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I Forge Iron

wathomas

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  1. I have only built a tire hammer style not a Rusty style so I can't say which is easier to knock together with certainty. I can say the tire hammer is quite simple and a quick build. I went thru the same indecision , in the end what mattered most was putting down the reading material and digging into the scrap pile. My very best suggestion is take an inventory of what you have available or can scrounge with your next trip to the scrap metal dealer and bang it out either style decided by whats at hand. Meanwhile if you crave a PH keep an open eye for what will be your anvil post...if you see a candidate snatch it up....I passed many suitable pieces right up 'til I need it but at the moment I was ready for mine I made the trek around scrap dealers in the area and couldn't find that piece. Ended up welding stacks of cut offs I had stashed and while it works it detracts a bit from the appearence. There seems to be a fair amount of fancination to small power hammers of any sort. If you built one and decided it didn't do all you wanted or couldn't take dies or what not you needed for your particular use I expect you could recover your costs w/o too much difficulty (particularly if you buy materials at scrap and not from a metals supplier). I recall four posts over the last year on the local Craigs List. 2 were authentic Little Giant hammers and the lower priced advertised for $2000 and the listings stayed up quite a while...but the homebuilts were $500 or less and the ads dissappeared the same day. Sounds like you are on that path having aquired your motor. Stay on the course of working with available bits and I don't see where you stand to lose. BTW switching motors is very simple on tire hammer...mount it up if the feller you have isn't up to the task you will know with certainty and can remedy w/o losing a lot of time or material.
  2. Looks nice and I like it too. Especially like that you took what you could scrounge and USED it. I say great job :D
  3. I don't have experience enough to make any useful recomendations. FWIW I tried no weight and two different weights...for my tire hammer, the heavier made a big difference. I think it could be improved even more if I fooled with a bit more weight. As it backs up to a heavy lathe (approx 5000#) right now I have just looped a line around it ...that prevents it from slowly "walking". Its not bolted down..right now I am thinking next time I come across some scrap heavy rubber I will put it under the base see what that does. Thats not why I posted. I want to say I am impressed with how everyone shared their experience in this discussion. Its a good group. Kudos for Ted..class act to make a simple apology ,not take offense or stray off topic. And that was made easier I am sure because Grant was quite graceful in expressing his observation how a statement made for emphasis can prevent or have a tendancy to prevent everyone from expressing themselves. I will keep lurking always informative. thanks all.
  4. Keith --congratulations on seeing it thru---looks great. You say you are about to cut and bust out a section of the slab and reinforce. I certainly have seen this recomended in several posts. Have you spoken with anyone who went the other way? IOW only jumping in to "repair" the damage to the exisitng slab after the fact? Have you had sicussion 0with someone ths has "done it". Wondering whether "waiting til it shows it is needed " is going to tyically result in a larger area that will need repair? I vaguely recall one post that went into some detail about the localized underlying soil type being a big factor.
  5. Congratulations. Enjoyed the video and as I watched it looked to me like the drive mechanism particularly shows off a lot of local problem solving/thought went in to its construction. I like that individuality in builds. Have you struck hot metal with it? …I had trialed my PH with a piece of aluminum (something I had seen on the web as evidence of how hard a hammer was hitting)…I didn’t have experience to correlate or predict what that was telling me. (but it smashed it well and was sort of fun). But it was later using hot steel when I was delighted with how it hit. That’s why I ask that looks in the video like wood being used for a test (makes sense rather than witness/scar the anvil )…have you done that before or have you been able to try out on a heated work piece? [or maybe I am imagining that to be a piece of wood ] Looks great!!
  6. No paint yet...have been using it a bit...these will spoil you for drawing out stock and super easy way to form a "square edge step. Going to use it a bit before painting (trial the welds etc). Nice link to site I hadn't visited. Nice loooking tire hammers. Meanwhile I am out of space (don't see myself building a smaller one).
  7. I thought this topic had some clear explanation on various heat treat operations and might be worth checking out if you haven't seen it.
  8. Tim---thanks for taking time to post pictures. The one you finished from the ball pien has a nice shape. You have figured out the the issue with slitting/punching the eye so clearly you learned from that one too. With tempering , I have broken a fair share of mostly wood carving chisels (worked from disgarded coil springs)...it happens and doesn't take a thing away from the learning if you have watched the color you will have a better idea how to work that particular steel. Sometimes can be useful to harden by cooling locally....just submerging the end or edge you want hard into the quench...this will keep the sections you want less brittle (like the tang of your knife or even back edge) softer. Another useful aid can be the oven...using an oven for 45 minutes to hour I can usually sneek up on a color amd draw pretty evenly the full length a straw or bronze. Typically set the oven at 405F to 425F (...varies by spring). But if I want a chisel that I will be hitting regularly with a maul or hammer I will sometimes still draw by torch or using the forge so I can let the colors go blue near the handle and only have the end straw.
  9. Heated some 5/8" coil spring stock to red heat tonight in the propane forge. The tire hammer performed very well quickly tapering a section to a pointed tang about 3" long. 2 heats was all that was needed...with practice it might be possible in 1. By hand I would likely have 5 maybe 6 heats using this particular coil spring stock because for whatever reason it is "harder" to forge than same/similar sizes I have used from other JY springs. Either my technique using the power hammer ...or maybe the tongs , wasn't the best....instead of an evenly 4 square cornered tang I got an sort of elongated diamond cross section...but heh I recall similar problems when hand hammering if my tongs aren't tight and let the piece "roll". Very encouraged by this first real trial.
