Steve H

Wow, I can't imagine a guy stealing a power hammer but I know it happened out here with a 3 or 4B!  You can take my car, take my bikes and stereo equipment but DONT take my hammer!

Generous offer, Bruce. Might take you up on that. I haven't gone into the spring box yet but it's looking like one screw is tensioned more than the other.  I'm starting to be amazed at the adjustability they built into these things.  PM sent, Willey

FYI I have the correct tap for chasing the arm tensioner threads if you need one. It's 3'' x 10 tpi

Hi all,  almost there with the little 50 but wanted to clean up some old trash on the crank before firing it up.  I'm looking for a close-up photo of the crank adjusting slide-nut and approx. dimensions. Looking to replace the sketchy thing someone added here.

TIA,

I do like 4140 as well but it is too soft, even with a water quench. I've case hardened it with better results for hammer faces

"The power of forging presses for the average line of work is approximately as follows: For mild steel at a fair heat, a pressure of 3 to 5 tons per sq. in. on the faces of the tools is generally sufficient but when swages or dies are used, it may be necessary to double these pressures. For the very hardest steels, the pressure required may be as high as 10 or even 15 tons per sq. in but this is an exceptional case"

Machinery's Handbook 1953

Jim Batson did for hydraulic forging what Ron Kinyon did for pneumatic forging~
Also- the $1.50 hydraulic booklet from Surplus center is excellent too. I refer to it more frequently now than Batson's book.

Hey Larry,
Was wondering which of the bit styles were using it since most hex bits were always 1045 ish. I'd agree, the stuff seems tough as nails. Makes great tongs- springy as heck.

The dies I'm making have a head dia of 2 1/2" and a shaft of 1.5". Going to be a wait and see how well they hold up. Fortunately I made three die so they should buy me some time if there are failures.

Your buddy Jeff at Michigan Pneumatic says they make their rivet sets out of 4340.

The dies for your 3B are 4340M (cobalt mod) I got from Boeing Surplus for 25 cents a lb. 400 lb blocks for 100 bucks was too good to pass up. Although when Grant machined those he said they were xxxx hard; probably why they were at Boeing Surplus. Have you got a line on any of that material in rounds?

I coulda added on to the 4140 topic but would like to start my own here. There's two steels Grant turned me onto; 4140 as used in Off-center's swage dies (why doesn't someone ask what hardening method Kayne uses now?) and 8630. Similar to 4140, this stuff is supposed to be oil hardening. Similar to 4140, achieved hardness with oil quench leaves alot to be desired. Grant mentioned about water for thicker sections of 4140 and I would now concur. Unfortunately I never got to ask him about water quenching 8630. References list both methods and I'm wondering what you guys have used.

The dies I've made have differing sections of mass that I'm afraid may stress out. I water quenched a sliver of it and i would guess mid 50's Rockwell

I wound up going with what the references all say works very well for 8630: Case hardening with an oil quench. I'm guessing the business ends now are close to 60 rockwell and the core is still plenty soft.

We'll see how it holds up over the course of a few thousand rivets.

Why 8630? It's 2$ a lb at online metals~!

Almost forgot about one of my most favorite 'chance' encounters with NYC ironwork:
I took a date there in the 90's and after dancing all night and carousing around we sat down on a bench. I turned my head and was blown away, immediately recognizing some famous grilles from Jack Andrew's books. It was then I saw my date's lips move and I heard not a word, too awestruck to respond. Looking up closely at Sam's slit and drifted pass-throughs boggled the mind. I think the material was at least 2" round, maybe greater. A masterpiece.

That's what I was looking for...

Love it.
Reminds me of Paris under Eiffel's Tower near the Siene river.
The Blacksmiths were like gods...

I haven't done Germany yet but the French work is by far my favorite.

I've made a guillotene butcher with A2. It is a tricky steel to handle. Fortunately I did not have to do anything other than cut a mitre with a hot saw and then make a C-frame to handle the drops. It seems to have very good heat resistance but the shock handling ability of the annealed end is pretty crappy. The end of the tool that is struck has spalled worse than just about anything else.

