nonjic

Ive stripped those before, A couple of little hydraulic jacks instead of those packers, maybe a bit of heat, and it will be out in 2 shakes of a lambs tail.

Hi Beth, We have stopped selling them as we are so busy on large industrial projects, Im more than happy to help with any hammers that we supplied though !

Beth, Drain the old oil out of the box on the side - there should be a drain plug in the bottom of it, that takes an allen key to undo. (it might be covered with filler!) Put in the new, lighter oil. Then run the hammer and make sure it is flowing up the pipe. The oil feed to the compressor piston (left feed) is the one to watch! - don't worry if the right hand pipe is not feeding oil, as that pipe is 'secondary' to the one on the left, and not really necessary on a small hammer. Run the hammer for an hour or two with the oil turned up much higher than you normally would. You can 'wedge' the treadle with a block of wood so the ram is 'swinging' but not striking a blow. Oil will start to leak out around the ram guide (clean up with a rag!!). The lighter oil will pretty quickly find its way through the machine. When you have had enough of 'over oiling' it, turn the adjuster screw(s) on the oiler back down so the left hand feed is giving approx. 6 - 10 drips a min from the 'swan neck' inside the glass bowl on top of the oiler. If the glass bowel has filled up with oil, so you can not see how many drips are coming out of it, you can unscrew the bowl (carefully, as it is brittle) to clean the old oil out, or you can completely remove the 'needle valve' adjuster and it should drain out. You may also need to remove the non-return valves which are on the oil lines and clean them out with some 'wd40' or white spirit etc. You can speed the whole process up by removing the 2 top covers (compressor and ram) from the hammer, and wiping the bores out with some paraffin, wd40 or whatever. Then put in an eggcup full of the thinner oil into each bore, and wipe it around the sides etc. Note the position of the cover on the compressor piston before you remove it, as it needs to go back on in the same orientation. If you run into any problems or have any questions post here, or give me a bell next week ! (John at Massey)

Those nail swords are genius ! :D If you could find stainless nails they would make fantastic cocktail stirrers with a cherry on the end, or for picking snacks from dishes!

It might be dangerous if you did it only wearing your underpants. Its not dangerous when I do it in full ppe, with a leather apron, and a forced air full face respirator (which I wear for all my bladesmithing dirty work). The disk is only a few thou out of balance which stops it glazing. I did not suggest any one else did this, I merely stated that's the easiest way I have found to do it ;) And on that note Ill not bother contributing to this section any more.

Miserable stuff, borax scale. When I used to forge Damascus with a press it was terrible. Under a power hammer you pretty well blast it off. Billet clean up time is like chalk and cheese between hammer and press. The easiest way I have found to shift it is with an angle grinder. The more out of balance the disk the better for this application. You want it kind of 'bouncing' to knock it off. I usually do a bit with the normal side of the disk, a bit on the edge of the disk, then turn the grinder upside down and use the top of the disk - keep chopping and changing so the disk does not glaze up.

Steve, I don't think you killed the thread, it was just an example (and it was just an idle 'didn't know you could do that' comment) but it may have discouraged others from asking questions about it for 'fear' (for want of a better word!) of just being re-directed to a different portion of the site. It really boils down to how much you want the knife making section of IFI to be about a few members directing folks to established threads, or more of a 'general input' throw ideas around environment for learning, with other more experienced bladesmiths chipping in where necessary. (of course, I understand, its not me who has to moderate it though :) )

I think its good that you Rich, and Steve have spent so much time compiling information in the knife section of this site. It is also worth considering the following though, There are hundreds of other members, with collectively tens of thousands of hours of experience in blade work. If the first reply to a thread is 'read the knife making classes' (often within a few mins of the thread being posted) it does not encourage contribution from other experienced members, who may have valuable information to add that is not in the information you have prepared. just a recent example - I posted a blade with pattern welded stainless cladding. Someone commented they did not know you could do this, and the reply was along the lines of 'we covered that in the classes' - end of. no more discussions about p/w stainless. Out of interest I went and read the classes, and very little of what I did, and my techniques was covered there - but... the conversation was pretty well killed by the comment along the lines of 'do your homework' So, s'pose what I am trying to say is perhaps don't take it so personally when questions are asked that you feel you have covered in the past, perhaps sometimes let the conversation run, ideas get thrown around and possibly new ideas tried.

The head scratching was getting it not to rip to pieces as it cooled from forging, and getting the billet stable enough to be heat treated. At stainless welding temp you are very close to O1 melting temp !

This is my first effort at san mai construction on a blade. The steel is 14 layers of 304 and 316 stainless either side of a core of O1. The metallurgy of this one took some head scratching to get right :lol: Its not finished yet - handle just dry fitted. Some tweaks before if all becomes permanent ! Sorry for the low quality pic - I will update the thread when its all finished up and we get some of that 'daylight' ive heard about :D

ssssshhhhhhhh - don't say that until its working properly ! rule no.1 fixing stuff :D

A strip of thick leather soaked in oil would be ideal. (veg tanned, smooth face of hide to ram)

The Masseys were built in batches of 4 or more. Each part for the hammer had the hammers serial number stamped on it so they didn't get muddled up ! Whilst each part is to a drawing there is a lot of fitting work in building a hammer. Bearings scraped to cranks, rams fitted to stuffing boxes, slide blocks bedded into their slots with blue, taper pins drilled on assembly etc. The parts would make their way through the factory, and then be built up by a fitter or two working together, then onto the test floor for running for a few days, velocity tests etc. Everything for every hammer recorded in a folder.

