bear Hill

Fosterob - the plate is 1" cut to 36 x 84. The channel risers are 6". Worked well for making a 2 piece a one piece! :-) David also placed a sheet of plywood and anti-vibration pad under the plate to the floor - rather impressive in the shock elimination. The 12" reinforced concrete floor is also rather "stout" under the hammer. Ralph

Ric, Looks like we spent a lot of time on different scanners together :-) ............... At least we're getting the info out there for others. I've also got Mark's book - but came close when a defense contrator in the area had a retired mechanic that maintained eight 3 & 4 B's for their company. He developed alzhiemers before I got to him - but what a resource that man would have been. I figured if anyone had a repair manual - or lots of literature and correspondence from the original companies - it would have been him. Judson, There's some good info on lots of the different power hammers on the NEB page. I've had several people send me pristine manuals and literature in the hopes I'd scan and post it for the future reference of others............there's day's it's kind of cool to be the web master for NEB. I looked up a post David Kahn made to Iforgeiron and started reading some other posts. Work has been nuts lately (7 days a week kind of nuts) - so I don't know how long I'll keep looking up the posts in the evening.

Great info Rich. I built an air hammer with a tube in a tube for a guide system before the LaCrosse conference where I showed my ideas to Ron Kinyon over an ice cream at Lunch one day. He took the two tube idea and made a spring lever the air piston hooks to and saves a lot of air for those with smaller compressors. I went to an in line straight ram/guide system with an 18" stroke piston...........this trapped air in opposing cylinders has made for more control than I ever imagined. I also end up with 11 inches of open die space to stack tools or forge large pipe in. Cutting the pressure on this hammer allows it to be used as a power treadle hammer - and that's no exageration. Ralph

Ric, I don't know if you have the United and Lobdell catalogs on Nazel - but if not I have scanned all the info onto our group's web site (New England Blacksmiths). I also included information and brochures that Tony Millam sent to me as he used to own a couple trailer loads of Fairbanks, Dupont, and Beaudry parts and the accompanying literature. http://www.newenglan...hammer_info.htm That hammer you're talking about went from Bob Bergman's to David Kahn's and I helped put it in place with Terry on Saturday (but you probably knew that). :-) There's a lot of good pictures on Facebook of Nazel rebuilds (like Keane Paradiso's, Mine, and Mark Krause has posted many great pictures of repairs he'd been doing before he ran into problems. I miss his sage advice on these hammers. On the topic of old hammers - here's my serial number 24 with the ID tag still saying Beeche Pat. on it. This hammer was put into service in 1907. She runs great after a five year reworking. Ralph

Ric, Do you have any of those books? Curious - if you're collecting Nazel books...........have you ever seen a "Repair Manual" for one - or are the blueprints as close as it comes?? Ralph

John, Looks like the hammer is running really well for you.........and you've been doing some practicing! The spring swage, bolster, and cut off are nice - but I really like your kiss block/ramp die - that's sweet! Hope you can make it down to Ohio - as I'm swamped with projects, jobs, and a couple demos to do in September - but I'd really like to go - if so See you there! It was great to see how happy David Kahn was on Saturday when we placed his hammer and got it running..........made me think back to how thrilled I was to finally own a 3B when I picked mine up...........but then the reality of rebuilding it over five years made me realize I should have found a running hammer in one respect - but the knowledge I gained during the total rebuild was amazing and got to learn these inside and out during that rebuild - that has been priceless and I've been involed in 5 rebuilds now. (Guess this is where you say - education is costly!!) I was glad the hammer's been running for over 6 years now and has easily paid for itself during the "good times". Saturday David's hammer going in and running in a 9 hour period made me think - Yeah - David is doing it the RIGHT WAY!! Buy it - Use it. Guess I'm a glutton for punishment (or I'm a hard learner) as I have a 2B in the shop now for my 6th rebuild............. I want it to come out as nice as David's (and NOT take another 5 years). :-) Ralph

It was fun to be part of this delivery. David has himself a really nice hammer, and I got to work with Terry Suthers (which I always enjoy doing). Bob Bergman rebuilt this hammer and put a Variable Frequency Drive on it........we had enough to do yesterday to place, pin, set antivibration pads, hook up an exhaust, wire (done by a very helpful electrician), and test run the hammer - that we didn't get to play with the Frequency Drive. I'd love to see what that would do when changing speeds to see what it does to performance on large stock, plannishing, tooling work, etc. Hi John Newman, how's that Massey running for you?? Going to Quad State? I'm hoping to. Ralph

