Patrick Nowak

Check out sandersoniron.com. Joel has a 100# single frame Hackney that he has restored and uses regularly. I ran it a little bit before he had it permanently set up and it was a sweet hammer. It is an extremely controllable hammer.

The are two points to consider in this from an industrial point of view. 1-how much energy is imparted to the workpiece vs. to moving the anvil and 2-keep the anvil in the proper position relative to the tup over time. If (in steam hammer work) the anvil and foundation are not large enough, the anvil will shift and could tip, resulting in mis alignment of the top and bottom die. We had this happen at work with a foundation that was not properly installed. To overcome the mis alignment, the bottom die was machine at an angle so the top and bottom die surfaces were parellel in service. Eventually they had to take the hammer down and redo that foundation. In my own situation, the Bradley anvil/ram have a 5:1 ratio and that anvil absolutley will bounce if the bolts tying it to the frame are not kept tight. Patrick

Well, I finally got the hammer back up and running. It took the machine shop about three weeks to make the new hub. It ended up being a shrink fit on the shaft and when I put it on, I botched the job. The hub shrank on the wrong place on the shaft. I tried to get the shaft out but even with our 2000 ton press at work we couldn't get it out without completly galling every thing up, so back to the machine shop it went. They were able to salvage the hub they'd made but had to make a new shaft. In the grand scheme of things, having a new shaft is a good thing. The orginal was bent on the drive wheel side and that resulted in a lot of push back on the treadle every time the shaft rotated. The new shaft has elimiated that issue. This time, the machine shop bored the hub just slightly bigger than the shaft and added 4 set screws to keep it from sliding back and forth on the shaft. It took me 3 afternoons to get the hammer re-assembled, but I did it and forged for about 6 hours on the July 4. The hammer is working fine, but that was a miserable day to forge. It was 102 F out side in the shade and I don't know how hot in the shop, but at work our shop has been pushing 120-130 most of the week. I sure am glad to have the hammer back. One thing I've learned is that even on the relatively small work I do with mokume, the big hammer with great control is essential for forging thin sections. While the hammer was down, I used three different shops to keep my regular work moving along (Thank you to MIke Garrett, Keane Pardiso and Doug Ponzio) and had a chance to run a 75 KG Stryker, 4B Nazel and 75 ton press. They all were good for what they were designed for, but none of them were quite as good at this job as the Bradley. I found the two air hammers to be harder to control than the Bradley, but that is probably because I'm not used to those machines AND they both require very slight changes in the treadle postion to accomplish rather dramatic differances in blow energy. The slack belt arrangement on the Bradley allows you to sneak up on your work more easily. The press was a challenge to use for thin work (0.210" forge thickness) because it sucks the heat out of the work so fast and because when you set a position, the electronic controller tell the press to complete its stroke to that position regardless of dwell time on the work. I ended up using a set of drawing dies with the press and that did work, but it took 2-3 times longer to flatten bars from 0.375x2.5 to .210x2.625 than it does with my hammer. I was a bit surprized by this becuase Doug uses that press daily to forge 5x5 and 6x6 cans of powder metal mosaic damascus. This just illustrates how much more power is required to deform a thin section than a thick section.The 4B had plenty of power, but for production drawing of 1x2 down to 0.75 octagons 2 ft long it felt slow. I think that hammer has a max speed of about 150 BPM and though effective, it was slower than I'm used to. In spite of my lack of familiarity with these tools I am still very grateful that all three guys allowed me to work in their shops to keep my own work moving to my customer in a timely fashion. Patrick Patrick

Keep in mind that open and closed die work are very different. Closed die is much more like forging thin flat sections so you need to get more energy into the workpiece than with open die, hence the need for high tup to anvil ratios.

I dress mine when the get dinged up enough to affect the quality of what I'm forging. Most of my work is flat bar that needs smooth, uniform finish. If I misuse tooling under the hammer I can put dimples or pits in the top die pretty quickly. Patrick

We are only moving about 4 miles. Due to the expanding needs of the family and the great buyers market we decided this was a good time to look for a bigger house (and shop). What where buying has two shop buidings, one 30x30 the other 28x30. the larger is completly insulated and has a wood stove, lots of overhead lighting and some dedicated air lines along one wall. This will be my machine shop and probably also stock storage. The other building has not yet had concrete poured so it will become the forge and fabrication building. I have a local friend with heavy equipment so I don't think it will be any trouble to have some lifting capaciy on site for this move. My plan is to crate as much as possible and then on moving day just start loading up trailers with crates, pallets and machinery. Patrick

