nonjic

In the circles i mix with in UK industry a 'plater' is a pretty skilled guy who does all the 'working out' and tacking up, prior to the job going to a welder, who does all the donkey work staring at a spark, running all the beads! Not a derogatory term at all.

'Clear Space' hammers have an internal air resoviour where the air is stored for single blow operation. Spose it could be condensate ? wipe it out and dont worry, thats the official advise (oh, and paint it green :P )

Ive met some apprenticed 'time served' machine operators (turners, millers etc) and I am uncomfrotable standing near a machine they are running because they are not safe, and it winds me up seeing a machine tool being tortured with the wrong speeds and feeds! Ive met blacksmiths that have spent several years studying the craft, and I would rather have your average 'stick and weld' arrow heads outside my house than their work. Its all about the competence of the individual. I think its complete bobbins to suggest that someone who is formally trained is going to ultimatly be a better craftsperson than someone self taught. (though if you have 2 people with the same competency, and formally trained one they would get 'there' quicker than the self taught person.) I studied business and finance to degree level. Does not make me a better business man than somone self taught :D to quote you bigred, I 'play at' machine operating. Made these 6' dia clutch plates this month from flame cut plates. Turned, drilled, and gearcut on a slotter, they drive (dead fit) on 52 teeth on one side, and have 0.006" clearance on the other side. Never been trained to use a machine. Did them in half the time a subby specalist takes..... just playing though... I have 'a play' at blacksmithing too... (self taught, just playing) Pretty insulting to suggest that formal training makes you better, and us self taught guys are just incompetent, unsafe messerabouters.

Its a tricksy subject - I do the estimating for some pretty complicated engineering jobs, studied accounts / business marketing etc to degree level and run a company thats doing pretty well. For me it boils down to 2 catagories of pricing a job. 1) - what can I get away with. This is the price a customer will pay, with their eyes only watering enough that they will come back again. This pricing stratagy has nothing to do with actual costs of undertaking the job. 2) - If you want / need the job, and there is someone else quoting it, like for like. You have to do the following. Communicate well with the customer, be confident with them about the job from a technical standpoint (even if you arent, worry about the details after the consultation, but prior to quoting, dont ever ummm and arrrr in front of them). Be a smidge cheaper, and a tiny bit quicker on delivery than the other guy quoting. You should get the job unless there is backhanders at play. If with 2) you cant make money on the job you need to ascertain why not, whats the other guy doing faster / better that lets him win it? find out what it is and copy them! Make sure you are quoting like for like at all times. Dont be afraid to look someone in the eye and say 'I can do it when you need, and we can do the quality' what kind of price have xyz quoted ?' most folk will give you a number. Make sure you are looking them in the eye when you ask, and you can tell if they are bs'ing you. liars allways nearly always look down when they do it :D Couple of other things that influence if you will get a job. Your only as good as your last one on price, delivery and quality. References are everything. If a customer is pulling a face about the price, rather than discount, reference your previous good job. Tell them 'have a chat with Mr Soandso' (have the details handy) , and give me a bell when you have thought about it a little. Again, confidence is everything, both confidence in your work, and the customer having condidence in you. When you do a good job, and the customer is glowing with satisfaction thats the point to ask them if they are happy giving references to your future customers! One other little thing that I learnt, and found to be true. the '80/20' rule. ie, 80% of your profits will come from 20 % of your work. Ive never really ascertained if this means the 20% of work after your fixed costs are paid, or you have to do quite a lot of bobbins jobs to be in business for when the 'cream' comes along! Hope the above ramble helps a little, basically it is not always down to a shop rate giving you a wage and overhead recovery!

I think the work 'Knacker', as in to destroy, has been around for a long time. Ive never heard of gypsies called knackers, but the place you send old / unwanted / injured horses has allways been the 'knackers yard' in the UK! If you are making your own dies for anyang, you can get a much more usefull shaped die by making it deeper, and narrower. Draw a circle the same diameter as the end of the ram, and see what 'rectangle' will fit in there! I have made 'deep dies' and they are much nicer to use! (preference thing?) You can even make slightly 'octaconal' top die to get more depth by knocking the corners off (so it does not foul when the ram retracts into the cylinder) You can also make your bottom die much longer than the top die (left to right, as it were!) so you can forge 'step downs'. All the Massey hammers were supplied with a wider bottom die than top for this purpose ! Nice to use, and costs no more.

Im making a set of dies for a Goliath spring hammer at the moment. 'mates rates' is £400, ie that will just about cover the material, labour for the milling machine operator, and a tiny bit towards shop overhead! (will do them as a 'fill in' job, so I wont actually loose out on the deal) ! Be carefull not to knacker your dovetails with badly fitting dies and keys, a very false ecconomy in the long run!

