SGropp

The recent thread '' Champion power hammer for sale in Seattle'' brought up some thoughts on tool collecting and related matters, I'm curios what other have to say on the subject. From even the most cursory review of the posts on this forum, it's obvious that there are always more people looking for anvils, power hammers and other tools than are available. There's always the controversy over people buying up whatever is out there, either as collectors or as users [ either professional or hobbyist ] while others struggle and search long and hard to find what they need to bring their aspirations to reality. Blacksmith tools are rather unique it that they can literally give generations of hard service but if used with a modicum of skill and minimal care, retain both their usefulness and value for the next generation. Some old tools are just that; worn out , broken , truly obsolete, unsafe and unrepairable. Some of this comes about from misuse, abuse ,ignorance or neglect or as collateral damage from other events. A lot of tools , particularly machinery gets damaged in moving .Some of them were never well designed or well made to begin with. Probably a lot of them in this category should truly be scrapped and the material recycled into something hopefully better. A lot of them however ,particularly the ones that have proven their worth and survived should be saved, rebuilt, repaired , modernized for safety perhaps and used as intended as the next step in the ongoing continuum of history. User or collector, it's better to save and protect this heritage of tools than to have it scrapped and lost forever. Americans,in particular have the means to accumulate far more than they can use immediately. My shop is filled with a lifetime collection of tools, reflecting an evolving and ongoing career of making things. All of them have been used at some point, many are still in daily use. In most of the rest of the world there is enough there in my one man shop to provide full time employment to a whole village of people. Buy and use what you can, take care of it, repair it with skill and pass it on when you're done.

Anyone that gets that hammer for $500 is getting a real steal! There's another one [35# Champion ] for sale on Lopez Island, Wa. now as well. They are asking for more than $500 but it is worth it, IMO. PM me and I'll give you the contact for the seller. Serious enquiries only please ! I'm just trying to help out an old friend.

I'm considering building press myself and am contemplating the same questions. A C frame press seems much more versatile in that the edge of a wide piece can be worked and long pieces can be put into position more easily and quickly, important considerations when doing hot work. Putting the cylinder on top ad having the ram travel down to a fixed bed would allow adjustable stock rests to support the outboard ends of a long piece. It would also make it easier to set up stops or guides for repetitive work. It seems also this would be easier to visually watch the tool in the work. The only down side would be the overall height of the press and having the hydraulic lines above the hot metal. Any leaks of high pressure oil would be a potential flame thrower. I've heard that some forging presses use a water /glycol[?] mix for the hydraulic fluid. Does anyone know the particulars about this ? My thought would be to make the frame as narrow as possible and configured somewhat like a drill press so curved pieces , rings or hoops could be worked unrestricted in throat of the press. I was planning on using the 10,000 psi electric hydraulic pump and foot/hand switch from a Cleveland Steel Tool 35 ton Porta Punch as the power source to the press cylinder . Does anyone have experience in sizing the cylinder to match ? I need to buy the Porta Punch to punch a about a 100 holes around the perimeter of a series of large [6' OD ] rolled hoops for a project. The pump come with a 10' hose with quick release fitting so it could power the punch tool as well as a press or a movable cylinder to bend work on the platen table . My thoughts would be to get as much versatility out of the design of the tool. Any kind of machine that is used with forged work needs to be able to accommodate a wide variety of odd and irregular shapes. I will be very interested in what you come up with.

Take the safe , put it someplace handy. Everyday, put spare change in it . Before long you'll have enough money to buy the material and parts to make a real forge from a proven design. Light the fire and go to work. Enjoy !

So what's the best method to cool down a power hand tool when you've pushed it hard and it gets hot ? Usually it's warm to the touch and there's a slight smell of hot insulation. What's too hot ? I'm talking hard use , within the tools rated capacity, but not abuse. Run it without a load so the internal fan can cool it ? Blow it out with compressed air ? Set it aside and do something else for awhile ? Drive on ? Just wondering what the best thing to do is. I've never burned out a tool , but they do get worked hard in my shop.

