frogvalley

Drill 1/2 inch round holes. Round the square rod to 1/2 inch diameter and insert. You can buy a clapper die/spring swage to do this or you can eyeball them with a grinder(not the best way) or use top and bottom fullers. You know, like a dowel joint. Mig weld in place with a very small bead or tack and no one will notice. I would buy a 1/2 inch spring swage and fit it under a power hammer. Square holes are a pain, so if you must create a tube with them, then use C channel and a punched flat bar welded in the bottom to hold the pickets. That way the weld is on the bottom, cleaner, and less likely to get water in it if your only tack or stitch welding. I don't do any railing work with less than 1/4 in stock with holes for the pickets and topped with one or more bars of different profiles. In the past I have used square holes for pickets, but now use only round holes with doweled pickets or round pickets with or without any squared bits. Why tube anyway? There certainly was very little "wrought iron" tube. Solid flat bar punched is better, with a top rail its darn purty too. Tube would not be traditional nor as strong. Of course I might use my plasma cutter to make the holes, but that ain't traditional either.

On the matter of infestations-I like lizards too, don't kill or get rid of them please. You could bag em and ship em to me. Be glad you don't have my shop problem. BIG HAIRY SPIDERS. These big females thick bodies and long hairy legs will just barely fit on the palm of your hand. I let them stay mostly, they too eat a lot of bugs and are generally shy. However, twice I have let em get a little out of control, and they seem to like my welding leather, the jacket especially. Many times I have had to evict them before putting it on. On two occasions I have forgotten to check and while deep into welding with the helmet on, I feel a tickle on my neck, a not unusual thing as I have hair that when untied hangs to the middle of my back. Both times are almost identical, but this last time is certainly representative of events. Shortly after the tickle they have crawled out of the collar and up my face. Not being easily excited I have simply stopped the torch and removed the helmet, attempted to remove her and sought assistance from an apprentice. Who promptly backs away from me with a look of total horror, and a mouth full JC's an F's. I at this point have managed to guide it off my face and down my arm but cant seem to shake it, so the apprentice then, with much coaxing, begins to gingerly and at arms length and ready to run, WITH welding gloves on, push it around and then back off, push it and run and so on for a minute or so, which of course just irritates her---and of course it ends up running back on my head. Since I can't get a grip with the welding gloves, I have to once again pluck the lady off my hair bare handed and put her out of the shop. The apprentice (former apprentice actually) this last time says I am brave, way braver than he, and that he would have been running away and screaming like-these are his words not mine- like "a retard with his hair on fire". I just laughed throughout the whole thing. Please send me your lizards! Oh and don't try to analyze why spiders like my jacket, my people here think its pheremones and that only spiders and snakes are attracted to me. Hmmm... P.S. moth balls will probably work on lizards, but there is probably a whole somwhere that needs to plugged.

Here is a rant that is sure to stir up trouble. While safety is a concern for all of us, some of the concerns raised are overkill. OSHA leans toward the extreme side of safety, to the point of being a hinderance and a hazard in some of the safety cages that it requires. OSHA's job is to protect the powerless and unitiated workers of the larger corporations where the dangers are different than a small forge with competent machine operators and few power hammers. I won't put safety cages over any of the parts of my machines. Many safety systems will bite you worse than the piece that would be flying off and can't protect you from all things anyway. The most dangerous part of the power hammer, in my opinion, is the ram while you are working. SMACK on your fingers is bad. Next would be actually getting caught in the moving parts while the hammer is operating, but if you are working, your hands should be on the workpiece and not the moving parts of the machine anyway. And the instructions say don't where loose clothing, etc. Ptree's machine has a common design difference or flaw in that the ram can exit through the top of the guides. Thats a major problem if there is any trouble with the spring or the roller guides at the top of the ram. Other designs cannot have this happen. There are several ways to design around that. A keeper at the top of the guides or a die set up that does not allow the ram to go all the way up and out. Take a look at mine at http://www.frogvalleyforge.com or at "superrusty". Another problem I see is the tendency to make these machine have a small, compact profile, hence the motor being inboard of the center column and near the operator. Remounting the motor outside of the column puts those moving part associated with it away from you. I would have to move 2-3 feet to the left of my normal operating position to get bitten by the pulley. Plus these should be made tall enough that the spring is way up from you, and I am 6'2". Mine tops at 7'6". I would not build a "rusty" type with the spring in my face like the original. Can something go wrong with my machine? Yes. Is it more dangerous than my 1905 Fairbanks? No. Are both of them good machines and safe enough? Yes and neither one has any significant safety devices only safely designed. The best safety is a competent, aware operator. No drink, no drugs- but even more important is a check of all operating parts daily before use. AND during the day if you use it all day. You should be oiling or greasing every time you use it. I don't have many grease fittings on my hammers, I much prefer oil holes as it MAKES you look at all the parts when you oil them. Your mileage may vary.