We will be moving to a new house and new shop next month. I'm quite excited as I will be able to split my machining off into a seperate building from the forging/fabricating. Does anyone have any suggestions as to how to go about packing up all the little things? I've well over a hundred pairs of tongs, probably close to that many anvil tools, hammers and other handled tools, metal in all shapes and sizes, work benches, large and small machines etc. The machines, benches and cabinets will all be loaded onto trailers and moved with a large fork lift or tow truck. My plan for the hand tools and small items is to crate them so they too can be loaded with a fork lift. How have you moved and what should I be sure to do or NOT do? Patrick

John, I have dies for my Bradley already made just as you've drawn along with maybe 10 sets of insert dies. These came from a shop in Cinncinatti that made tools for Mac Tools. In their design they made the little die pockets with a single dovetail. They're drawings called for S7 material. If you want to forge dovetails it does not have to be tooling intensive. I've done it several times. Start by forgings a bar that is just narrower than the top of the dovetail with the key in place. the bar should be a fair bit taller than the depth of the dovetail slot. Put a half round bar in the dovetail slot with the round facing up. Heat your material as hot as you dare, then place it in the slot on top of the half round and drive it down hard. Be sure the key is in place when you do this. Knock everthing free and trim or torch the flash from the top of dovetail section you're forging. Re-heat and repeat, but this time leave the half round out. If you do this right your should get a fairly serviceable dovetail blank that you can weld other shapes and forms to. I've made serveral dies this way and it has worked pretty well. It's not as good as machining, but it does work. Patrick

While some of those terms are used on the shop floor, I would be loathe to use most of them in a report to a customer or my superiors as they do not help you communicate in a way that is percieved a professional. You certainly can get your point accross with them though. I would use the term "suck-in" to describe the condition in which the surface moves faster than the center, "in-gate" or "up-gate" to describe the projection left on the bottom of an ingot after it has solidified and "rag" to describe the bit of metal left after hot cutting. We don't use set type tools in heavy forging since that can be accomplished with the press dies. I am not aware of an alternate term for bastard file as I think that term designates a specific coarseness of cut to the file teeth and therefore I would have no problem using that one. People make assumptions about a person by the vocabularly they use. In my profession, as an engineer and represntitve of my company, I need to make sure that the impression I give to customers is as positive as possible, so my vocabulary needs to be chosen accordingly. I also have to be able to communicate with people who may not be familiar with the forging process, so again I have to use terms that they will understand, not just the shop slang that people who do the work every day for a living know. Patrick

We forge literally tons of stainless every week in the austentic, martensitic, precipitation hardening and duplex types. forge temps vary by family and carbon content but the austenitics are worked up to 2300 F, the duplex at 2200 F and the martensitic and precipitation hardening types between 2100 and 2200 for an upper limit depending on carbon content. 2300 F is the standard max temp for carbon and alloy steels when carbon does not exceed 0.50%. Reduced temps are needes with some grades because carbon has a signifcant role on the melting temperature. Other elemnets do to some degree as well and since we don't want to melt the steel, we need to keep the temps lower. Note that in heavy forge work, the movement of the metal generates heat due to friction so when selecting a forge temp, it is wise to make sure you don't go to near the melting point. (This is primarily of concern only with very heavy industrial forging). As Thomas pointed out, the magnetism or lack thereof is a function of the phase present. Austenite is non-magnetic at all temperatures, therefore it you can keep autenite present at room temp, that material will be non-magnetic. Nickel, manganese and molybdenum are all austenite stabilizers. Chrome is the element that makes stainless stainless. Nickel can enhance and improve corrosion resistance but since it stabilizes austenite at low temps you may not want that in a steel intended to be used in the martensitic state. Monel is a nickel/copper alloy and is NOT a steel at all. Nickel superalloys have lots of nickel and other elements. I'm not sure they still are majority iron or not, but they are so far removed from the steels in alloy content and behavior that they are considered there own family. Solution annealing is a common practice with the stainless grades that hasn't been mentioned yet. This is the practice of heat back up to usually around 1950 and quenching. This is done do dissolve chromium carbides which can reduce the corrosion resistance and also to dissolve other preciptating compounds which can affect corrosion resistance and toughness Patrick

I was able to get a drop from a 12.5" diameter bar of 4340 from work this week and they even roughed out the hub. That and the original hub, shaft and the cylinder that fits around the journal of the hub were picked up by a local machine shop this afternoon. I'll have to follow up with them tomorrow to make sure they understand what I need. Conceptually it's not a difficult part, but it is big and there are some tight tolerances as you need an interferance fit on the shaft, the hole for the shaft is about 3/4" off center and its about 3" in diameter. The entire piece is 11" long and before drilling the 3" hole for the shaft it and machining in the T slot it weighs about 125#. I'm not sure if this part is a weak spot in the design of these hammers or not. My hammer was built in 1943 so it's not exactly a young machine, but by hammer standards it's not old either. I'm not sure what lead to the break out of the T slot. I know that similar damage can occure on milling machine tables from over tightening the bolts and I'm sure that happened here, but unlike a mill table were the T slot has no support, in the hammer part the T-slot flange mates up tight to the cylider that can be rotated to adjust the stroke so you should be able to really tighten things up without putting a bending force on the T slot flange. I've noticed that some the parts on this hammer do have casting flaws and that cracking has occurred in these areas. It wouldn't surprise me if that was the case with this component too. I suspect that every time the bolts loosened and the cylinder rotated while I was running the hammer, more and more of that flange was beaten away. The new steel part will have a flange 3/4" thick and being steel it won't be subject to the brittleness of cast iron.