Now, just build yourself a treadle hammer and you can use all those set tools as they were intended; with a striker. Nice score.

Ironfalcon, Yes, my hammer is a swing arm type where the two arms swing in parallel. This makes for a dead flat blow, which is excellent for closing the hem on heavy sheet metal, among other things. The safety stop with the pipe clamp looks like it would work for some applications. A lot of times ,I'll say, chisel a line or slit with a top tool and then flatten the piece which has curled up from the chiseling with a solid flat blow of hammer head. A fixed stop wouldn't allow that unless I used a flatter that was the same height as the chisel. There is a a certain amount of jarring vibration to the hammer in use which might cause the clamp to slowly creep out of adjustment. If you put a hardy hole in the anvil of the hammer , make it the same size as the one in your anvil to avoid needless duplication of tooling.

I have a double ended hook that I use to lock the treadle in the up position when the hammer is not in use. I built one of the ''modified'' treadle hammers from the ABANA plans years go. This design has two coil springs to lift the treadle,linkage and head back up. The head weight on mine is 85#, a solid 4 inch square block of steel about 16 inches long. A couple of years one of the springs broke and the head came down like a ton of bricks. No harm done, but it was an eye opener. I'm not sure how you could make an effective safety for the hammer in use. The tool is just too darn useful to not utilize because of the danger, just be careful to keep your hands out of the danger zone. I use my treadle hammer all the time for punching, cutting ,splitting and most any operation that you would use tools and a striker. Just like a power hammer the blow is limited to straight up and down. Someday maybe someone will come up with a design that can strike an angled blow.

I checked out your website, that's a phenomenal body of work to accomplish without a power hammer ! Fantastic stuff ! I love the ''rawness'' of the hammer work of the piece in the original post. There is much lost in getting a piece too refined and''perfect.'' Picasso said it was not so much that he knew how to paint but most importantly,he knew when to stop. Love your drawings on your website. Thanks for sharing.

I ran a full time smithing business outdoors under a canvas awning for at least 10 years. It was strung off the front of my shop building and was open on three sides. It was great, lots of ventilation, good light and no walls to run into with long pieces of stock. Sometimes the wind would really blow the snow in, but I love the feeling of standing in the snow while forging on a dark winters afternoon. When it came time to move a bigger power hammer in, I just undid a couple of guylines and pulled the awning aside so the crane could drop the hammer straight on to the foundation. I've since replaced the canvas roof with a heavy timber framed structure. It is still open on 2 1/2 sides so it has the same open airy feel. The solid structure gave me a place to hang some real lights and mount a swinging jib crane. I did build a solid fence and gate for privacy and security in the driveway in front of the shop. This had the unanticipated benefit of stopping the flow of cold air draining down the driveway during really cold winter days. Here in the pacific NW we don't get weather as cold as in Colorado but there are spells every winter where it gets snowy and cold for weeks at a time. It always seems that on the coldest days I am doing layout on a large slab of frozen steel or maintenance work on some very cold machine. The only time i regret not having a heated space is when I am in the patina or finishing phase of a project.

Any disassembly of a hammer of that size should be done very carefully and ideally with a helper and/or an overhead hoist. The parts are really heavy and you can mash your fingers or worse just moving them around. The spring arms need to be loosened and removed to take out the rollers if you have to replace them. You can fabricate a wrench from a chunk of square stock and a heavy flat bar.

Is there much real difference between the Striker and the Anyang hammers? Same factory, different paint jobs ? or two different machines altogether ? The various websites tout the superiority of one over the other but they look pretty much the same. It looks like they were both a copy taken off the Chambersburg or Massey originals. Around here in the PNW, a lot of smiths have Strikers ,which after varying amounts of work seem to give good service. I can appreciate the unique advantages of an air hammer, but have I personally have gone the route of mechanicals due to the lower electrical power input requirements per ram weight [ mechanicals are much more efficient ] and simplicity of operation and mantainence. All hammers are loud when they hit but the air hammers seem to have the extra noise of the intake and exhaust. Check out the link below to an interesting photo essay on the area around Anyang ,China. If there is a place like Mordor here on Earth, it is there. Showcase: Infernal Landscapes - Lens Blog - NYTimes.com show/ China&st=cse

