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I think it will be a vacuum oiler (ie no pump) The middle lever is an air bypass to reduce the starting load. I would pull the covers off and tip some oil down the bores. The big end bearing on the Con rod will be grease lube, take a grease gun and give it a few shots. Similarly there will be a grease point where the crank exists the cylinder by the flywheel. If the valves are 'frozen' with rust there might be 2 covers on the other side of the cylinder. Remove all bolts, take the covers off and using a picece of wood drift the valves out, emery, oil & refit. Make sure you mark everthing up so it goes back together the same ! - if you loose the valve positions your into a lot of hastle. I think there will be a spring loaded ' clack' valve in the bottom valve - check this is free Its sometimes a good idea to buy it before repairing it, the price might go up once its running! hope this helps some!

looks like it might be bigger than 500lbs that Bob - its certainly more than 1cwt bigger than the 'small' one. Im sure the 250 kg anvils Ive looked at have only been 6 1/2 - 7" face width (how many units of measurement can I use in 1 post )

2 'v' blocks on the table of the mill, and a clamp (in one of the 't' slots) to push down in the center of the bend. clamp it a bit past straight and it should come back straight. (machine heal thyself) Ive straightened shafts a couple on inch dia using 1 clamp with a single piece of 20mm screwed rod (or 3/4 " allthread to you yanks :)

fingers crossed for a good recovery. My sister has done 3 tours in the sandbox as an army doctor, and fortunatly come home safe each time. They are sending her back out soon - She does not think its as safe there now as it was a couple of years ago. The IED's are well planned, with no warning , and no visable enemy. She has patched up a good few folks from IED's, and sadly not had the chance on others. She keeps going back because so many army doctors are quitting for better paid civi work, and they are massively short staffed on the medics. We should all spare a though for those out there - they are professional soldiers keeping US safe. Hope the purple hart works with the ladies for your lad ! :)

hey mr 10mm - I sent a 20' box to aus a year or so back from the UK, and im sure it was less than

Forging 100% income for me. (but not blacksmithing) I supply forge plant all over the world. I design it, buy it, rebuild it, sell it. Hammers 80% of my work, presses the rest. Tell me what you want to forge & Ill supply the knowhow & equipment. I do development work for forging companies, and have a huge pool of resources I can draw on to make projects work (other highly specilised firms I work closely with) Machine down? - ill put a team on site to mend it. I supply Chinese power hammers to blacksmiths in the UK, and have made a lot of friends, and met a lot of intersting people in the process. The job can be very stressfull, but is very rewarding - one fringe benefit is I have a 'forge' to play in most full time smiths would be a bit jealous of, when my damascus is up to scratch ill be a bladesmith though oh yeah....... index :D

can these little fellows be used for heating stacked billets for damascus (pattern welding) use - I vaguley recall that the gaps in the stack would prevent the induction field doing its job right... ????

hey bob - I would class that more as machine shop work ! from my experience they are a tricky machine to get to do much other than very light skimming. Even with well ground tooling, and the machine set up as rigid as you can the tool will still 'push off' for the 1st 1/4" of the cut, requiring multiple passes to get semi-flat. Any metal tougher than Mild steel causes even more problems. I class a small die block as less than 4" along the dovetail. The orientation of the vice is usually set so the work cannot be pushed through the jaws (ie the cutting load should be into the jaw). Perhaps they are just not for me!

went back to dovetails there ! - Im a pretty good machine operator and getting a small shaper to even skim you a flat face is tricky and time consuming enough (with tool push off and drag) they are good for internal keyways if youve got an angle plate. Im just not convinced of their use in a blacksmiths shop. sorry.

name a few bob , other than skimming die block dovetails.

I'ld spin the vice round 90 deg before you use it what do you intend using it for? - in my experience the reason they sit unused for years is they are not very versatile at all. I had a lovely decent sized 'ALBA' and it went to the big recyclers in the sky They are handy for cutting dovetails on very small hammer die blocks (slowly) One hint - dont over tighten the stroke adjustment clamp when you use it, then when the tool digs in and jams (which it will) it will slip, and save the tool / workpiece smashing.

ive only just got the knack of grinding the small fellas (after many years in engineering!) - basically it will cut ok so long as when you eyeball it the cutting edge is the highest point! - if you can do big uns you can do the little ones with practice. with the small ones, if they have been badly ground I sometimes find it easier to grind them flat, and start from scratch. Dont let on to you know how to do it, or you end up grinding them for everyone else every 15 mins :)

looks good ! - now everone you show it to will want one !

if your putting a lot of hours into the knife it might be worth chopping a bit off the end of the file, (inch or so) and 'test' heat treating it before you do the knife - grind a bit of an edge on it. could save some heart ache !

