iron quake

Any of you own or ever use a Prentiss or Reed vise with the swivel rear jaw? I'm told these were made to hold tapered objects. How do they hold up in a blacksmithing environment?

I don't use a coal forge but how about a cheap propane plumbers torch?

Picked up this swage block yesterday 15"x18"x4.5" and 225 pounds. Any of you know who might have manufactured it, or how old it is?

S7 works very well for hammer dies. I costs about the same as 4140 and you don't need any quenching medium, as it's air hardening. A 3x3x6" is $79 through Hudson. You can temper with pretty good control in your kitchen oven at 550f and get good results at 55Rc. Perhaps a bit harder than you'd like but it works well for me, as long and the features are not to fine. I don't know why you'd ever use H13 for a hammer die. I can't see the die ever getting to a temperature you'd see deformation with S7 or 4140 / 4340. A great material for true hot work however. There is a great heat treat paper on line on the Tidewater Blacksmith site if you need the information presented in simple easy to follow manner. http://tidewaterblacksmiths.com/heat.html

The guides are not the issue if you're talking about mounting in a location centered on the ram "tup". The frame which the guides mount to is the limitation. On my 100 its ~ 3.25" so you could have a 6 diameter top tool mounted on the center line. I don't know why you'd want to do this however. if you are looking to form bowl shapes then a hydraulic press is a much cheaper, faster, safer and more repeatable option. You can press round sections of sheet or plate into a bowl shape with simple tooling and do it COLD. Form the shape and apply any texture you like after the fact if you like. Otherwise a smaller concave bottom and and convex top tool is what you want I guess. Lots of folks on this site forgot more than I'll ever know about this whole thing so keep asking.

I think this idea has a lot of merit for small parts.

A lot of hammer ram tooling connections, retract up beyond the bottom of the guide assembly, which I think is a disadvantage for custom dies and operations like you're suggesting. One hammer in production today, that I know of that doesn't is Sahinler, which I think is advantageous. I wish I owned one right now.

Don that's the best solution by far.

Super Cut bimetal blades are fantastic. I've cut 1000's of cross-sectional inches with them in horizontal and vertical saws. Order them direct and they ship the same or the next day.

Big Gun has the best idea. Super Cut bandsaw bimetal blades are fantastic and they will ship the same day. A wood plug will work just fine and needs only bridge across the center of the tube not the whole diameter, i.e 2x4. Adjust the blade guides as close to the work as you can and set the feed rate pretty slow, the rate will increase as the saw gets to horizontal so beware. A saw that pumps coolant will help you as well, any saw big enough to handle the material will have that.

Bolt on with two bolts works very well. I changed to bolt on dies in my 100 LB LG and never have a problem, and that's using 3/8 SHCS. The thing I like best about it is, I make tools steel dies welded to CRS base plates. The tool steel is small enough then that I can do the heat treating myself, but could't if I had the lower section with the dovetail as part of the die. I machine the tool steel portion heat and quench in oil if they are 4140 or air quench if they are S7. Tac weld the tool steel to the mild steel base plate. Pre heat the assembly to ~600 F, then weld the assembly together using .035 hard wire in a MIG. Then temper and stress relieve at 400-550F in the kitchen oven for an hour or two. Flux core wire or some stick alloy, would probably be better than what I use but it works for me.

I purchased a copy from Pieh Tool and thought it completely worthless. Pieh told me to send it back and I did, they then refused to refund my money. So I would't buy it or anything else from them…ever.

If you can get your hands on some Deltaforge 182 from Henkel, you might be very impressed. I've been using it to punch and drift up to 1" square holes with great success.

Rubber, plastic materials have few uses in a smithy. Try to keep to metal, wood, stone and leather. There are exceptions always of course.

Take a couple steel bars across the feet and lag the ends to the stump. A couple short lengths of 1/4 x 1" with a hole in each end and 4 lag bolts will do the trick. If you can heat them up and form them around the feet thats better but you don't need to.

Hi Adair, I rebuilt a 100LG a few years ago and still use it. My suggestions would be do what you can to take all the slop out of the treadle pivot both radially and axially. Fabricate a new treadle from tubing to get the maximum stiffness and limit the deflection. Think large thin wall tubing to get the stiffness and minimize the weight, which you will have to counter act with a spring. And most importantly put a brake on it. You can look at photos in my gallery to see what I came up with. Purchase a brake band from Peacock here on IFI. Best of luck to you.