Im quite proud of this little hammer, Its an imported C-41 with seperate anvil. I have designed and made a base for it that lets me sell it as a '1 piece' hammer, with all the convenience that they have, but with a full fat anvil. Ive got a couple of 25 kg machines that are getting the same treatment at the moment, which are showing promise as being great hammers. Working with a new supplier (with a lot of modifications made in the UK) I sold these machines for a similar price (similar margin) to a 'standard' one piece hammer! I put a lot of thought into the design, there are lots of influences from how we install the bigger two piece machines. Im sure its not a new idea, but ive fine tuned it pretty well. (ill not go into the details online as it took a lot of development) The annoying thing is we have so much industrial forging machinery work on now that I am probably going to stop selling small imported machines, there are only so many hours in a day and my fitters and myself need to concentrate on the 'big' stuff, sadly there is not enough of an available skiills base in the UK to just 'get someone in' to build these machines for me! I might come back to small hammers in a few years, who knows ? :D

The self contained aint gonna win any beauty contests but its obviously just evolved into what it is, cant hold that against it! I like the look of the utility hammers, timeless and functional - much better in grey than red !

Great Stuff John! Thanks for the pics, they speak a thousand words. I can see how the extra weight will stop her running for the door! How hot does she run ? I did a temp / time run test on a 2 cwt Massey last week - after 6 hours we were measuring over 100 C at the compressor side ! Gonna have to get my head round the valving you have done there. I will design & build one, one day....like you, just because :)

Rolls Royce piece of kit that! If you buy it you will smile every time you use it!

Nice work Sam! 3 legs is the future, even a 4 leg stand only really ever sits on 3 unevenly! I saw a hofi anvil on the 3 leg stand at a BABA event a few years ago and was very impressed at the simplicity, usability and stability of the design. Is (was) the anvil a virgin ? she looks a nice little lump!

worth checking that the valve sleeves (top and bottom) are tight in the frame, and one of them has not slipped round a bit.

hmmm, gotta say thats as bad as ive seen! a couple of half inch bright nuts holding the bottom die in place? - seemed to be working loose. They would not last 5 mins if it had the power and blow rate it should for its capacity! a 25 kg (55lb) Anyang would embaress it, TBH im almost temped to put a set of similar dies in a 33lb and have a go at the same stock size! Just a note of general powerhammeryness... the energy of the blow is 1/2 m v sq. Ie, its the velocity that is the really important bit, coz its squared! you cant get good energy without the ram travelling fast, coz thats where the velocity comes from! You can get the ram travelling fast with a low bpm (think KA 75) but you still dont get much work done due to the slow blow rate. The 'metal moved rate' is really a function of the energy you can lay down in a given amount of time, ie get the speed of the thing up :D

If you continue to get the mess about from your foundry I can reccomend H.Downs Ironfounders. They have turned round (very) complicated engineering castings for me in 2 weeks, and the price is very reasonable. Nigel, who owns it is very approachable, and does quite a lot of 'artistic' casting for sculptures etc, so this would not be outside his remit. http://www.hdowns.co.uk/

Yup, im pretty sure the '3' on my youtube is the sister hammer, but we have swapped all theirs round a couple of times so cant be sure anymore (we sometimes just swap the hammers over for a spare when one needs fixing!) Wasnt too upset at not getting it Al - truth be told its very hard work making money on small hammers !, the margins can tip the wrong way if they dont come out of the ground easily, access is bad, or they need repair or whatever! Im going to have to book that transport company for a job, just to get a good look at the waggon :D Phil, Ive lifted 40cwts the same way in one piece, you can still leave your cup of tea on them without fear of sloshing any! - we put a bar of steel in behind the strap (so its trapped against the casting) to remove any chance of it slipping forwards once lifted and moving.

Looking good Al! Thats one of the first hammers I sold, a couple of decades ago - the guys you bought it from just pipped me getting hold of it earlier this year :D IIRC we bought 2 '3cwt' from a rail maintenace yard in Salford. Funny enough we were working on you hammers 'twin' today in Sheffield at an orthopedic forge. Im loving that waggon they delivered it on. Want one!

I would make the 'best' position (even out the error) , then have a bit skimmed off the tapered side faces of the dies (not the dovetail). If you have a 1/4" error one way, and 1/2" the other way error the die faces cant be the same size anyway?