Guys, I need to replace a part on my Bradley. For those that have Bradleys, especially the guided helve and strap types, you will recognize this as the hub that is keyed directly to the shaft. This hub froms the innermost of the adjustable excentric that controls the stroke. On one side of this part is a flange that has a circular slot that takes a square headed bolt. Three of these bolts pass through the outside eccentric. When the bolts are loose, the inner and outer eccentric rotate independantly allowing the stroke to be adjusted. When the correct position is reached, the bolts are tightened. The problem I have is that the slot in the flange is broken out for about half the circumferance and I can no longer get the hammer to keep a constant stroke. To fix this I have to tear out the entire shaft, and eccentric assmbly, get the hub off of the shaft and then procure a new hub. Does anyone know of a source for Bradley parts. I know that Cortland Machine was supporting them for quite a while but I'd heard they'd sold that buisness to Bruce Wallace. Does anyone know if either of these folks or others out there can supply the part I need? The originally is a cast iron part but I'd be just as happier or happier with steel. Patrick

The industrial rule of thumb for efficient/production type forging is 50 lbs ram weight for each 1 square inch of cross section. You certainly can work bigger material than that on most hammers, but to get good penentrating blows and rapid material flow its a pretty good guide.

The written word "swage" can be found in old period blacksmithing texts such as "Forge Craft" published in 1913. I'm sure it is in other period references as well. In our 1970 version of Webster's collegiate dictionary "Swage" is included and there is actually a sketch of top and bottom swages in use forming a tennon. I think the pronunciation differences are most likely regional more than anything else. There are lots of examples of pronuciation variation by region through out the US. Patrick

. This really depends on how big the key is. On my Bradley the keys are about 1.75 wide and 1" thick at the big end and 18" long so they are big enough in as-forged condition to handle the pounding they get. If I were doing some of the thin keys I've seen on small hammers I'd heat treat them. Patrick

Aaron, Are you active in UMBA or IVBA? I don't recognize your name, though that doesn't mean we haven't met at some point. I'm in Beloit so Milwaukee isn't too far a drive. Those old European anvils certainly are beautiful, but my shop is plum full as it is. I had to move stuff out of my shop to get my latest anvil in. You can find pictures of it in this section from a few months back. Patrick

Hello and welcome. I am the plant metallurgist for a major supplier of open die forgings here in the States. In my shop we heat treat 5.5 million pounds of steel per week (or more). It is rare that this heat treatment is a stand alone charge since we are processing our own forgings, but the method is the same regardless. You have to consider both the weight/size and the time required to accomplish the desired outcome. The smaller the part, the more pieces you can get in a furnace (and the faster the cycle time) and therefore you can split the cost of the load over more pieces. In our shop, we typically just charge so many cents per pound per hour. The hold time is usually a function of the cross section and that determines the minimum length of time for the specific cycle. This model works pretty well becuase you can have two parts of the same weight but different sizes and therefore different hold times. If you have a long skinny part you may be able to get quit a few of these in the furnace and run a short cycle while the same weight in a short fat part would require a much longer time at temperature. A typical heat treatment in our shop would consist of three heating cycles (normalize, quench, temper) and each may take for example 10 hours. Assuming we charge the same rate for all these steps and the load consists of 50,000# of bars you have 30 hours x 50,000# x price per pound. Since tempering is done at lower temperatures than the other operations, you may chose to figure that step at a lower price per pound than the higher temperature steps. Of course your price has to encompas the cost of fuel, labor, capital equipment and maitainence, but that would be true of any buisness model. If you expect all your work to be basically the same size with the same cycle times then you can simplify your calculation to just price per pound. Patrick