I use the unit I purchased from Larry more than propane, the efficiency increase is just incredible. I seem to make a lot of mortise and tenon joints. Being able to heat a 3 inch section of 1 inch square in the middle of a 4 foot long bar is sweet. I make an item that uses about 4 foot of 1/4 inch round rolled up on a mandrel like a spring. I feed the material through a guide and long induction coil and then on to the rotating mandrel. It needs to roll up red hot to maintain its id size. I don't think I could make them any other way. Windancer, I've shorted my unit out hundreds of times and it seems to be a non issue.

I just received a copy of the book mentioned above by Randy and think its very well done. Complete plans with detailed drawings, BOM of the hydraulic system and explanation of how and why it all works. I'm guessing the cost will be higher that whats shown, from 10 years ago when this was published. The only thing I see that I would change, for what I do is redesign the anvil support to allow a long drift to pass through the anvil for making holes in bars or hammers. Other than that, if you need a 24 ton press with a short throat its looks like a good document to help you build one. If however you want to build a beast with a 30" throat, as Jim Derring who started this post is looking for, this will be of no help at all really. A little rule of thumb to keep in mind when designing structures like this is the Deflection is highly dependent on length of beam element. For a given total load and distribution, deflection varies with the cube (third power) of span length. Therefore, if length of beam is doubled, deflection increases by a factor of 8, which is 2 cubed (2^3). Even if beam length is increased by only 10 percent, deflection increases by 33 percent. thats significant, yes indeed! Thanks for the suggestion on the book Randy!

Hi Eddie, Yes that's a 1" x 11/2" oversized hardy. One of the reasons for making this anvil is I'm going to be banging the same size mortise "hole" in some 1" X 11/2" or 2" bar. So as soon as my H13 material shows up I'll be making punches, drifts and giving this a go. As for the legs their 4" X 6" X 3/4" angle 40 lbs. each. I had that angle for a farm implement project that never got built, so I used it and think it turned out well. The anvil weighs about 150 lbs. I had to lift it off the welding table with the tractor.

Finished my Brian Brazeal style striking anvil. I made the upper section from 2 sections of 2"x 3" CRS that I picked up as rem. from my supplier for 35 cents a pound. I machined the hardy holes in the mill as a matched pair. Grooved the intersections deep and then welded them all around. Should work ok, now I just need a striker.

I average about one screw up a day, sometimes two, so don't feel bad. As far as HF, most of their stuff ain't worth the gas it costs to bring the junk home. I have had a few tools from them, last a while but it's VERY rare indeed. My frequency of purchasing from them is rare as well. I'd take the junk back and sit with it on the tail gate of the truck in the parking lot with a sign on it for sale, and start telling everyone the story. And when they ask you to leave tell them selling it on CL will be easer anyway and a LOT more noticeable to all their customers too.

EF I'm not sure you are directing your question to me. If you are, just to clarify I don't do any NDT/inspections or anything like that or ever have. I'm a lowly metal worker/machinist/artist/blacksmith. I'm not an engineer either. I have been in the business of building equipment all my life however. To answer your material question; No I don't think there was an advantage to using a514 material over a36 because as you stated the "E" is about the same and deflection, or a minimizing it is the goal, not pushing the deflection to the point of failure " plastic deformation" or yield, where the a514 would be of value. Perhaps a well educated and experienced engineer will chime in here, educate all of us and tell me if I'm wrong, which could be.

I have purchased the Iron Kiss 75 listed in the Tailgate section. I think the Sahinler would have been a great hammer and dealing with Brian would have been a great experience also. The hammer I purchased has had great reviews by a lot of folks and it really came down to affordability for what I needed, good control and lots of clearance for tooling. I'm hoping this along with my LG 100 will do the trick for what I do now and hope to do in the future. Thanks to those of you who responded to my inquiry.

I’d like to know what you all think of Sahinler Power Hammers. Any feedback would be appreciated and welcome. I’ve talked to Brian Russell and he seems to be a standup guy and very knowledgeable, I’m just looking for other comments from owners or smiths who have run one. Thank You,

This "3/16 HRS after about 3 days and some masking.