Jose Gomez

Mr. Hofi, You are right about the blower being overkill. There is absolutely no way that I could use the amount of air that it is capable of moving, but it is what I have, and it was a gift from the 86 year old bladesmith that comes over to work in my smithy every weekend (and has taught me an immesurable ammount of tricks). He took the blower and had it fitted with a brand new variable speed motor, speed controller, and fan blade, then gave it to me as a gift to put on this forge. So I adapted. I have found that I only use it on full speed to start the draft, then turn it almost all the way down. Even at its lowest setting it provides enough for a beautiful fire. The big thing to me is that the man that gave it to me is happy every time he sees the forge being used. Attached are some photos of the old fire pot/blower assembly, and the new fire pot in it's new home. PS. you might recognize the fire poker in the picture. Thank you for the time that you put into making the power hammer techniques videos, they are outstanding! Abenakis, The old blower was a 90 cfm that came off of a furnace, if I recall correctly, and it produced more than enough air. I cut the air inlet tube to the chimney through the back wall of the stack so that it would be exposed to the heat from the fire. I did this in the hope of pre-heating the air blast to, hopefully, help reduce the effects of adding cold air to a system that relies on hot air rising to make it work.

I took a short clip of the forge on start up when the fire was good and smokey to try and show what effect the forced air chimney had. Side draft - Blacksmith Photo Gallery

Thanks all! Help yourselves to any of the design ideas you like...to me that's the point of posting the pictures. The pivoting tool tray is extremely helpful, and I think would be a nice addition to any work stand, and one of my favorite things is with the vise connected to the point of the base you can move around the front and sides of the vise without tripping over it. racer3j, 33 and counting to be exact Thomas, I'll put it in iron in the hat for the next meeting if you'll throw in that 500 pound fisher...but the winners will have to load them themselves! Pault17, the lack of mobility is exactly what I was looking for. My shop is relatively small so if I do ever have to move it its only a few feet, so I figured it was better to have it stay put during heavy use than be really easy to move. It is light enough, though, that 2 determined People can load it into a truck to take it to demos or conferences.

Here is another project that I finished not too long ago but had not had time to share. It is a vise stand with a removable swinging tool tray, and on the tool tray are several removable tool holders and vice spacer set. The base is constructed from 4' of 1" thick steel that was cut through it's midpoint beveled and welded to form the 90 degree base, (which stays out from under foot). The pipe is 6" schedule 40 which I filled with sand that was poured through the tapped bolt holes through the 3/4" plate that the vise mounts to. The tool tray can swing to either side or can be removed if it gets in the way. It's not easy to move, (weighing in at somewhere around 300 lbs including the vise) but it doesn't move a millimeter even when your wailing on it sideways!

Thanks for all of the interest!! Donnie, the air conditioner does a fine job of keeping the temp in the shop just low enough that all of the water doesn't boil out of the slack tub by it self! HWooldridge, thanks! I put quite a bit of thought into it. Anything worth doing is worth doing well I guess. racer3j, It sound as though you and I share the same curse... I can't pass by a weld without studying it, I have been welding for near 18 years and finaly found an exelent way of making looking at welds pay (at my day job I am an Instructor of Welding Technology for the local college) Abenakis, the exess air from the blower is already being introduced dead center into the base of the chimney and does seem to help to thin out the thich smoke from startup. I have attached another pic of the forge with a line drawn on it indicating where the top of chimney air dump pipe is, and if you look in the opening in the front of the forge you will see the air tube. Also, another shot of the plumbing taken from the left side of the forge.

I built the original side draft forge in 1992 out of left over steel from a few odd jobs and used it mercilessly for a few years, but after building my propane forges it fell by the wayside and ended up spending the last 6 or so years living outside on its back. That is until I built my new shop and finally made room for it. In it's previous life it had a fire pot made out of 3/8" plate and a salvaged blower off of a gas heater connected to a dimmer switch, which worked just fine, but recently a friend of mine gave me a newly rebuilt giant electric Champion blower with a new variable speed motor that he had "laying around", and I also managed to score a Centaur forge cast iron fire pot from another friend (for a chunk of change). I first torched out the old fire pot and installed the "new" one, but I ran into a problem with the blower. It put out WAY too much air even at it's lowest speed. The solution was to use any extra air from the blower to force the smoke up the chimney. So I plumbed the blower into a home made T-fitting with one side of the T feeding the fire pot and the other side being diverted all the way up to the center of the chimney to the point at which it narrows (where I figured that the air blast would induce the most draft). I also cut the tube that carries the extra air into the back of the chimney so that the fire will help to pre- heat the chimney air blast. With that all done I whipped up a set of sliding air gates to independently control the firepot air and the chimney blast, and then conected the controls to the front of the forge to a set of control levers. I added a third lever that connects to the clinker breaker on the firepot so that I don't have to reach under the table to rattle the clinker breaker lever. Some of the pictures were taken with the forge laying down so that you can see the plumbing. It works amazingly well!! I don't have to do a thing to get the draft started, just turn on the blower. Absolutely no smoke escapes, even on startup, which is nice when working with the doors closed and the A/C on when its 110 outside. I must admit that it is nice having a coal forge inside again!

