basher

I can easily get single blows from all of my air hammers, none of them are as trixy as the massey , I had the pleasure of meeting a lovely 300 massey last thursday, quite the tool. when In perfect tune I can also get single blow from my spring hammers, but to get them doing it nicly requires a lot of fiddling and they go out of tune easily. I almost never use a single blow though . I have an air brain when I am working ( as the term has been coined) , A lot of people I know do. I will often have multiple sized things in the fire at once, I multy task all the time, grind during heat up . I have timers on for heat treat and will have 4 or 5 things on the go. I still have mechanicals , I have a goliath (60lb spring hammer, called Athelstan) that has been my companion for 15 years and I doubt Ill let that one go. but for me the instant versatility of the air hammer means all my work goes under them. I do not consider that the constant blow rate is a down side, or rater I thought the variable blow rate of my mechanicals was a down side and found the constant blow of the air hammer to be a bonus. I found , and find that ajusting the pitman on a spring hammer to be a royal pain, and way beyond the relm of minor ajustment, for my hammers it involves an overhead crane, or awkwardly placed engine hoist . blocks and swearing....

I think that I am finally getting some of whats being discusses here . I have seen youtube videos of german smiths running 200lb+ federhammers and punching with very slow strokes. none of my mechanicals have had the weight to do this very well (my 90lb kingshorn bow spring hammer has a huge range of travel and gets close). However I can do a great job of replicating this with 2 of my air hammers one with speed controle and one with variable pressure/vaccuum, although the variable vaccuum still runs at the same bpm. However in reality I would use a press for this job. I think that the versitility that you are claiming for mechanical hammers is such a specific versitility that it creats a bit of a dichotomy. I do not believe that a lot of people would consider that having to re-ajust and retool a hammer to achieve a possibly larger overall range of distinct specific and limited use is infact more versitile. At least for most of us. Having run power hammers for 22 years now ,I am constantly impresses by the diferent ways people use and run them, I have certainly learned a lot over the last 15 years from people who are much more varied (or indeed specific) in their hammer uses. and the tool has changed for me from a machine for bashing out tapers to somthing much more versitile. there is a lor more to learn still.

I have had lots of hammers, mechanical and air and there are only a couple of reasons i would chose a mechanical over air. one is economy, economy of power consumption, you get a lot more hit per HP whith a mechanical, If you have single phaze or limited ampage then they can be the only answer, I had a 60 lb goliath running on 1hp (they run better on 5 though) The other is economy of purchase they are often a lot cheaper. If you ad to that economy of repair, and I would include "easy to understand for a layperson" within that..... I have a place (very limited) for the soft slow blow in my work but have become much more fond of the soft fast blow of an air hammer. the soft slow blow slows you down when forging to a fine forged finish under the hammer. I would love a fast spring hammer (400bpm) as there is an obvious advantage in that for a limited mumber of jobs. Otherwise in use, I prefer my air hammers. Forging 5mm stock, fullering it with a tall fuller and all in the same minute (i work a lot of stuff in the fire at once) working 60mm square damascus billets. I run my pilkington on a VFD and can ajust the speed, this changes the blow power dramaytically but can give a wonderfull slow paced hit. I use the start up exhaust on my Alldays and onions 200WT (this exhausts the drive piston to air, lowering the air and vaccuum pressure) to vary the ram lift at a given height and can hot cut 10lb billets of damascus material to leave a 1 to 2mm flap for folding (as gentle as a lamb) and at the pull of the leaver turn the machine into a monster. I have used similar sized Nazel to do forge welding of multy bar billets that were stacks 1mm wide by 60mm high, I would not be able to pull that off on a similar sized mechanical hammer. My two main hammers are sahinla and I do almost all my smaller and finish work on them. If I were to give advice it would be to get a power hammer and get to know it. They are all amazing tools especialy when you know them well. If I could only have one hammer it would definatly be an air hammer,

A decent belt grinder would be top of my list, its the mainstay of knife making (even if you forge the blades). They are very versitile and come in handy for all sorts of work.

I run a 1" burner forge capable of getting 15kg billets of damascus to welding heat, I am always bemused as to why so many people seem to go overkill with multiple burners etc. simple is often best.

Sanderson Iron, thanks for posting about that lovely hammer. I will dig up some pictures of the brakes on my Goliaths.

That is a really beautifull blade, well done.

I have never made a tire hammer but have owned and run a lot of mechanical hammers. they definatly run better with bigger motors, get the biggest you can run easily.