The ones on the left may be like the ones that I have for working bowl shapes. They would hold the deeper bowls by the lip, after initial forging over the anvil or the depressions in the swage block, the shape requires a different set of tongs. A comfortable angle for the tongs changes with the shape of the forging, therefore one would use these after using regular tongs. The ones I have are homemade by me. Your mileage may vary. Irnsrgn is also right, you can reforge them to be another shape if you wish. 50% of all tongs that I buy, I reshape to fit my needs.

I have a tumbler made from a 5 gallon plastic pickle bucket that runs off a funky belt drive system for speed reduction and a 1/2 hp motor. For tumbling medium I originally used driveway gravel and assorted small chunks of metal from my scrap bins. Now I use a medium grit aluminum oxide with the sam small chunks. I like the driveway gravel better. As to dirt/scale removal, don't bother unless it really bothers you. Its abrasive and unless really rusty it can only help. NOISE LEVEL IS INTERMINABLE. I moved mine outside under a shed roof years ago cause it made more noise than my power hammers. I got tired of shouting. I intend to redesign this one as the belt slips a little, so when I get that done I'll take pics.

I would beg to differ with Mills. Flat dies do work they just work differently than crowned dies. I have the original flat combination die set that came with my Fairbanks hammer, it has two profiles, a small section and a large section in one piece. Radiused edges but no crown. This die set will draw and smooth with no problem. It can form balls and complex shapes and can handle all the hand held tooling like spring fullers and clapper/spring dies with no change of the main dies. I have a clamp to hold some of the tools in place while working. I have both this Fairbanks #25 running from an over head flat belt line shaft driven by a 3/4 hp motor and my own version of a spring helve hammer at 75#with a 1hp motor hanging off its back. The 75 has a slightly crowned die set much like Mills has made his. Either one will make the same shapes with experience. And believe me I have been working these hammers almost every day for years and just getting busier here all the time. If anyone wants to see how they work, please feel free to stop by sometime. A note to FredlyFX- 5hp is so over kill for your 75# by a factor of 2 or 3. A well running 75# LG style hammer will work wonders with a 1.5 or 2 hp motor. Since I have limited power in my shop due to number of factors, plus the fact that I can run these machines off of my solar power if needed, I am much concerned with efficiency. Mechanicals are of course HUGELY more energy efficient than any air hammer, including the self contained. I have also worked on a Bradley 300lb helve hammer with crowned dies. That was a beautiful thing. It inspired me to build my own hammer. I hope to actually end up with that machine here, or its twin, as our work is now demanding even more equipment. A word of warning to power hammer users, there is a danger with all these hammers that is sometimes over looked. Forces that are generated by hitting the metal under the hammer dies is at least partly transferred to YOU. I don't care who says otherwise, but all the "forging industry" people and blacksmiths I know who regularly use power hammers have some damage to themselves of a sort. No matter how well aligned your hammer is, how carefull you are about working with the stock at exactly the right angle, not even taking into account the occasional really dumb manuever, some of that force is transferred. Repetative motion things and the like, carpal tunnel, tendonitis of various kinds and more are common place if you do a lot of this work. It probably ain't gonna be a problem if you are just playing around on the weekends but if you do a lot be cautious...Your mileage may vary... I am currently on a weeks rest from heavy hammering, partly with ice packs, due to 8 weeks of almost daily pounding on these machines making stock for galleries and myself , culminating in my big spring studio tour and demonstrations for 400 people here. Much of that demo stuff on the power hammers too. Guys and gals both dig the big ka chunk of them. http://www.frogvalleyforge.com

