Anderson G. Phillips

Has any one talked yet about using a vicors or rockwell style load test 0 blank and pin to test a hammer? do the test using parts of a system that is already out there?

One problem I see is: What pressure do you run the utility hammers at? It appears that many Big Blu's are operated at 175 psi and normal for an IronKiss is 100 psi. The other day I was using my IronKiss at 40 psi and smacking pretty good too! Many utilities won't even run at 40 psi. What would be fair?

Hey, when we did the power hammer test as we stated, we did it 2 different ways. We ran the material in parallel and perpendicular to the dies. By looking back through the archives, it looked like some times the test had been done one way and some time another. Nothing would please me more than to see a standardized test with rules posted under this forum. I love this sort of forum for encouraging debate (thanks IFORGEIRON.com).This helps advance the community and is a valuble tool for me. We strive every day at BIG BLU HAMMERS to make our hammer the best you can buy. I feel the hammers I go to work under every day are the best. Since I first started forging under a power hammer, I have always sought to improve the machines that help me do the work I love so much. This is one of the reasons I love working for BLU. Don’t get me wrong, I am only one guy on the BLU team and don’t hold a candle to the 14 years they have been making hammers. But we are all encouraged to give our input and the BLU hammer continues to grow with the blacksmith and metalworking community. I don’t say this as representative for BLU but as a blacksmith that loves his job and feels pride in the machines I get to help make. Our dies are 1.75” X 5” ( don’t even get me started on how I feel about flat dies) but that doesn’t stop our machine from moving some metal. We made the youtube videos so that there wouldn’t be any question about how we did the test. Here are our results in print. If you have any question about the power hammer test of the BLU, watch the video and if that doesn’t answer your question, then I’ll do my best to answer. 155 pound hammer on 140psi: Parallel o 0.529 @ 5 hits o 0.258 @ 10 hits Perpendicular o 0.374 @ 5 hits o 0.081 @ 10 hits 110 pound hammer on 110psi: Parallel o 0.587 @ 5 hits o 0.294 @ 10 hits Perpendicular o 0.448 @ 5 hits o 0.138 @ 10 hits 65 pound hammer on 90psi: Parallel o 0.735 @ 5 hits o 0.572 @ 10 hits Perpendicular o 0.622 @ 5 hits o 0.387 @ 10 hits

Turning a power hammer it to a multi tool is tempting, but you can overcomplicate things really fast!

Wood fire, rail road rail and a ball peen hammer.

While you might be an angry blacksmith for a few days after you melt down and pour 800 pounds of tire weights, it’s the liver damage that I would worry about. Nothing we do at work on a daily basis is necessarily good for you and I wouldn’t dare get on here and lecture you about health but that’s a lot of lead! You would have to do it all in one pour. I grew up in Winston Salem, NC near Bowman Grey Race Track, and as a metal worker, I got a lot of odd jobs due to my proximity to the stadium. Once such job was casting lead weights that would bolt on to the bottom of the cars to add weight where they needed it. I would set out 5 gallon buckets at all the tire shops around town and make rounds every couple of months to pick up the tire weights and drop off some “S” hooks, boot scrapes, etc.. as a good will gesture. I would pour the lead into 2” x 2” and 2” x 4” tubing , then I could drill holes through the lead and steel and it could all be bolted to the car. When you cast lead, it shrinks but it’s also fluffy. After a couple of seasons in a race car, the lead had been vibrated enough in a 2” x 2” x 6” tube that it was loose and with a little work could be knocked out with a hammer. Not only do you have to worry about the shrinkage of the lead but also the loss of volume over time due to the vibration of your hammer work forging the lead down. So why is this so bad? You can forge on it but it’s no fun! Forging with a loose filled lead hammer is way better than forging with a loose filled lead anvil. Without a lot of work and mechanics to keep the lead tight and in the right tension, it will lower the power of your hammer without any real benefit other than just plain being heavy. One way or the other I cant wait to see the end result!can you postpics?

To do a good job with the lead right it’s a lot more trouble than it’s worth (not to mention even if you’re getting the lead for free your still melting down a couple hundred pound of lead and breathing all those fumes). Air hammers aren’t cheap to build because you can only cut so many corners. The anvil is one of those corners. The head of an air hammers spends very little time in contact with the anvil. So that quick return of energy provided by a steel anvil is that much more important to the overall power of the hammer. On the other hand a dead anvil sucks when you’re the one swinging the hammer, but if you are not worried about having the power to forge big stock under this little hammer then a dead anvil might not be such a bad thing. After all you can forge on a rock; it’s just not any fun. I think you would be better off with as many inches of solid steel directly under the bottom die, and then just use something inexpensive like sand to add the weight you need to keep the hammer stable.

I like it! nice sparse constrution. How is belt life and wear? What wears out or brakes on a hammer like this first, where is the weak link?

I like it!

First you ring the bell, then i guess your hammers age and weight.

I don’t know which I would trust less to have in my face while forgoing, the tire or that spring! But many people use tire hammer and the bulk of them stay in one piece. I am interested to see what you come up with in the end. How are you going to build and attach your dies?