Loving this thread! cant wait to see the videos. Seems weird putting so much timber under an anvil (not saying its not a good way to do it, just that I have never seen it done like that!) Can you draw a layout of the valves, tubes and motion gear? I might be able to chip in with some ideas when I see what is really going on with it. What I usually do on 'unknown' hammers is 'project' the valve tubes, and valves (ie roll up a piece of paper into the tube, and press it against the ports. Wrap a piece of paper around the valve so it marks the bands / drilling / cutouts etc. You know the valve travel in the tube so you can then overlay the 2 tracings and move them relative to each other to see where the air is going, and why. The trick to steam / air hammer valving is to fully understand that the hollow center of the valve is the exhaust for top & bottom cylinder air, there is usually a 'live' band of air around the middle of the spool that charges top or bottom of the piston head whilst the 'hollow' valve exhausts the opposite. Ive made cardboard models before of self recipricating air hammers that have a throttle valve that actuates the control valve via a 'sword arm' or lever. It helps the understanding :)

This is a clutch from a different 2500 tonner we did last year, real headscratchers to get right these! 24 drive bolts all have to be in contact with 24 slots! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiRuig6EDvo&feature=plcp

Thought this might be interesting to some of you. We rebuild a lot of hammers and presses at my company - This is a photo montage of a 2500 ton ram and pitman we overhauled last month. The assembly weighs about 16 ton all up. The clearance on the bronze bush to the crankshaft is 0.016" max when done! The bolts are shrunk in place with heating elements to give the correct pre-tension. All the surfaces have to be in 'bed' contact or the assembly will not last very long in service! you can see we extensively use chalk and blue to check contact in some of the photos. The bearings you can see being removed at the start of the video have been in about 5 years, you can see where they have melted and extruded! Towards the end of the montage there is a video of the bearings being hand scraped - The guy has been doing them for 40 years - makes it look very easy! We scrape the bearings to give an extra couple of thou clearance at the sides, which aids the oil flow to the point that does the work under a full forging load. The complete press weighs about 250 tons, and is used for hot forging automotive components, cylces about once a second! Ill try and dig out some photos of the full machine. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzx-NbS20Pk

Sounds like a nightmare with the shaft and wheel interferance fit :( Many moons ago a fitter we employed 'stuck' a 6' dia wheel on a shaft in the wrong place... we did not have a wheel press at the time so sub contracted the job of pressing it back off. They smashed the wheel. expensive and painfull lesson for me. We now have a horizontal 200 ton , specifically designed wheel press. You still need to be real carefull with it. On a small shaft (3" dia) 0.002" is a big pinch, and we are never shy with the (proper stuff) moly. The bradleys sound like great hammers, I hope to get some anvil time on one, one day!

Massey made 90% of their open die hammers with a 10:1 anvil. You could specify 15:1 or 20:1 as an option. Drop hammers (closed die) were nearly all made with 20:1 anvils. Personally I have found hammers with small anvils to be very effective up to a certain point. That point is tough, cooling, thin section material. Then you want some weight under the tup. I have seent the 'ceco' anvil efficency chart that Jock has put the anvilfire copyright logo on. Personally I would see that as a marketing thing untill I saw the science behind it. I have not solidified my thoughs on the size of the concrete inertia block under a hammer and any effect it has on forging efficency. My gut feeling is not very much effect on efficency after a certain point. If you study the 'elastic circuit' of a hammer mounted on concrete you will realise once the system flex has been minimised the energy can only go into the forging. Again, not based on science, but gut feeling - once the concrete is large enough to minimise vibration (which is lost energy) it is large enough. I think most of the size of the inertia block is to prevent the block tiping and sinking over time under heavy use (caused by the very small % of energy that is leaving the 'system'' of tup and anvil as vibration). If you look at a hammer like the closed die Banning 'ring frame' it helps with the understaning of 'elastic circuit'

its a deal, its a steal, its the sale of the "" century ! :D One of those would run you well over $20k new, and that one looks nice!

many an hour has been spent inside the castings of self contained hammers 'porting' the air flow! gotta make it easy for it to get where it needs to be! An intersting fact for the hammer geeks. At Massey in 'the hayday' the Clear Space hammers were made in batches of 4 (sometimes more). Now, take 4 sets of parts, machined the same, and 4 sets of castings made from the same patterns - result ? 4 hammers that acted differently on the test floor. Each hammer was then very carefully 'tuned', over several days, via drilling escape holes in the valves, compressors etc untill they acted similar. No 2 are ever quite the same though. (some are flighty, some have dead spots, some are a bit lumpy thumpy) They all have a personality. Anyone who has had some anvi ltime on a few hammers will verify this! Very subtle differences in a machine (surface finish of castings, a slightly slipped core etc) add up to a noticable difference when you push the treadle down.Get a really good hammer and there is a little bit of magic in there.

neatest foundation holes I have ever seen! top work :) looking forward to seeing this thread progress!