Perhaps I am in the minority, the voice of dissent, but I would NOT weld that anvil. I have worked on many an anvil, and none of the repaired ones faired well in the long term. Welds tend to come out or off or just wear unevenly. Attempting to heat treat an anvil face to properly harden it is hit and miss for the most part. I am a full time blacksmith and metal sculptor and I have 6 or so workable anvils, including my first anvil with its broken heel and dinged surface. I did and still do a lot of work on an abused anvil. Sure I have almost new looking surfaces on a couple of my anvils, but you very rarely need a big perfectly flat surface, unless perhaps your sole work is knives. If you think about it for a minute , you only need a smooth spot on the top that is the size of a hammers face , or perhaps several. You will never need to have the entire face perfectly flat. Just smooth in a few spots. Except for the spot where you hit it with the hammer, the rest of the anvil face will not leave a mark on your metal. You "should" be able to hit those spots with your hammer easily enough. If not then well...thats another rant. BTW I have a 200lb Fisher Anvil with the cast body and welded steel face , much like the Vulcan. I love it. Its quiet, almost as lively as one of the Peter Wrights I have. If you are repairing it strictly for cosmetic reasons, don't. If for structural then you need less repair than you think. Oh and don't use a disc grinder or sander on the face, only on the horn. A Belt sander is the tool for the face.

Perhaps someone with more chemistry background can correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that burning most anything will make CO2, including biomass nuggets and the other above listed fuels. My answer to conservation is simpler, I use a propane and a coal forge, but have solar electric power for the other tools. The house and pottery shop are also mostly solar(except our big kilns). I even back pack and camp with solar panels and rechargeable batt packs. The problem isn't what we burn its how much we burn, and that is a factor of TOO many people, not what we drive or what we burn. www.frogvalley.com/solar.html

Nut coal is best for me although larger chunks work fine for me too. About 20-30 percent fines mixed with it is OK. The bigger chunks break up easy enough once they are start to burn and are sprinkled and packed, as per the standard coking process of moving coal closer to the center of the fire. I have not recently tried to use finer coal, but I know many who do. I didn't like it as was stated, it tends to fall through the grate. And no I wouldn't like a smaller grate.:rolleyes:

You want borosilicate glass, not just plain tempered. Borosilicate is like pyrex.

As to properly adjusted, well they are notoriously tricky/twitchy to keep adjusted and 2 out of 3 who say they have it adjusted ain't really got it. So properly working and well maintained is what you are looking for. Take your time with this, go over EVERYTHING. If you ain't spent an hour looking at it , your rushing it. Look at it from all angles, climb behind it, around it from all side. Look and shake and jiggle everything. Inspect alll shafts, all bearings and all ways (guides). The ram should be tight or not too loose, the main shaft and all its pulleys should be tight and have little or no play. Bearings are replaceable, but pouring babbit is a pain, but can be done. Look for cracks in any and all part of the castings, the main body is very important and must be crack free. The anvil and anvil cap should mate well and not be crushed or worn or cracked, the anvil being the most important part. New styles have a replaceable anvil cap so if the cap is bad but the anvil is good its might be ok to buy. Look at all the ways, the guides that the ram slides up and down in, shake the ram back and forth in this guide looking for play. It shouldn't have more than about a 1/32 back and forth. This hammer will work maybe 1 inch stock, I own a Fairbanks 25# and it is rated for 1 inch. Try to talk him down, if it ain't mint, I wouldn't pay $2000. I don't know who has this one, but if its one of Sids or a recent one from him, his are usually Ok and have already had all the work done to them. He has great reputation, although these machines have a reputation that far exceeds there real value and hence the price is often higher than they should be. If I can think of anything else I'll post here again.