This is the scale mounted to its traveling stand, it can also be mounted in to an anvils hardy hole. The scale is in NC and I will have it with me for the Madison GA meeting next year. It will eather be at the BLU hammer tent or at the NC ABANA tent and we will set up some time for people to try it out. Also here is the original artical. ABOUT THE WATT SCALE.doc Why I Built the Watt Scale.doc The Results So Far.doc

Spot on! I slipped on that one.

Hey, I work in a hammer making shop and one of the hammers we make (and our biggest seller) is the stubby little spade shaped hammer! I’m not the expert on this hammer but I do spend a lot of my time in front of the finishing equipment thinking about the use of these hammers. I have been a full time metalworker for 10 years and these are the five steps I take into account when setting up a forging possess whether it be under power or by hand. 1. Input energy: About a year ago I built a watt scale to measure the total input energy of a hammer blow provided you could hit the target. The scale is modeled after the high striker game only is mounted at anvil height. There is a full article available through the Hot Iron Sparkle (our NCABANA publication) as well plan are available if anyone wants to build one. The scale is indicated in joules and those increments where found by dropping weighs from a series of set heights to produce known measurement of input energy via the classical method to find the energy of a non rotating body in a fixed frame. The Mass of the object multiplied by the speed of that object in its frame, that total divided by two equals joules seconds for the purpose of calculating energy transfer . Once indicated the scale allows one to work backwards knowing the mass of the hammer to find the speed at which it was moving when it its target. All of this of course is a bit crude but for the purpose of my experiment it yielded well enough the data to be able to make a conclusion from the results. What I found is that in most cases there is a cap of the impact speed of a hammer that is swung with one hand (no matter how long the handle). When you pick up the bigger hammer you have so much more going for you in order to produce a height amount of input energy, the arch of your body provided ample distance to accelerate a huge hammer to a height speed provided you can lift it. Although it is not practical in most cases to use a huge hammer in almost every case I tested smiths with a bigger hammer made more input energy provided they could hit the target and lift the hammer. 2. Forgoing Dies: So you have all this energy, Now what to do with it? There are so many ways to squander the work you have put in to every swing. Not only do you have to account for direct surface of the material being worked but what will happen to it. Where will it flow to as the energy transfers? For the purpose of hand forgoing the bottom die is your static anvil and you top die the dynamic hammer. There are so many possibilities and this style of hammer helps you to take advantage of every facet of the face of the hammer. When I dress the faces of our hammers the sides of the face are polished so that every edge may be used as a partial or full peen as you roll the hammer further over on it axis. The tight center mass and short head allow you to roll the hammer further over without it tipping on impact so you don’t have to grip the handle as tightly (thus encouraging you to let the hammer do the work). This I feel is the main advantage of this type of hammer. 3. Inertia: No matter how fast you swing that one pound ball peen at the piece of two inch square the energy will be absorbed in the corresponding surface mass of the overwhelming stock. The energy will not overcome the inertia of the piece you are working, and while it seems like a good thing to have all of the energy go into deforming the hot metal all you do is make a mushroom! Inertia is a huge tool that most people use in there forging but few understand. Despite what the troll engineers want you to think energy transfer is not instant, the hammer hit the hot steel, the steel deforms against the decelerating hammer. The steel accelerates in spite of its inertia. As it accelerates it is driven into the bottle die and deforms again as well as transferring energy into the bottom die. Some of that energy will pass through the structure of the bottom die as it to deforms , but in its deformation as it resists it own inertia it builds up that energy like a spring and thrust it back though the piece of steel. This can be exploited for everything from shouldering a piece to binding and striating. Laying out this timeline will help you to understand what is happening to the steel as your strike it. Your hammer to anvil ratio is no more important than how they measure up to the hot steel in between. So in a lot of cases that 3 pound hammer is forging that piece of hot half inch square steel better not only because there is more input energy but the process of energy transfer is also better. 4. Frequency: When I make our touch make on a bar I use a #4 hammer because I only need to hit it once. When I know I will be forging larger sock I use a #3, I can’t hit as many times in a minute but the heat last longer and I can pace myself and move the metal more with each hit. When forging leave and small thing as well as planishing I use#2 or smaller so I can get is a lot of hits per minute but I’m not lifting all that weight for each hit. This is where having a good selection of hammers and knowing what works best for you and your body comes in handy. 5. Possess practicality: A few weeks ago the shop Forman and I had a full day of nonstop hand forging ahead of us. Every hour or so of back to back heats I changed my hammers size and process in order to use my body differently. You are the most versatile tool in the shop; the hammer is only a lump of metal on a stick. You have to find what works for you and be flexible; there is no perfect hammer and no perfect way to swing it. It’s just not practical to swing a one pound ball peen at that piece of two inch square just like it’s not practical to forge quarter inch square with a five pound hammer. Before quoting the master and planning you next heat ask yourself without bias: why! Why each step is there and what is its purpose.

and the other two parts

Hey. I’m a fan of the power hammer test discussion and have enjoyed fallowing the thread. So a few weeks ago the team at BLU hammers decided to try out the power hammer test with hammers we use in our iron shop. We wanted to clearly show our results and how we did the test .So we made a video. You tube link : Thanks, Andy Phillips

Hi, I work for blu hammers we will have a 65 at quad state that you can try. We also have one at the shop you can test out.

Hi Iv been a blacksmith for about 9 years full time. I work now for BLU hammers and oak hill iron. I just never took the time to join Iforgeiron but i have been reading this forum for a year.