My hard earned experience has taught me that the closer the relationship you have to the client, the clearer the understanding and more legally binding the WRITTEN agreement has to be. Figure the cost of all materials, fastenings, finish, shipping etc. and multiply by a factor of 10 to get a ballpark estimate of the projects cost. If there is a lot of forging, heat treating or machining to be done, figure even more. This assumes you are actually doing this to make money beyond a third world level minimum wage. If you are representing yourself as a professional, then you are licensed, bonded and insured as required in your state, right? You ARE assuming all product liability whether you do the project for free or at full price . Better to get paid enough to make it worth the risk. Good luck, sounds like a fun project. My teenage son build one that shot six foot fire arrows 150'

As part of my full time business I make a lot of stair railings. These usually involve handling and forging a lot of long and/or heavy stock for newel posts and handrail sections. These are often in the range of 1 1/4 '' to 2'' solids. I seldom or never have a helper available. I usually try to avoid having to use tongs if I can, sometimes welding a section of pipe on the end as a handle to be cut off later. I find the most useful tool for handling heavy pieces at forging temperature is a steel hook about 14'' long with a 1 1/2'' radius bend at the business end. The handle is shaped like a T at right angles to the plane of the hook. With one hand on the cool end of the stock , I can drag the hot bar out of the forge and while it is resting on the stock rest at the mouth of the firebox, I can pick the hot section up with the hook and carry it to the hammer , anvil or platen table. Once the weight of piece is on the dies or anvil it is fairly easy to move it around to work on it . The hook can be hung on the die key or tool tray or kept in the hand, the T handle gripped against the bar enabling both hands to manipulate the hot section under the hammer. The process is repeated in reverse to get it back into the forge. The use of the hook allows for much better body mechanics in handling heavy pieces. Cotton hot mill gloves, leather apron and steel toed boots are essential as are careful planning and a clear path. The hook is also very useful in handling long sections, particularly where the heat is towards the center of the bar, The longest piece I can work unaided with this method is about 12 feet. The hook I use is made of 3/8'' spring steel. It was originally a halibut gaff. I cut the point off to make it safer to use. Anyone have any other tricks to handling pieces like this?

If the clearance is really that tight getting through the doorway, you can slide it on a film of oil , talcum powder or graphite dust on a clean smooth slab. It's amazing what you can slide on a smooth surface if you can break the friction. Have something on hand to clean up the lubricating medium immediately afterwards to avoid slips/ accidents . Pull with a comealong with a chain or sling around the base of the hammer . A heavy bar or timber spanning a well anchored doorway at floor level can make a good pulling point . I used this method to slide my 6000# Beaudry into my shop, it was like a joke it went so easily. Be careful, think the moves through ahead of time. Keep the loads and forces as low to the ground as possible. Is this a one piece hammer ?

I once did a pit firing of a bunch of ceramic pieces using dried horse manure as fuel.It definitely got hot enough to bisque fire the pottery so that it was quite hard and pretty strong. We didn't try a glaze firing which would have required a higher temperature and more control of the atmosphere. I remember that we used a lot of fuel for the project.It helps if it is dry!! I think we were inspired by reading how the Pueblo Indians did and still do make beautiful black glazed pottery using horse and sheep manure as the fuel. We also dug the clay out of a bank as part of the process. This was fairly early on in my lifetime career of doing everything the hard way. I'm not sure if it would get hot enough to forge with, probably pretty inefficient due to the high bulk to BTUs . There might be some research done on this in regards to the metalwork done by the ancient nomadic tribes in Central Asia. The Scythians [sp?] in particlar were renowned for their fine jewelry and weapons. They were horse nomads on the treeless steppes