Ive never worked on a Khun, But checking the ram & compressing piston pistons rings would be a good starting point, as well as any packings in the stuffing box (gland where the ram exists the cylinder). These are the usual points of air loss.

this is a little piece that I started last night, and finished this evening. its not knife shaped yet. Its bandsaw blade and thin steel cut from an old cabinet. Believe it or not theres 6 hours work in this one lil bit of steel from start to where it is now (and that with a hydraulic press - im still a newby though! the knifemakers might see what I was trying for before the final stack slipped over itself on the draw out to blade shape... - think its kinda funky even though it deviated from plan slightly.

we warm the bearings in an oilbath. Dont be to 'heroic' about the interferace fit - on most bearings .0005 - .001" is a suitable pinch. the shaft and inner race will always expand / contract at a very similar rate, so the pinch will never be lost. Depends on the bearing and application though. more info needed for accurate, correct advice.

fill a container with water right to the brim, gently submerge the hammer head and catch the displacement in a measuring jug - x the cubic inches displaced by.283 , subtract a bit (say 2 cubic inches for the less dense handle) et voila ! the weight in lbs. dust the hammer lightly with wd40 or dont worry about it to much - its how it 'feels' that matters.

ive got a nice etch using HP (brown) table sauce - just smear a couple of mm evenly over the blade - this is handy for when the blades to big for the etch container Wait 10 mins and watch it start to bubble! apparently salad cream works aswell. (though not tried it personally) ferric chloride is my new etch of choice though. Its becoming a home from home for BB'ers here !

your forge looks very cold - as does the bit your hitting in your photos, assuming the photo wasnt 'staged' (everything cold, just switched on) try cranking the gas right up on your forge, steel moves 20x easier at a yellow heat, than the 'cherry red' in your pics.

I tried to weld a bike chain, before I got a hot gas forge and just ended up with dozens of red hot chain links all over the floor, Ive got the hang of forgewelding billets now, and I think the key is keeping the 'thermal mass' up next time I try chain Im going to wrap it round a solid bar so it holds its heat long enough to set the welds (so it will be a chain / plain bar hybrid, but ill keep the chain on the outside of the billet ! - lots of flux and safety specs are well advised!

Hey Philip, Remember you need to factor in some draft angles etc if you want a foundry to use your concrete block as a pattern, and youll need to dress it nice and smooth. With the labour rates over there could you not just draw it, and get the foundry pattern maker to sort it and the core boxes etc??? - like with computers, foundry work .... rubbish in = rubbish out. - dont forget the contraction etc when designing it 20 mins on a good pattern can save 20 hours of hand grinding !

they are a very elegant machine, that, IMHO cant be improved on ( I build presses and hammers for a living) - they are also cheap for what they are, even cheap at $1000, youll get your money back if you even choose to sell. (so, effectivley they just cost the shipping, and the cost of the capital (yup, im an accounts boy originally). I doubt you could ever 'fabricate' a functional screw for one of these, a chains only as strong as its weakest link etc... some things like power hammers & hydraulic presses can be made for 'home / small shop' use better../... more cost effective than the commercial products, but im afraid flypresses cant. !

this is what they occasionally go for in the uk ! fly press on eBay (end time 23-Jan-08 22:24:43 GMT)

Brian, I wasnt trying to be a smart&rse, and with a lot of effort & engineering you could just about make a useable cam press that would be as good as a flypress for certain applications. The main areas of concern on cam, or eccentic presses are,.. The elastic circuit of the frame needs to be immensly strong, any weak welds and it will burst it. The ram needs to be immensly well guided, any offset load and it will ' kick' & jam unless its very well guided, or it will break the crank, or cam holding shaft. (or the weak bit whereever that is) You need a big end, and a pitman, and pitman end bearing to give true vertical motion of the ram (starts to get complicated to make) , otherwise the cam would 'wipe' or pull the hot metal (instead of just pushing it down, (desired)) You may need some kind of clutch mechanism to release the stored energy into the work, it only needs to malfunction once (double stroke, engage late etc) and it will bite you. if you go for a clutch you need a brake - these then need sequencing somehow Factor in some method of stroke adjustment, or raising the bottom tool (screw, or more commonly a 'die wedge' ) and your into making a pretty complicated machine. I figure this is why the design of the flypress has changed so little since the very clever victorians deigned the basic configuration - Its the same with Naysmith and the hammer! Any specific questions on the design your planning I will try and give you some help with though !