Don't worry about the neighbors, they'll be fine at that distance. What ya gonna do with the animals?

SWE_Karl I agree with dan and metalmonkey. Make them if you get the chance and test the market. I have not investigated the market extenively for these items, but it is very specialized and therefore carries a premium price. A friend of mine once wanted me to go into the business (with him) of making medieval style restraints, he has some knowledge of and experience with these devices, and the numbers that we discussed were very good and tempting, however I was working on another project and could not do it. Apparently there is an upper class fetish market that has quite the disposable income. I have seen some "custom" work of a similar nature for sale at a show(don't ask how I came to be at such a show) and the vendor and his two girl friends apparently support themselves and travel fairly well. And I reccomend lining them with satin covered soft padding. For safety, of course. LOL

Don't get hung up on screen or mesh for a fireplace screen. Try etched glass, or stained glass, or hammered and punched copper sheets.

You can of course use a cold cut hardy in your anvil. You won't go to H for hitting cold iron if your doing prep work using the right tools. And hit it with any old hammer. Don't need to be fussy, I have triplicates of all the hammers in my shop and as long as its the right weight for the job, pound away. Spreading the mileage around prevents any one hammer from being worn out. 4 lb cross pein is my primary hammer, 2-3 lbs next, 2-3 lb ball peins next and then as needed for other 50 or so hammers. Of course I like my power hacksaw for cutting best. :D

I keep a 4x6 piece of half inch plate and a couple of other odd shapes that I heat in the forge and then lay on the anvils when it gets below freezing. Mostly thats important for small work, 1/4 to 1/2 stock. Larger stock doesn't usually need it. For my body and its assorted cold spots, I come over to the shop and start the gas forge or the torpedo heater to take the chill off while the fire gits goin. Then I come back to the office/house and have coffee.

Ok, here goes a bit of a rant. Sorry in advance... First the basics. An interferometer is a precision device for measuring using two or more input sources. It works on the principle that two waves(of laser light in this case) that coincide with the same phase will amplify each other while two waves that have opposite phases will cancel each other out. It is used to measure things with precision. And I mean extreme precision. Not like some dial micrometer measuring in thousanths. Starrett don't make anything that accurate. Thats amateur stuff comparatively. There are millionths and billionths of an inch. And sometimes that matters. The ones used in astronomy measure the distance between stars. Here on earth a good interferometer can measure to within a fraction of an inch, the distance to the moon. Or they can measure a wave length of light. Or a machine set up that makes other precision parts. Can't do that with abench mark based on your boot size. ( I use that one for a 12inch/one foot mark myself). Even a slight error or out of tolerance component can exaggerate itself into miles of error in your final calculations. Or light years if your doing astronomy. Or microns if your thinking small. When measuring small, say something .001 of an inch, and you miss that measurement by .0005, you would be 50 percent wrong. Plus or minus. And that is smaller by a long shot than a piece of dust. If you send a probe to another planet and your interferometer is off by 1/1000 of 1 percent over 100 million miles, thats 1000 miles off, you could miss your target. As a blacksmith, I rarely need ANY kind of accuracy that my eye can't see. As a machinist, I have needed .0005 accuracy many times. Accuracy is not ALWAYS needed, but in precision machining for interferometry it is. Second the solutions. Wire EDM Sounded good and would have been my first choice. Ironscot may also be onto something. Especially about lapping to tolerance and/or fill treatments. Sintered stainless would need a surface treatment to be smooth enough I think. Correct me if I'm wrong but even when forged to density it is still, under microscopy, a bit grainy. IMHO

