use a mechanical linkage to the treadle. PPS I don't know about other makes but I find the ports on Norgren cylinders a bit restricted for the flowrate of air hammers running at full tilt. It's worth drilling and tapping out to the next size up.

..... if he had the space

Thomas I've a job I'm quoting for in Bronze. Till now I've always used nickel aluminimum bronze CA104 (sorry, don't know the Cxxxxx number) Trouble is, it's a bit yellow for the customer. He's kinda looking for some more like the "tradititional statue" bronze ... almost browny greeny, you know .... bronze colour. How does silicon bronze (CS101 - C65500 ???) fit with this colour; it seems a lot of bronze is cast these says using silicon bronze.

Guess the problem with brass is there's SO many grades, all with different forging temperature windows. Also some people blur the line between what is brass and what is bronze. A lot of brasses tend to be both hot and/ or cold short (do you guys call it hot/cold short?) If you're not sure what grade it is, a general rule it's usually most effective to forge it when barely red. Because of this narrow window it just takes for ever to move a large amount of the stuff. Also as Frosty says, it a PITA cos it's such a good conductor of heat. You can't go wrong with "suck it and see". If you've got enough spare pieces try it a various tempatures to see what happens. It's worth noting that copper is an absolute joy to forge, both hot and cold.

Me? I get my conversion tables out.

Might be some sorta false memory psychobabble thing but I'm suure I remember going on holoiday to Ireland in the mid 90's and the the distances were in km and the speed limits in mph. As you guys say "go figure" .... literally

centimetres???? who does dem widgets? m and mm all (most) of the way!

now thats back in the day! Egyptian, Babylononian or that new fangled Roman cubit?

Sorry Grant, too tempting, just couldn't resist it ......mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa

Good points there, If it's a treadle you need then a powerhammer is a poor second best .... and visa versa. I'd imagine for a majority of people, it's the power hammer they use the most. I'm up to 3 powerhammers now (and want .... no ... need a bigger one) and I've one treadle. Guess this ratio kinda reflects the relative usefulness of each tool. If it is a treadle you need, one obsevation/tip I would make was when building the treadle, one of the hardest parts I found to source was the spring. Tension springs long and "powerful" enough just didn't seems that common. Ended up using a rear suspension spring of an offrode motorsiclkle. Managed to bend back the the top and bottom hoops through almost 90 degrees so I could get a fixing through them. Don't use heat (yeah it's difficult but do-able cold) else your into the realm of alchemy heat treating to prevent any weaks spots around the heat affected area. It's stood up to 7 years of intermittant use. If you look closely at the attached you should get the gist. If you look closely at the anvil you'll see its a 150mm solid bar (in hinsight should have used 200mm) but the "cap" is a seperapate bolt on piece that I've hot punched a 30mm square hole through (aren't hydraulic presses sweet) then trued up on a lathe. Very useful for dropping tooling in but if needs be I can swap it over for another piece with no hole. If you're good with an oxy fuel torch you could cut a hole out of say 50mm plate with it. Did hum and har about making it adjustable. Always a fan of the simple is best approach so didn't. Very rarely wished it was adjustable in years use. My tuppenance is put your time effort and money into a good anvil, it's not to difficult to make it adjustable later. Lets say your using a 50kg hammer head, you really could do with a minimum of 250kg anvil.

I'm not familiar with these plans but I wouldn't rule out building a power hammer. I'm an air hammer devotee myself but there's plenty of wonderfully ingenious designs for home brewed mechanicals around. I can't imagine these would cost a right lot more than a treadle with a bit of scrounging around car scrapyards. Specially so when the cost of the anvil is taken into account ... to me it's probably one of the most important things to think about when building an effective hammer. A good one would cost the same for either treadle or power vesrsions. You see too hammers with a bit of tube with a bit of plate welded to the top for an anvil. If working a round a budget I kinda recomend putting as much of this as you can into the anvil. A good mass of steel in the right place makes a HUGE differnce

Just curious, who's actually put a radius on a good quality anvil with a file?. Had a quick play with a 200kg cast steel (brooks I think) and 63 kg composite (no ledgible maker mark). Sure would take a long time to put even a moderate radius on .... would probably go through a few files as well. Are we meant to use diamond files ... they aint cheap.

I've had the good fortune to go an Weekend couse on design run by Peter Parkinson. T'was money VERY WELL SPENT

now thats a labour of love

went to the timber merchants today and picked up some 3 be 2. Measured it (because thats the sorta person I am) It's 70 by 43mm. Have I been screwed?

Sure are. afor-warned is afor-armed