fciron

Thanks for some informative replies. I guess I'll be going back to square, octagon, round but I have to say that the hex draw was pretty cool for the small area where it worked. I'm gonna need to design an excuse to play with it some more. I also need to remember to let things percolate through the internet a little longer. Mike-hr, I think we posted simultaneously, my frustrated comment was not aimed at you.

Let me rephrase the question. I want to make some very long round tapers for a paying job. I want them quick and I want them decent. Should I try to draw a hex all the way to the pointy end bit or would it be faster to switch to square/octagon/round when the hex starts to distort? The more time I can spend with my foot down hard on the treadle the more metal I can move and the quicker the whole job gets done and the sooner I get paid the exact same amount. My test pieces suggests I can put more whammy into a square than I can into a hex, experienced industrial smiths never miss an opportunity to talk about drawing hex. Which should I go with? You know what? I just told someone in another thread that the little giant is not an industrial grade tool. I should go with my test piece and worry about hex later. Good Night. Lewis

Mike, I do indeed mean hexagonal, having six sides. I've heard Clifton Ralph and other industrial smiths talk about drawing out hex, then round instead of square, octagon and round. Thingmaker, it is not necessary for things to be symmetrical, but to keep from twisting most of the material needs to be in a vertical line with the contact points of the hammer and anvil. (Just think how boring it would be if we could only forge symmetrical stuff.) When the hexagon is 1 inch across it does not distort enough to start twisting (although it would under a larger hammer). When it gets down to about a 5/8 inch hex, then hammer blows deform it enough to cause trouble on the next side. My question is whether there is a way to prevent this and still draw quickly or if this a limitation of hexagonal drawing.

I've heard (and read) form a number of reputable sources that drawing out can be done to a hex rather than a square. I've got a couple of jobs coming up that call for long round tapers from 3/4" and 1" round bar (about 18mm and 25mm?). I thought I'd try drawing them out hex, since that would be closer to the final round than a square. I tried to take my time on the first heat and get a well define and accurate hexagon, then started drawing with the second heat. The bar seems to twist when I hit the second side of the hex; for the first side everything is symmetrical and I can get a nice squish, but when I turn it 60 degrees then the blow twists the bar. I rotate again and hammer on the third side to put it back to a symmetrical hex, but now it's got the twist. I can keep it all tidy if I use a real light foot on the treadle (25lb. Little Giant, just cleaned and tuned, new bushings, the new dies are flat and parallel) but then I am going really slowly, which is the opposite of what I'm looking for. Are my angles still off or is this technique only appropriate for larger material? (Running the hammer hard on larger material would have the same effect as me using lighter blows, it wouldn't deform the hex enough to start twisting. So larger proportional to the hammer. ) Any thoughts or suggestions appreciated. Lewis

ptree, now you've done it. I was joking about the see-through shield before, now I'm seriously considering it. I was thinking you'd need half inch material, but it might actually be a reasonable project with the polycarbonate.

It's short for Falls City Ironworks, named after a local brew. Perhaps you need a plexiglass shield for your hammer. ;)

My cynical point of view has always been that the Little Giant seemed to have been designed by a couple of farmers rather than engineers. Design changes seem to occur whenever someone thinks of them rather than as part of a planned design process; the lack of renewable parts, like bushings, in much of the machine; and a generally fussy design. I've gotten to fiddle around on a Beaudry and a couple of Bradley hammers and they seem be much more professional machines. I think that the widely held opinion of air hammers having superior control to mechanical hammers is because the Little Giant is the default representative of the mechanical hammer. The little bit of work I got to do on a Beaudry was a revelatory experience. (The guy who owns the Beaudry is a much better mechanic than I as well, so I am trying to emulate that, since I won't be getting a new hammer anytime soon.) My cynical view of safety is that both employers and workers need to be protected from themselves. If safety improvements weren't mandated by government agencies then a lot of them wouldn't happen because they'd be bad for the short term bottom line. Common Sense is well known to be a rare commodity, so it is foolish to expect workers to be fully aware of all the hazards around them 40 or 50 hours a week. As an example, you cannot expect people to remember to put on their safety glasses at the moment they become necessary, so it becomes policy for everyone on the shop floor to wear specs all the time. Magnify that logic for a nation of 300 million people and I think that OSHA is a surprisingly responsive bureaucracy .

Jake, there's not really a lot to know about little giants. They're pretty simple machines. Oiling is about the only thing you can do regularly. Less obvious things to do occasionally are greasing the clutch (grease fitting in the center of the shaft at the back) and adjusting the ram guides (the ram should only go up and down). When you reassemble things you want four lower pins (all the ones that go through the short link arms) to form a horizontal line. That way, when the ram moves up or down from the resting place it is compressing the spring, not spreading the arms. Most hammers come with their arms drooping and the new owners just use them that way. (I did for years.) It's a great surprise when you finally tighten up on the spring and that "clunk" on the upstroke stops. (If I had spliced the belt right my hammer would only make noise when it hit something.)

If your hammer is already bored oversize for bushings then you might be able to buy bronze bushings ready-made. Check the bushing in the crank too. The LG's left the factory with the pins running right in the arms. I bored mine out when I first got it and installed bushings. Just did it again this summer. Need to do the bigger hammer next. I uncoiled part of my broken spring to make some tools with and it was all cracks. The cracks ran from the inside of the spring about a third of the way in and they all opened up when I straightened it out. Kind of scary that it was so worn out, kind of cool that it wore so evenly.