For whatever reason it does seem like it's fairly common at auctions/on-line, etc. I wouldn't kick it out of bed but I'd prefer S-7 or H-13 for the hot work.

Most folks start making hammers. I made tongs. For some reason I saw them as more challenging and let my hammer-making skills slack. Now I'm trying to catch up and am finding out how hard it can be to make a decent hammer!

Hey Geist, Nice work. You should check out some of mine: http://ballardforge.com/web/tools.html

With Grant's passing it's opened up some opportunities for tong production, locally at least.

Look out Brent~!

Good info, guys.

I too have been revisiting all that I feared about brass/bronze since i've been making more of these little bottle openers lately. I was using sili-bronze which I absolutely love but was just quoted 17$/lb. It was 14$ last year and I thought that was horrible. Turns out Naval brass is only about $10/lb. I hadn't ever used it but heard it was forge-able and am happy with the results. Looks like yellow brass but yellow brass falls apart as soon as you try to move it.

2nd photo is a sili-bronze filler on architectural bronze handrail. Filthy stuff. I was told to ditch the welding on bronze handrail, make your joints as tight as possible and silver solder. Seeing as how no-one has ordered a brass handrail in ten years it may be awhile before I try it.

A little more than a year ago I picked up a Plasmacam DHC (their first model) for less than half what the guy paid in 2004. Complete with a 60Amp Hypertherm.

I can't say enough about the machine. It's completely changed how I look at solving problems. Yes, you could still cut the same shapes out via a band saw/files whatever, but you wouldn't. This way you can, and will.

Save your pennies and go for it, either torchmate or plasmacam. I think they are both great systems.

Hi Dan, Heat is the definately the enemy in hydraulics. You'll know after you've been running for a few minutes if it's a problem. A large resevoir is something I haven't had the luxury of, yet- I have a 60 gallon one waiting for a pump and motor transplant. Your 30+ gal. tank should help.

Those Bailey subplates seem a little spendy. I found this site: http://www.hyvair.com/pdf/subplates.pdf
Take a close look at the 'normal' D05 and the 'High Flow' pattern. Also check out the rated flow. The High flow pattern has that extra tank return I talked about.
I like Surplus Center for hydraulics but just noticed they didn't have a 3/4" manifold for A+B. Price is right at 50 bucks though...

As P-tree mentioned, the next valve size up; D08 suddenly starts getting spendy. I'm still running a D05 but have a few D08 bodies lying around waiting for a retro-fit. With the D08, your D05 becomes a piggy-back pilot for the bigger valve body. Seems convoluted but I believe what happens is when the amount of fluid gets to a certain point, say approaching 30 gpm, the little solenoids can't push against that much fluid. They have to instead control another spool which resides in the D08 body. From there it's lights out, They are rated to flow like a fire hose. xxxx things weigh close to 30 lbs by themselves!~

Good luck and be prepared to have fun. I gave up a 3B to get into the hydraulics and don't regret it for a moment. It's become my main mangler in the shop

Sorry I missed this one Dan, sounds like a neat project. I've ran both Tandems and Open centers. Open centers deliver less shock as the spool is cycling back and forth because all ports are open to the tank. You may think you only shift the spool once in awhile but after I studied what I was doing while forging, the thing must've changed direction twenty times while I was working a heat.

Tandems will hold the pressure after you let off the solenoid, UNTIL you change direction. I liked the positive feel a tandem had but it will rob the heat even faster than you've already heard about, mainly because of the increased contact time with your material. I also blew off a filter with a Tandem setup, presumably because of those shocks as mentioned. I run a spendy baffle type water hammer arrestor now on the open center and it seems to really help smooth out whatever shocks are left.

Are you running the 28gpm pump at 14 or 28 gpm?