I have an 8" somewhere

yup half a £ or 50 pennies .....cheraper than a bag of chips (that is fries not crisps, although even a bag of chips (crisps) is normally more than 50p)

I make and sell hammers, I like the ones I make....I like my Jim Austin hammer a lot. I also have 50p hammers I bought from a boot fair I like. reading through this thread I would say that If you can aford a hand made hammer and like the idea of it then get one or a few. If you can not then with a little time a 50p hammer can be just as good. My favorite hammer is an old saw doctors hammer, second favoriute is a £2.00 French hammer ( £2.00 new), then one of mine, then my Jim Austin hammer. For some jobs all are the best. I love other peoples work....like my grandads old jumper , full of living and stories to tell. I have a lot of hammers I will end up with more. $140 is a cheap night out in london...or a hand made hammer that is someones idea of what is the best way to do it......... I do not like really heavy hammers, they have hurt me and I think that the trend will end up with a lot of hurt people........your experience may vary (if you are lucky)

thanks for that, not somthing I have come across with a temperate climate.

Ric, what is a block heater? sounds good.

I dont know how many KW a small bullfinch burner is but I think 600 watt would be very slow . A PID with either electric or controlling a gas solenoid would also be good. my super simple version has worked so well I have not improved it.

that is good advice, you can get a surprisingly long blade in double diagonally.

Hi , I am not mar quenching the blades but am using heated marquenching oil to temper as it has a high temp stability, I think peanut oil would be a good alternative. I quench into fast oil (Uk available exelquench fast oil) at around 40C. and then temper for 2 x 1 hour , straightening at the end of the temper cycle when thew blade is hot . I will happily reheat to straighten as much as is necessary.

I temper swords in mar quenching oil, which is happily temperature stable for the temps I use (around 250C normally for swords), I have a very basic set up , an insulated pipe with a section of the bottom exposed where I put a propane torch, and a thermocouple and cheap reader in the oil. I generally pre heat with heated bars as otherwise its about 2 hours to get to temp. Its a constant loss system so you just adjust your burner to change temp. it happily sits pretty much where you want it to be temp wise, the oil circulates with convection currents so keeps the temp quite even. The only thing I would say is that you need to be careful of getting water in the oil, heating oil that has water under it can be messy and dangerous. I gently heat the oil through the 100C mark incase there may be some water at the bottom of the tank, a moisture drain tap at the very bottom is a good idea as well. There is about as much effort in low temp salts which is where I will go next (i have the salts) but the oil so far has been good on 100+ sword blades . I prefer it over an electric oven (which I also have) as there is a lot more thermal mass in the oil and this speeds up reheating the blade if it needs straightening at temper temp.

So basicaly the statement that leaf spring hammers are more powerfull than coil spring hammers is anecdotal?

I would be interested in how you quantify this? do you mean per Hp or per lb of ram or some other measure? Would the hammer power not depend more upon the speed of revolution and head travel (and therefore ultimately HP) I am sure that the non hitting weight moved may come into it as well (as a loss). I have both types of spring hammer and both are pretty snappy, unfortunately they are not the same weight of head so hard to compare. My assumption (possibly wrong) is that the leaf spring hammer were in general an older design then the coil spring hammers, I wonder what their advantages were? Arftist, I would have agreed with you on the fly wheel before clutch being of prime importance, however i have used a few very good hammers that omit this and still run very well. so it is not essential . the czech prako guided helve hammers hammers have a small fibre drive wheel acting as a clutch direct onto a metal flywheel and they are excellent hammers.

I would look at all this in another way, the fact that Tv shows are being made at all shows that blacksmithing (or in this specific case bladesmithing) is actually on the Radar... minecraft.....game of thrones...all of these things do make a difference and the zeitgeist is strong with crafts and smithing. It does not really matter if ones own version of the craft is being shown I believe its all good.

I scorch all of the handles of my hammers and axes (unless asked to do otherwise) I like the finish. scorch with oxy torch 0000wire wool and then ren wax is the best finish i have found deep chocolate brown. the scorching acts a lot like sand blasting differentially burning the grain in the wood bringing out texture. the reason I started doing is is because i found my "blacksmiths " hands always marked the clean white wood..........and I love the finish.

do a search for Federhammer, lots of makes.lots of sizes.

well it is finished . here are a couple of macro photos.

I would do those grinds withy the blade vertical to the wheel, so not a hollow grind but a flat grind on a wheel.

ts getting there:- just some leather round the central "connecting tube" and some pro photos...... ]