I think Wallace Metal Works in Penn. bought the remnants of the Fairbanks line. I think you can link to them through anvilfire.com. Definitely pour an isolated foundation block if you can. A wooden riser block is good to get it up to a working height that won't kill your back. This also gives a cushion under the cast frame of the hammer. What's the consensus on the effect of a wooden block under a hammer in regards to the penetration of the blow into the work ? Some old literature I came across advocated a massive all wooden foundation pier under the anvil to allow the blow to more fully penetrate the work due to the slight elasticity of the foundation under the anvil block. This was in reference to large steam hammers, but my factory literature for Beaudry hammers give a foundation plan of solid oak blocks on end supported by a large raft of oak timbers almost 4' deep below grade. My hammers are bolted to large and deep separate concrete foundation blocks with 4'' to 6'' thick wooden riser between the hammer castings and the concrete. This seems to work very well.

Great, thank's for the useful link.

It makes great hot cut tools in my experience. Forge and grind to shape, heat to non magnetic and air cool in front of a fan. Cool frequently during use in water . I suspect crowbars vary in both quality as a tool and as a source for useful steel. The hot work tools I have made from them have been exceptionally tough.

I just picked up a #2 Diarco bender for cheap. It is complete with factory stand and tool cabinet and a bunch of additional pins, dies and parts but no set up information or literature. Does anyone out there have a manual or any info on the tooling and use of one of these machines ?

Your best bet is to build the railing in sections that are manageable in size and send them out to be hot dip galvanized. Assemble the sections on site with galvanized or stainless steel fastenings . Allow at least a 1/16'' clearance in any holes for fastenings . Any hollow sections need to be vented with a 1/4'' hole at each end of the void section. Do this yourself where it is least visible or the plant workers will do it for you in the most expedient way with a torch Figure the cost of the hot dipping as well as of the transport to and from the dipping plant and some extra time to clean up the drips into your quote. A selection of wood rasps work well for knocking off the drips and bumps in the soft zinc coating that are inevitable. The galvanized coating should weather outdoors for about a year or be etched with a light acid and rinsed thoroughly before being painted. I've done hundreds of feet of exterior railings and this is the best finishing scheme that I have found to weather proof work that involves collaring , wraps or mortise and tenon joinery.

Ptree, go back and read my original post in regards to the safety of dried out linseed oiled rags in the trash. Not a good idea! I've had a large commission that's been hanging fire for some time now. I just found out that the client was building another house in New Zealand. The house was finished, everything moved in. That night the place burned to the ground, A multi-million dollar home a total loss. The cause; painters rags left in a heap in a closet. Another friends sister is the caretaker for a large family estate on the Columbia River. The general contractor that takes care of the estate had subcontracted the job of treating the shake roof on the main lodge with some kind linseed oil based treatment. The subcontractorr left his equipment covered up in a pile outside on a deck. About 10 minutes after the caretaker left ,the pile caught fire and the entire house and several outbuildings burned to the foundation. Even though the investigation put the cause of the fire to oil soaked rags left by the subcontractor, the insurance company sued the general and he lost everything he owned and went bankrupt. Burn those linseed oil soaked rags in the forge or stove ! Better yet ,use a better and safer finish.

Anybody here have any ideas on a roller [hand or power ] that can roll up to 3/8'' x 5'' MS flat to about a 2' radius that's worth spending money on ? I'm looking for something that is fairly compact and can be adapted to roll a variety of sections with reasonable accuracy.

I love my #6 C frame fly press and it sees a lot of use in my work. I've come to the conclusion that the #6 is about the maximum size for use by one person to operate manually on a regular basis. Although there is an amazingly large amount of force generated, it still is a hand operated tool and only so much power is available by arm strength alone. Is there a source for new or used motorized screw presses in the Western US ? I'm looking for one probably in the 50 to 100 ton range , single phase.

The only stuff I've had powdercoated was sandblasted first [ by the powdercoat shop ]. This was more expensive than the actual powdercoating. This was to get the metal completely clean and to give it some ''tooth''. Contrary to what they might say ,the prep and the powdercoating do not get into joints and cracks. It's basically a straight line process and will not protect the areas most liable to rust. I think it's an overrated process, particularly for forged work.