You can forge the dovetales seperate and weld them to the main die blocks, but on an air hammer you will need to have a spacer block to go between the work piece and the top die to ensure the ram does not exceed it's maximum safe travel. Here is the method: Forge or aquire a block of steel that is just a hair narrower than the narrowest point of the dovetail. Be sure this block is a good bit taller than the depth of dove tail in the sow block. Also be sure it is narrow enough for the key to fit into the sow block with this block in place of the die. With the lower die removed from the sow block, heat the block to be forged as hot as you can get it. Put a flat backed fuller in the sowblock dovetail, round side up. Try to keep that in the center of the dovetail. Put the hot block on top of this with the key loosly in place and forge down. The fuller will push the metal towards the corners of the dovetail cavitiy. You will have to pound a little then tap in the key. Keep alternating between the hot metal an the key. Knock out the key and remove the fuller. Torch or grind the mushroomed edges off the top side of the dovetail block. Re-heat and repeat above, but this time leave out the fuller. Remove and grind to final fit. I did this several times before I got a mill and it is effective. The fit is not as good as machined doevetail but it was good enough and I still use some of the dies I made this way. If you've done everything correctly, the bottom and top of this block willb e parrelllel so it should be straight forward to weld whatevery you want to these forged dovetails. However, since your dies are fairly small, I'd suggest having a local machin shop mill up a bunch of blancks that you could then modify as you need. It probably won't cost that much, expecially if you use a basic steel like 1045. Once they have the setup, it should be a pretty quick machining job. Patrick

There are several things that can affect the yeild strength-grain size, martensite/bainite/ferrite content and the presence of austenite formed during tempering. The best way to start your investigation is to look at the microstructure. This will tell you if you have an effective quenching process or not and should also reveal if there is any austenite present, which I think is unlikely. I had a recent experience in my own shop where the yield/tensile ratio was in the 50% range, but the cause of too high a temper which resulted in the formation of some austenite during this step. I would suggest that you consider adding a normalizing step which will help refine the grains and that in turn will result in some increase in the yield strength. I do not think your hold times are excessive for the part size, expecially if you have grain refining elements such as aluminum or vanadium in the steel. It is possible the time in the quench is too short, but this is often a balancing act between obtianing the desired micorstructure and properties with not cracking the part. Patrick

Fe-Wood- I don't recall the ram weight on you Bradley but it looks to be over 100#s. With the floating anvil configuration Bradley used I would expect that it will break a 4" concrete pad fairly quickly. I suggest, at a minimum, cutting your floor around the hammer to prevent damage to the main part of the floor. As an alternative, you could set it up on a thick wook pad. If you do this I" suggest 2x6 bolted together on edge.That will provide a significant cushion for the anvil. I think the best way to set up a big hammer is to either use a deep concrete foundation or a heavy steel plate foundation, both of which have been demonstrated to be successful on many occasions. Patrick

Griffin, I used a block of hardword faced with leather for the part you need to replace. Rubber would work too I'm sure. This piece functions as a break and I have found that the rim of my flywheel often has lots of oil on it since the bearing don't hold the oil in on this machine. If you have something that will still provide some friction even in an oily environment that would probably be best. Patrick

I have some of the die inserts that went with that hammer and the sister to it that I think Jim kept. He sold me all the duplicate die inserts that were at the Mac Tool auction. You're not missing much as they are all for very specific applicatoins like swaging, forging chisels etc. What you need are a set of flat dies. I suggest you just anneal the main die blocks, machine the tops flat and re-harden. Or you can have a set of dies made. I believe that Bradley dies were orignally machined on a shaper, though a mill will work if you have access. I had a cutter customer ground to this angle so I could make my own dies. An alternate method would be do have a bar of steel machined to the dovetail dimensions only. You can cut any length sections from that and then weld block to that to make specialty dies. If you are going to have dies made, I suggest the following grades: 4140, 4340, H13, S7. The dovetails on my Bradley have a 5 degree dovetail. Patrick

Yes, that is a Bridge anvil. Typically found in oil-field forge shops and used for dressing drilling bits. Several members here have them. Patrick

Nice job on the anvil. I'm impressed with it only taking you 5 hours to get as far as you did. I'd need to see the chemisty to advise on water or oil but based on the tensile/yield strength values reported above I'm thinking water is the way to go. You will definitly need mor than 100 gallons of quench fluid and you will need a way to agitate the fluid. My suggestion would be to find a large volum of water such as a creek, pond or swimming pool. Rent a coulple of 2" diameter high volume pumps and use them to blast the face of the anvil with water. Patrick

Danger-The anvils that were made at Scot Forge were advertising anvils and maybe weighed a pound or two. They made anvils with both the Scot Forge and Larson Forge logo. Larson is a closed die forge shop near the Scot Forge hammer shop outside of Chicago. I have never seen the dies for the job and if I recall correctly I think they ended up at Larson Forge. I was told they used a little 1000# Niles-Bement hammer for that project. The hammer has since been pulled out of the ground as it was never really big enough for the production work we do. I've been told that we'd be willing to sell it for the going scrap price, and I've passed that on to several folks with an intrest in steam hammers but no takers so far. Total weight, with anvil is estimated to be around 20K#. I'm the hammer would need and overall before it would really run well. Patrick