My shop is considered dangerous by others, to me it fits just right. Its down right sloppy. There are WAY too many tools. A big woodstove, two power hammers, two main anvils on stumps, a swage block on another stump, three forges, hundred tongs, thousands of wrenches and other hand tools, a lathe, a mill, two drill press, powerhacksaw, metal bandsaw, wood bandsaw, a couple of presses, shoot there is too much to list. And all that xxxx iron just everywhere. An entire hardware store of nuts and bolts in a hundred different sizes. Piles and piles of scrap. Extra parts for sculptures and other forged works. Don't make no sense to make 1 of something, if I'm gonna fire up the forge I might as well make 20 of them. Definitely gonna need them sometime, some gallery or shop or show will need them. And our productivity is increasing exponentially, even in the junky shop. My metal shop teacher would be having a fit. Firstly 'cause of the mess, secondly 'cause he couldn't see how I could make that much stuff in that much mess. My father and grandfather also had different ideas about shop cleanliness, but they had other jobs too. Not me. My shop is the living. Everything that I love is right there, tightly packed around me when I'm working. I put it there, whats it need to be organized for? Can't sweep the gravel floor. I rake it twice a year. I hate standing on concrete all day anyway , just got two small concrete pads, one under the welding table in case I gotta back a tractor or crane or boom in to unload and reposition something. The other is under one of the power hammers. More of a foundation really. Can't sweep either of them anyhow, I hose the one down once in a while to get all the little beads of metal off, the other has the hammer and its assorted tools and stuff piled on it. I make it safe for others to walk in during our twice annual studio tour. Hundreds of people walking around and all that. Don't make no sense to trip and kill the customers. I don't worry about close friends or other artists working here. They can take care of themselves. But twice a year is the only cleaning it really gets. And I do know where everything is. My brain is organized so the shop doesn't have to be. Mod 01: edited for content

JWB- Clean=recently swept clear of large chunks For my shop clean = freshly raked gravel I would face those with hard facing rod built up to 3/16" or 1/4" thick and grind to shape. Works great on all my dies.

Metalmaster- What is the beam made of? Is it a spring? I have some experience with those types of hammers if you need info. I have mine setup with parts of two sets of Jeep CJ5 springs. Mine seems to top out at around a couple of hundred hits per minute, any more than that and it turns too fast for the hammer to reach bottom and therefore only does so every other hit. 182bpm is what i have it set for and it works great. Whats the ram weight? What was the original machine? Is that a geared motor? what horsepower? what dies are those that I see on your website. Blah blah, always asking questions I am.

JWB- Very cool. Interesting way to handle the "weight" of the larger hammer. It looks like you suspended it outside the center "bearing". BTW do you have oil holes in the columns? I can't exactly tell in the photos, how large and what type of dies are you using? Flat, convex or a combo for both drawing and general working? What are the anvils made of? What is the stroke? A rubber pad on a clean concrete floor will help with the walking issue, or drill holes in the floor and use a wooden or rubber pad. The green hammer of mine has a wooden base and still it walks a bit. Anvil weight is a big factor in where the forces go once the hammer comes down, My fairbanks hammer has an independent foundation (most of the shop has gravel and dirt floor) 10 inches thick concrete, with a special wooden block under the independent anvil.

as George Carlin said "cop didnt' see it, I didn't do it" Similar in principal to the philosophical question " If a tree falls in the forest, and no cops are there to hear it, does it make a sound?" :D

JWBIRONWORKS- I would be very interested to see that hammer.

just showing off a couple of my toys, if you haven't been out to my website yet to see them , here they are... The homebuilt 75#-older pic, she is now under roof and is still a very much used tool. All of the power work needed for large stock and for small stock that comes from the coal forge is done on this one. 7 feet tall. Not shown is the new and improved anvil and base plate, that added about 400 lbs and makes her more efficient and less bouncy. The Fairbanks 25#-another old pic, she is also under roof, and is now inside the main shop area and is our most used hammer. She is connected to the line shaft that also runs a turn of the last century mill. Even with her funky repairs she works well and accurately, and we are collecting the parts to build a new anvil for her and her little quirks will dissapear.

I thought the moon was involved in that. Maybe it's just lunacy. Blacksmith=Lunatic LMAO