  10. Good tip and you are right I don't recall mention of a brake ...nor did it occur to me when I tacked on a "stop" to control the travel of the lever arm. But it sounds like a good idea. This evening took a piece of flat stock 1/4" x 3/4 and approx 10" long. Heated red, bent both ends 90 degrees...heated back up...bent a curve "bow". Drilled the folded over tabs for mount bolts. The "arc" and its mount bolts sits on a stack of washers (this is the adjustment feature I chose since I don't ex[ect frequent adjustment to be required). Had a sturdy piece of strap 2 inch wide flat stock that was already formed in a "u"..used that as the base to get welded onto the motor lever arm. Works just like you said..releasing the pedal stops the tire and with a bit of finesse can stop it in position to hold the die open. When stopped this way (with die open) there is a strong brake that gets tighter if the tire is spun one direction. If the tire is turned by hand the other direction still holds pretty good before letting it starts to slip letting the die close.
  11. New morning fresh start. Drilled 4 holes inline in a short piece of angle, sawed it into 4 shorter pieces, drilled holes near the end of some square tubing had the start of the foot pedal. Another piece of square tube as a cross brace in the front ties them together. The scrap cross brace was a bit "short" grabbed a " thin cut -off slice" of 3" round to bridge the gap...I thought it looked sort of nice as a foot pad sort of complimented the scrap base plate with its holes ... so dug thru a tub of cut offs to find another same diameter and about the same thickness for the opposite side. Used a 1/8" x 1" flat stock as connector rod from the pedal frame to the motor hinge lever. Heated it up gave it a half twist so it could be loosely bolted at both ends (drilled a couple of holes at the top so I had a couple of choices if adjustment was needed...actually had a "short link " with 4 holes that I prepared...then found the original hole gave the pedal about the right travel). Pictures don't really show the spring I am using pulling down on the motor hinge. Right now it is sort of temporary as I have a short line tied to the back splash plate with a lop that the spring is hooked into. the upper portion of the connector added a 8-1/2 pound counterweight (settled down the 'rocking' motion) nothing hi tech it was largest piece of steel I could fit in...and is the first piece I have tried...it is a big improvement. [i have read of various counterweights being used weighing from 6 pounds to over 11 pounds so i wasn't sure what to expect ...the 8-1/2 pounds changes the rocking completely ) runs a lot smoother now
  12. Also made a set of upper and lower dies. I had some pieces of die steel "FX-2" which I researched w Google a few years ago when I first got it. Welded on some "wings" with 1/2" holes counterbored for 1/2 x 13 allen cap screw. The botton is "flat"...the top I ground one half relieving the edges to a maybe 3/4" or so radius. No attempt to heat treat ...will see how it hold up..I used a piece in a hand hammer gullotine and it held up to that but time will tell. When the tupper is at the top of its stroke this picture shows the clearance betwen dies (about 2") Still need to make the foot pedal, add a lot more inches of weld on the anvil and I will need a counterweight to take out some of the tendency to "rock" but gave it several trials by pulling down with a hand on the motor hinge lever. Not sure it demonstrates anything much but it does a number on 1/8 thick aluminium drawing it out cold. Resisting working red hot steel until I get the foot pedal
  13. OOOPs looks like I made a bad choice...turns out the mystery base I had hanging around is some sort of cast iron not steel. Although the welds looked pretty they lasted all of about 2 minutes before "ping" cracking under the strain of the hammer test. Today I cured the problem with a trip to a local scrap yard where I found some 3/4" plate (the pattern of holes "came with" don't know what this was in its first life). The yard was accomadating enough to slightly bend an extra one of the plates (there were lots of the "short ones" ...I only found one of the larger} anyway they bent a smaller one for me with a skid loader (convinced me that its steel plate....I didn't want another "do over"). While I was at it I grabbed a "backsplash" ...figured that should provide some extra stiffening for the upright...is it needed probably not but the price was right. Yeh its a little rusty but at the areas being welded I used the angle grinder. The to deal with the anvil (which at that stage was "hanging in the air" I took four short pieces of 3-1/2" round and cut them all to a tight fit (facing them in a lathe did the trick and I had to make them slightly different to get them all "tight"). Tapped them under the anvil with a hammer and welded them in place...decided this looked better than "stepping down" to a smaller single round [and I didn't have another large round]. My alternate choice using what I had would have meant a 6-1/2" diameter piece (largest I had) which I thought would look odd as the next piece in the stack would overhand by a inch all around.
  14. Brian, Sorry to hear you might face grinding your welds to peel off the face on your hammer. If these welds are near the rim might be delicate as well as tedious excercise. I would probably do it that way (cut it off) but like you would at least explore putting stiffening braces on the outside. If they lay out OK on the "front side" perhaps they could look more visually appealing with some "shape"...thinking maybe concentric pattern of circles/curved rounds, a maze pattern or something. I don't think you are the first one to do this ..I thought I recalled an image with stiffening braces showing on the front face...looked briefly for it but didn't come up with it. Wouldn't be an inspiration if I found the picture (more a deterrent from what I recall they were kinda rough). If its any consolation I have ground/cut more than my share of welds over the years...usually the dread and avoidance is worse than the job itself. Bill
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