nonjic

welding is lookin good so far might be worth giving these guys a try for borax. In the UK tescos has started selling it, or 'Wilkinsons' not sure about the republic http://www.scarvapottery.com/opencontent/default.asp

Hmmm,, what you say is correct but I allways weld both ends of the starting billet and have decent results. There will be some bowing in the outer layers as it heats but this lets the flux in and will stabalise when the whole thing is up to temperature. You can minimise the bowing by pre-warming the billet in the forge exhaust for 20 mins or so if your being really fussy (not put the billet in a forge thats warming up though, that causes mega scale, and diaster! - ask how I know ) trapped flux is usually a result of hammering the outside of teh billet, then the central strip.

Looks a tasty billet, makes me wanna weld it! nice preperation. Its all down to heat, atmosphere and pressure now. get the flux on it early, then get some more flux on it when its hot, infact lots of flux all the time its heating ! (I use borax from wilkisons, straight from the box) First welding pass your just 'pushing' it together. Might be worth just welding 2 pieces of mild together before you do that one just to check your hot enough! It might take a few goes to get spot on welds, but there are really only so many variables to mess up, and once it clicks into place it seems real easy. Look forward to seeing how you get on with it! Oh, and gas forge is easy, coke or coal not so in my experience, if your using solid fuel build a really deep fire, and keep the billet out of the direct air blast from the tue.!

Well she survived heat treat under the supervision of Owen bush, and Howard Clark. Marquenched at 230C, then straightened, then tempered in oil at 250C. Lots of work still to do now regrinding it all thinner and true, and then polish and etch! big step out of the way with the HT though :D

Looking good Ric! The squeak might be a gasket blowing a little under full pressure load, Im sure you know already but 1/8" : 12" (1:96) is the standard for tapers on most machines.

looks like a sheet metal forming drop hammer (Ive seen a few, much bigger versions (CECO's) used for forming aerospace components.

Beautiful work james, Really shows the versatility of a good hammer! I hadnt even thought of using a power hammer on copper sheet! could you have annealed the sheet, worked it cold till hard and then re-annealed it? If that would work I might give it a try (more thinking time for me on the workpiece!) The finished bowl reminds me of the big fungi in a forrest ! , very organic

Hi Thomas, The blade is about 30" long, +5" for handle, Its about 2" at the hilt with a gentle taper to 1 3/4 just before the tip. Its ready for heat treat now, and weighs about 800g. The cutting edges are still thick so If it survives HT and I make it 'live' it should finish at 750 ish (the handle is still 'thick' aswell, which will loose some weight when I thin it) The fuller was ground on an 8" wheel (my first hollow grind!, spent lots of time hand sanding it true) Its a 4 bar interupted twist core, with a funky twisted 'serpent' edging strips (each made from 3 bars!) , lots of welding the steel is 15n20 & 20c from udderholm. Fingers crossed for the heat treat, there is a bit of a gammy weld near the tip I really dont like the look of!

This is my first try at a sword. More work that I could have imagined when I started on it 4 months ago ! Its ready for heat treatment which will be done early next month on a sword forging course I am attending (with a couple of folks who really know about heat treating long pieces!) Ive pushed my own welding boundrys a bit with this piece, Im not going to etch it before heat treat though. Ive had glimpses of the pattern when working on it, but would like to see it properly, all at once,....... if it survives quench!) The tip is actually much more even than the photos suggest, The sanding lines play havoc with it in bright sunlight photos! Any comments or suggestions fire away!

Glad your OK phil,. even when you know stuff can happen it can still be a shock when it does. At a large aerospace forge I work in they use the small Clear Space Hammers sitting down next to the Anvil. One guy struck a miss blow on 2kgs of titanium at silly heat and it flicked up into his face. It knocked all his top teeth back into his jaw and cauterized his gums over. The medics kept asking him where his false teeth were, not realising! Crazy thing is he was back in work after a couple of weeks!

Nicely shot vids John, and the hammer looks sweet what size of machine is it?

Wooohoo! glad its finally working now fix the air leaks and really see what it can do :lol:

The top die looks like it might be domed in profile. With the large flat bottom die could this be to raise a bowl shape forging from plate ?

Hi Ric, The 5 cwt hammer needs about 30 hp, at 713 revs (8 pole less a bit of slip?). You turn the motor pully down on the existing motor to compensate for the 50hz -v- 60hz supply issue! John Newman who posts on here has a Massey 5cwt, heres a link to a photo on his website,. http://nfap.ca/hammer.html nice, if a bit red!! :lol:

Imagine a dremmel type multi tool, with flexi shaft, but lots bigger..... the motor hangs from the crane, or a roof joist. the working end looks kinda like a clothes iron, except in the middle it has a cup wheel grind stone that can be pushed down to touch the workpiece. It allows tiny ammounts of metal to be removed in a very controlled way. Ill get some pics next time I fire it up!