How the heck do you get an attachment here?
I was going to put up a file of D03 to D10 (100gpm) valve and subplate info that makes me question Bailey's 32gpm claim on their D05 valve.
Most D05's are maybe up to 20gpm. I have a Northern that is rated for 24. If you can find a D05H , they use an extra tank return and are rated for 25 but I've never heard of 32gpm out of ports that are 7/16"dia.

Let me say this, I'm getting alot of heat in my system from running the 22gpm pump with my D05. I have recently picked up some D08 bodies that need piloting, either D03 or 05. They are a true 3/4" port and are rated up to 60 gpm. The heat is definately coming from squeezing all that fluid through little ports as everything else is 3/4, 1" or 1 1/4"
It's always something~!

The problem stems from fools listing "hydraulic cylinders' on ebay that are either high pressure pneumatic (~250 psi) or low pressure hydraulic (~1000 psi).
It LOOKS like a hydraulic cylinder but buyer beware. Fools like me see an 8" cylinder for 100$ and say 'Right on- my new 80 ton PRESS cylinder!~!"

Lesson learned: if the thing has 1/4" tie rods- stay away. If there is no tag on the cylinder, as many do not, what size is the ram? Is it 5/8"? Stay away.


Fast forward-
I'm really leaning towards forking over the big bucks for the right cylinder for a new press versus trying to glean a nugget out of the manure pile. Tried to get cylinders rebuilt these days? Forget it, I've had two 7's and 8's that I left at the cylinder shops when each wanted close to 2$K to rebuild them. The $1400 for the 3000 psi 8X8 at surplus center sounds better every day.

Agreed- When I sold the 3B I never thought a 400$ press would do as much work for 1% of the price. I can run the on-board 3HP setup (1725rpm using the 16gpm pump @ 8gpm) or do a quick coupling hose change for the stand alone 10HP power pack (227 gpm pump) when I really want to lay waste to some metal.
I get almost 5 or 6" per second of ram speed out of that combination (double rod 7" cylinder)

Looks Great, Danger. Sorry I missed you this morning, Larry- I left you a bottle opener~~!
FWIW, I've been in two shops that had powered 2-ton trolleys and while nice, I got tired of waiting minutes for them to traverse the building. I wound up going with manual trolleys and chain falls and didn't regret it. Sounds crazy, I know, but there's something old-school I like about having it off-grid. My current runway is 80' and I can whip that manual one down to the end in a fraction of the time it takes the electric. I don't mind pulling a fall either. Wax On, Wax Off~ :P

My favorite basher hammer came out of the dirt floor in that place. Literally- it was probably buried under 6" of ash.
It's a ~4lb sledge someone had forged a ball peen on one end of. Loved the Jib cranes in the place, too. Boatbuilding and outfitting isn't dead in Seattle. A year or two ago the power blew out on a few blocks because 40 supposed welders were working on Tom Cruise's latest yacht!

Definately use a lovejoy coupler. For those that don't know- it's a flexible coupling that goes between your pump and motor. Helps reduce minormisalignment, vibration and other stresses on the pump shaft, all of which, logsplitters anyway, have very wimpy bearings. Be careful though, I ran the cushion a little snug between the two halves and that blew up a retainer ring on the last pump I had. It didn't leak but I knew something was wrong when I had no low pressure high flow, only high pressure low flow. Drain the tank, pull the pump, oil everywhere and suddenly I'm a hydraulics expert!~

If your motor doesn't have a C-face then yes, you'll have to use an angle mount. If you do have a C-face motor I really recommend the cast motor/pump adapters from Surplus Center for about 40$. They really took the heartache out of the alignment problems I'd had in the past. Surplus Center has the couplings and good deals on fittings too.

Your alignment from the motor to pump is bad or- you have too much thrust on the pump shaft. I've gone though two logsplitter pumps this way, One domestic, one import so it's not really a question of quality. Do you have a C-face motor with an integral adapter or is it a separate pump mount? Improper motor rotation (even for a split second) will blow out seals as well.