I actually made a mistake. I supply the Big Blu with full tank pressure (175 PSI) through a 1" 200 PSI rated jack hammer air hose, but the pressure is knocked down to 150 PSI by the regulator, filter, oiler on the hammer. The KA is running on 175PSI though. I had also thought about the blows per minute, and hammer controll issues, as far as BPM Big Blu claims 0-225 on the 155, and on the KA it depends on how fast you are with your foot, but I would guess that it would be hard to even keep it at 180 BPM. As far as controll.. I don't really know that we can devise a test to measure controll because that all really depends on the operator expierience, condition of the machine, temperature of the machine, etc. I think Mike-hr came up with a great full power test, but as for controll, I am willing to accept the educated opinion of other Power Hamer operators. I know that I have no problems drawing 1/4" stock to a fine point with any of my hammers, or delivering a single light tap, or full force blow, which is a little tricky with the mechanical hammers but a breeze with the air hammers (pun intended!!)

Mike-hr, I sure appreciate the fact that you took the time to reflect on the difference between opinion and measurable results. And again I appreciate the fact that you found a reasonable way to measure a hammers general performance. I performed the test using 8" of 1" mild steel square heated to near welding heat and then struck 2" of the end using flat dies, as instructed, on both the KA-75 and the Big Blu-BluMax 155 and here is what I got. KA-75 with 175 PSI supply pressure starting measure 0.995 5 hits 0.773" 10 hits 0.565 Blu Max 155 with 175 PSI supply pressure starting measure 0.995 5 hits 0.705" 10 hits 0.475" I listed the starting thickness in order to help eliminate any variation in original thickness, and air supply pressure because it has a measurable effect on utility hammer performance. I think your spot on with this test and that if other people participate then we will be able to build up a real world performance database that will help a lot of smiths compare these machines. I am really interested in seeing other Smith's results!! Thanks!

The mistake that I made was picking it up in the first place... Now, 17 years later, I cant stop...Thanks for the sharp looking post. All good advice to follow. Many beginning smiths forget that they have the power to turn the "wrong" tongs into the "right" tongs with the same fire and hammer they will use to heat the metal. I have seen many novice smiths struggle with ill fitting tongs rather than taking 1 heat to "tune" the tongs to match the specific job.

That's the deal that I made with my wife. She gets the horses and I get hammers.....I just forgot to tell her that I ment Power Hammers!

You might also try to move this thread to, or re ask the question in the powerhammer forum (A few more powerhammer junkies might throw in some coments that way)

I have 2 Little Giants, A KA-75, and a Big Blu Max 155 and they are all outstanding machines for their intended purpose. I have also used a say-mak, a Spencer style tire hammer, a Rusty type, and a few assorted "nightmare" hammers. A few things that I considered when shopping for my hammers was floor space and noise level. The large self contained hammers take up a ton of floor space and can be quite noisy even not being used, and many can exhaust oil into the room. By comparison, the utility style hammers (Big-Blu, Iron Kiss, and Phoenix) typically take up a significantly smaller amount of work space, and sit silently until you throttle them up. The major drawback to utility hammers is the cost of having to purchase a compressor large enough to push the hammer. But the compressor being separate is also a plus to me because you can put it in a shed outside of the shop there by doing 2 things. First it saves the work space inside, and second it puts the noisiest part of the equation outside of the shop where you don

You know the funny thing is that I trade blacksmithing, welding work, and tool sharpening for trimming and shoeing from a local farrier so that we both get to stick to what we are good at.... or at least willing to do!!

Thomas, we are down to 14 horses of 5 different breeds (5 stallions and 9 mares), 6 miniature horses (2 of which are stallions), 2 goats, a llama, 3 dogs, 5 cats, 2 turtles, 2 canaries, a rabbit, and a platinum fox! I keep telling everyone that I am using my smithing skills to make all of the hardware for the ark that Noah is building behind my house!! Does anyone know where I can find a partrige in a pear tree? One nice thing about horses is that you can get 80 miles to a bale, which will be usefull if gas gets any more expensive!

welder19, If we use that logic the same could be said about blacksmithing.... I would love smithing......if we were still living in the 19th century, I think it produces a beautiful product and all, but I have a hardware store and a walmart, so I don't have much use for a means of making things that you have to work so hard at, even though you can buy it for a quarter of the effort it takes to make it....but to each his own. There is not always a well defined "use" for the things that people often chose to occupy their time, but if you look closer you will see that horses are used to work cattle, assist in search and rescue opperations in otherwise impassibe terrain, work crowd controll operations durring events like Mardi-Gras, and the US Border patroll still uses them to patroll large sections of the border that cannot be acessed by any other means. Horses roles in american history run nearly paralell with smithing by todays standards. The presence of both horses and blacksmiths are allmost entirely unnecicary by many standards, yet here we are keeping the dream alive.... I took no offense at your opinion, but just thought that I would share a diferent point ov view.