Not sure I understand 'one money'... If the winning bid was $500 does that mean you get all 5 anvils for $500 total (ie average $100 each), or would you have to pay 5 x $500 bucks , = $2500 Most of the anvils dont look great to my eye, probably why they are being job-lotted !

Hi David,. Im a bit embarresed to say I dont know what the finish on the tup is called Basically we use a 'flat iron grinder' to dress the flats of the rams, we rub them with a surface plate with a little engineers blue on, then grind the high spots off, and repeat........ when the flats of the ram are truely flat we use the same grinder to dress the surface with the little circles. Ive allways been told it helps to maintain an oil film on the ram. Looks neat either way!

I dont know how many Massey Hammers there are in the USA, not many I suspect as you had very good domestic manufacturers. Massey certainly did send a lot of plant over there in the early years though. This is a wonderful artical from the New York Times about the Machinery hall at the 1876 Philadelphia Worlds Fair, well worth a read! http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9D0DE0DC1F3FE73BBC4A52DFB066838D669FDE I know of a couple of Massey 'Clear Space' hammers in Canada at the moment. Below is some photos of a Massey 5 cwt Clear Space Hammer we have just finished re-building (shes looking for a new home now...... ) The 5 cwt (280 kg / 625lb falling weight) was probably the most popular size of hammer Massey made. Lots still in service around the world ! (I know at least 3 IFI members who have got a Massey 5 cwt)

This is a very neat setup,. I went and had a nosey today at 'young mr dylans' forge,. and whilst I cant begin to understand the air schematics I fully understand the benefits of a nice solid single repeatble blow. ! The 'KA' style hammer Davids built is also very nice, and with the 'auto cycle' feature a much more versatile forging hammer than 'one tap / one blow'. It also looks like it wants to be 'fed' hot metal, as some hammers occasionally do ! :D

It was a great few days, Thanks for making the effort to come over James ! (if I had know my pic was going online I would have put on clean overalls ) If anyones got any questions about the pics, or what we do here please feel free to ask, Ive taken on another 3 full time engineers this year, Which by my reconing between us gives over 150 years of combined experience on re-building, installing & maintaining forging plant :D

You could just set the 55gal drum up, and put a bath towel over the top of it to catch the oil mist. Then slowly fill with swarf (as per plan 'A'!) as and when its available.

hey basher (love the name mate!) Ive come up with quite a nifty design for a 'shallow pit' foundation for my 2cwt Massey thats a bit of a compromise. The hammer will be boosted up from ground level about 8" on old sleepers (which address the low bottom tool height issue for me), and have about 2' of concrete under the base of the anvil block. Not perfect but should work nicely! when I get the drawings finalised Ill mail em to you I think your a bit over on your weights, the block on your hammer (assuming 10x Nominal falling weight) should be 1.5 tons + / - a bit, maybee 4 ton in the hammer?

The fabreeka is good stuff, the bad news is it will be about $1000/ for a 1/2" piece to do that hammer ! I to will be interested to see how the 'foundation' holds up. It may well be ok if the hammers only doing an hour or so of medium work a day, its when you start battering them with 8 hours hard work every day the weaknesses will show in short order!

Great Stuff! thanks for sharing with the video If you notice the concrete start to spall where the anvil is seated on it you can buy a nitrile rubber, fabric reinforced pad to sit between the anvil and floor, There is a US company called 'Fabreeka' that make them. 1/2" thick will be fine. (it might attenuate a bit of the vibration aswell ) Like grant said some wedges between the anvil and frame will help tie it all together, and maybee have a look if the ram gland is blowing a bit, this might be causing the ram to 'tup' quite low like it is in the video, which limits your space to get loose tooling under. The only other thing is ive had pretty poor results mounting the motor starter on the hammer as the vibration gets them in time. Great looking setup! Ive really enjoyed this thread, and glad to see its happy ending.

John B,. I do a bit of work in a very large UK blacksmith & farrier college (not for me to name names online) One of the lecturers there showed me some similarly broken hammers from the same supplier (common problem as I understand it). They use them to show the students what happens to the grain if you overheat, and dont normalise afterwards Very, very, poor when you consider the price they charge for them,. perhaps they should come with a warning about striking things with them invalidating your warantee :D