You could mix a bit of him with some other carbon, and use him to carburise some wrought iron into blister steel - I would be more confident of some uptake into the material that way !

Just to clarify that I am happy to discuss all of the inner workings of the hammers with just about anyone who will stand still long enough to listen! and I have no problem including the 'secret' how it works and tuning document with the manuals I supply. I just cant post the drawings online, as that gives the website a licence to the information, and once you give it im sure you cant take it back! (ie, you can only do it once, and repent at leisure!)

I supply the packing in 3 ply, or 4 ply in 15 mtr rolls (massively) cheaper than Walkers price Phil states above. We get it made up by a local company from Kevlar cloth, graphited. The 4 ply is something we have recently started doing for when things are a lot more worn than they should be ! Delivery around the planet is not that much. DHL will do it for about £ 25 / £30 gbp anywhere :)

Im not going to put up any detailed information about hammer valves, and how they work as the info on Massey hammers is my companies 'IP' and I don't want to effectively grant websites a licence to the information, which I would be doing by putting it on a forum.... sorry guys, I wont be much of a contributor in this thread. This is a sectional view through a clear space hammer, which should clarify the compressor piston arrangement. ie, the head of the piston compresses on its up and down stroke (which of course, means it pulls on both sides of the stroke) . The with slides hammers have a similar arrangement.

the compressor piston on a Massey pumps (and sucks) both ways....

One major advantage of the 'T' bolt is that if a bolt breaks you have a good chance of being able to replace it. You have to lift the hammer off the foundation, and struggle to get the broken portion of the bolt out of the riser tube (or if your lucky the bolt will break just above the 'T' and it will drop into the void under the anchor plate). You can then just drop a new bolt down the tube. Its a lot of faffing, but much less faffing than the other options :D Hold down bolts don't break very often, but they do go occasionally. The long bolt has a lot more 'stretch' in it than a short bolt (for example an epoxy'ed in stud) - my limited mechanical / metallurgical knowledge leads me to think that it will be much less prone to failure than a short bolt.

Is that 40 at (what used to be) Kymon forge in NSW ? I used to supply bits of spares to them if so ! It has got a very long (quite flighty) stroke for light blows, for a big 'un

They do improve as they bed. The 33lb ive kept for myself is around 6 years old, and has received a fair bit of use being lent out, demo hammer etc. nice and snappy from the treadle now :D

I stick a timber wedge under the back end of the footlever to get the ram 'swinging', but not striking, to assist the warm up. If you have an inline metering valve Im guessing James has already modified the hammer. The oiler works on a vacuum from the compressor piston on its down stroke, and the check valve stops air being blown into the oiler on the piston upstroke.

Hi, This is quite a simple one to sort :) (only took me about 3 years to work it out......) basically, in a nutshell, the 15 kg (33lb) hammers run much better on a very thin oil, like a 10w hydraulic. (iso 32). They do not have enough reciprocating mass to overcome the drag of a heavier oil when they are cold. Sometimes they 'gum up' a bit inside if a heavier oil has been used. If you remove the 2 top cylinder covers you can give the bores a wipe out with some diesel (or whatever). Be sure to put the compressor piston cover back on in the same position. Put a wipe of the thinner oil into the bores once you have wiped out with cleaner, before you put the lids back on. If you are going to use a thinner oil I strongly recommend modifying the oil feed system by putting a good quality non-return valve in the line, and a needle valve to meter it better. The set up from the factory (IMO) does not have enough finesse to meter the lighter, lower viscosity oil. I understand that James sells an oil metering kit that can be retrofitted to hammers that he has not supplied. I have not noticed any adverse effects on the wear rate of any parts of the hammer using a lighter oil. The small hammers will still be a little slower to start making full power when they are cold, but the use of a thinner oil makes a big difference. Hope this helps :)

someone was onto me last year about a 2 cwt in the UK that was left outdoors for a generation, rusted up, water in the bores, pump seized up with rust, valve seized etc. They stripped it, cleaned it all and it ran like a sewing machine, no parts needed except a bit of packing tape ! The only thing I would really worry about would be the motor. edit. you can be fooled into thinking the lid is not bolted down on a 2 cwt, as the gasket on some of them is only nipped on the inside of the bolt PCD, it looks like there is a 1/4" gap with a wavy gasket.

Above info looks correct. I *think* you might be able to get away with a 6 pole with a very small pulley. Sure ive seen them done that way. You will have to do some jiggery pokery to get the existing pulley to fit a modern motor, or stump up quite a few hundred quid on a custom new one ! In my experience it is very rare that a motor actually needs rewinding, why do you think it does ?