The shield of my little giant has sides too. Both of the link arms had been brazed when I got it, so that was a warning, and then I made adjustable link arms after I got my new spring, and those are kind of scary. I'd hate to be feeding long stock in from the side and have that arm come flying out at me. I tend to lean in just a little too close to things while working. I made it in three pieces so the front swings open for oiling. I try to make maintenance easy, so I will actually do it. ;)

I guess it all depends what you mean by collector...

I don't think anyone was suggesting that you drive to either Kentucky or Ohio. If there was a jewelry shop in Jeffersonville, Indiana (10 minutes away) that had a couple of fly presses in the back, then there is a possibility of finding one in Colorado. If I were fabricating a press I would probably use a box or tube section rather than an I-beam type section. I think old equipment had I shaped frames because they were most practical to cast. You could fab up a wicked strong box frame out of plate. (The modern Iron Kiss hammer has a box frame, old hammers have cast I frames.) Might be easier to find material. You don't need a big wheel, you could build a barbell type fly-weight. Nor does it need to be that well balanced, it won't be spinning that fast. However, if you could find a fly-wheel off an old punch press that would be pretty awesome.

I found a couple of fly presses for a very reasonable price here in Louisville, KY. Also not the East. Looking at the original post there is a slight misunderstanding: a fly press uses momentum AND mechanical advantage. A press that works through a screw only will not have the momentum. One could imagine that the swing of the flywheel (or weight) is analogous to swinging a hammer and that the screw gives that hammer a mechanical advantage. I swing the 80 pounds of fly wheel through 18 inches of arc and the ram moves a small fraction of that. The energy put into the work (by stopping the ram) is equal to the momentum of the fly-wheel multiplied by the mechanical advantage of the screw. Fly presses have multiple start screws with a steep lead because the momentum is as valuable as the mechanical advantage. They transfer kinetic energy from the fly-wheel into the work. I had a screw action H-frame press in the shop, it would generate quite a bit of force, but it was very slow and not particularly useful for hot work. The ram was lowered slowly onto the die and it pushed rather than hit. It had a much finer thread than the fly press to get the maximum mechanical advantage. I believe it was being used to bend flat bar into pipe hangers before I got it, they're good for bending and cold forming, but not so much for forging operations which change the cross section of a bar. I'm not trying to discourage anyone from building anything, just trying to explain the differences.

I use my little air hammer two-handed with the work in the vice or clamped down. You need the second hand to control the chisel or it will spin and walk around where it wants.

With the strap mount you need to punch slots in the sides and then secure the vise the same way you do in the block; with wedges.

I have a set of chisels for carving dragon heads; they're sized for working with 1" stock and up. I have played with it for upsetting and other purposes, but nothing good enough to sell. If I were to use it for slitting I would make a regular hot cut shape and come in from the side. If you try to split from the end you are going to lose a lot of energy to the bar bending or upsetting. Sliding off of the bar is not as big a problem as you might think. I use a convex chisel for cutting the mouths into the dragons. (Hmm, that is from the end, but it's a very thick bar and a relatively short split.) I am constantly adjusting the chisel while doing this and the convex edge makes this possible. I would think that a concave edge would make it harder to correct for slight errors.

Yes, but the OP stated that he was looking for 1095. If it is easier to buy a small piece of drill rod, then he might come out ahead. That is all I was suggesting. That's like getting Yellin for Tijuana prices :P

I use an auto body type air hammer to drive some chisels and punches that I made. (standard .401 shank, you can buy cheap sets and forge your own ends.) It works well for that, but is in no way comparable to a power hammer.

Free-machining brass has lead in it. That's what makes it free-machining. Lead is something to be careful with, but most brass is alloyed with zinc. (Traditionally, copper-zinc alloys are brass and copper-tin alloys are bronze, but there is some overlap in the nomenclature.) You should be able to find some brass that can be formed using the same techniques.

There is an exception to the not paying for expensive, ground-to-size stock: sometimes drill rod is more reasonably priced. W-1 is a .95 percent straight carbon steel which is nearly identical to 1095. So that might help.

Would you mind explaining this recommendation? Not criticizing, just curious.

I've cut hundreds of feet of 16 ga with a carbide tipped blade in a worm-drive circular saw. I wore my welding leathers, gloves, a hat and a face-shield in addition to goggles and earplugs. It was loud and flung hot blue chips everywhere. It was unpleasant, but certainly the fastest and cheapest way to get the job done. If you clamp a straight-edge to the work you can get some very nice looking results.

If you combine the two suggestion here you will get one of my errors: a sharp corner in the shoulder and working too cold so that the shoulder is at a black heat. There is a range of temperature, I think it's about 800-900 F, just after the metal stops glowing, where steel is actually more brittle than it is at room temperature. In addition to a nice radius inside the shoulder, I would try too keep the eye area at an incandescent heat while forging. Whenever I am working a piece with this sort of weak point/stress riser (like a big leaf on a narrow stem) I try to keep the weak point at a glowing temperature so that any force put on it will cause plastic deformation rather than simply flexing it, which can give rise to cracks. I also discourage unnecessary quenching. This can also aggravate stress areas, even in mild steel. Lewis

I was doing a demonstration at a public event and a fellow from West Africa (the exact country escapes me at the moment) asked where the furnace to make the steel was. I got the impression that he did not think I was real blacksmith since I just bought my steel over the phone. :blink:

ptree, Long time no see. Give a shout out about the meetings on here somewhere and I'll try and bring a few people. I suppose I should join the IBA again. Lewis