Here's a few pictures starting with the table I made & like working with. The width style clamp cage only has a "kiss block in progress" not welded up yet (at time of 2nd picture). I like the clamp cage frames to be 1/4" under die heigt on the ends and 1/2" on the sides for clean up forging after pulling a block or ramp. The 3rd picture is the side clamping cage that allows length wise kiss blocks for forging rail cap, or using long swages, or ramp dies. The fourth picture shows the results of forging length ways to get more even spread than width yeilding more draw. Fifth picture is swaging sides with a long swage and "Loose pins" mentioned earlier in the thread. I find the kiss blocks don't even require the cage to be tight - they'll just bounce a bit when your at height and you can change them out quickly when you don't have to lock them in with a wrench.

The larger hammers have larger tooling - so dragging across a flush table seems wise. For a combination of tool holding, cage work(1/2" below die surface), and drop in tooling - I've gone to two seperate clamp cages. One is width, the other is length. Have to figure how to post pics.

Mcraigl - For the best cord storage I use those 6 inch ball o bungie ties that hold tarps to a frame. I pick them up from the cheap chinese store and one on each, cord, lead, hose, etc keeps them seperate - then you can put them on partial rims, or what ever large diameter hanger you prefer to keep the kinks out. Ralph

Looper567, I've built 12 of the Kinyon Clones. Also told Ron Kinyon about the tube in a tube ram/guide system he's using on his new one. I build the first prototype hammer years ago from the plans and found the open die space to be the same as a Little Giant (which I already owned) - so my newer prototype air hammers have used this ram tube in a guide tube like I mentioned above and got rid of all the time consuming drilling of brass guides like the plans asks for. I also went to a 2 1/2" cylinder and 3/8 porting on cylinder, valve, hoses, fittings, etc. The 2 1/2" cylinder is also 16 inches long now in my current hammer and I have 9 inches of open die space. I call this "Daylight" to work in and it makes for a much more versatile hammer if your going to take the time to build one. Those are the changes I've made from those plans over many hammers - it works better and is more versatile. I have purposely kept to 3/8 porting - as my goal was to achieve a power treadle hammer, tooling, swaging hammer - not a general forging hammer as I already have a Little Giant and a Nazel - so I don't need power and speed - I needed control and versatility. Ralph

Chief Mcgee - Mass is everything and isolation is wonderful. I first set a 50 lb Little Giant on a 5" slab with wire in it......four months later one of the fasteners had pulled a 10" chunk of floor up with it. The next step was to pour a footing of 24 x 36 x 24" deep - hammer runs like a dream setting on this with 2 inches of hardwood block and a rubber pad. My Nazel runs on a 2 1/2" steel plate (with hardwood and rubber under the anvil) on top of an 8" floor........works - but lots of shock transfer(would be better isolated). My air hammers run on 2" plates with rubber pads under them and work well. The difference in a mechanical and an air hammer is linear guides verses toggle links on a spinning flywheel = off center spinning weight. My advice is to go with a heavy plate like mentioned above -or go with a poured foundation(prefereably isolated from floor by board perimeter). An other option is a wood bunk foundation (but it tends to burn with drops) Ralph

Frosty - what's that supposed to be above? - a picture of you asleep at the wheel? I know better. Ralph

Swages being half round half hex or V in shape allow you to strike the material to shape it and the support surface trues the shape. That's why Thomas has so many uses for them. I find them great not only for shaping, but also to form sheet for parts of floral forms, chamfering an edge in the correct height backer, and using the thru holes for drifting, along with using a wide radius as a straightening section for trueing parts back in line again. As an example if you hit a pipe on the top in a V block - the V is striking in two lower points - hence you get results faster in shaping. Filling or working against a swage is a faster way to form. Ralph

After many demos, I find story boards and a plan of what I'll be making really helps the day go along. Folks ask much better questions when there are story boards on the table, and when you've thought out your project from Fish Key chains to boot scrapers or chain shackles - the spectators can see your headed somewhere with your work. Ralph