Geoff Keyes

On Ebay link removed Weird shape, huge price What is it? Geoff

I've got a 30# Fisher with an 1886 date on it, it's my bench anvil. I've got a pretty big (8") post vice that's all wrought, but it's got no marks on it. All of my machine tools. mill, surface grinder, and lathe are all '30's. Geoff

Ian, the NWBA is a great resource and I suggest you join. If knife making is what you are interested in, I also teach the craft of the forged blade in my shop in Duvall. Pm me and we can chat. Geoff

I'd call it a vice or a clamp, but you've got his contact info in the vid, why not ask him directly? Geoff

Aldo Bruno, the New Jersey Steel Baron has what you need. G

I've got 30 hp of 3 ph converter, so I could go that route. I would like to try this, but right now I found a nice beefy 220 v unit an d I will go with that. Thanks for the replies. I'll check the NWBA thread as well. Geoff

The motor on my hammer packed it up and while I'm searching for a replacement (the original came from a dead compressor with who knows how many miles on it, 15 years ago), I thought back to a conversation I had with Grant Sarver just before he died. Could you use a VFD as the speed control for a powerhammer? I'm thinking that you could run the belt from the motor to the drive pulley directly, with no clutch. The VFD would be controlled with a foot pedal. The more you depressed the pedal, the faster the motor would run, like a big sewing machine. Could that be made to work? It sounds to me that you'd have both speed control (from O to OMG) and maybe a single blow stroke. The hammer is a shop built mechanical, like a Champion, with a DuPont toggle arm setup, about 50#. Thanks Geoff

I do take issue with the statement about anvils ringing. My best anvil (in terms of rebound) is a 125 # Hay Budden. Since it's on a light stand (because it's my traveler) it rings like a bell. Well bedded, in lead or silicone, it's louder than I would like, but much quieter. I can't say that it is less good to work on in that state. My next best anvil (rebound wise) is a 200# Fisher. It's bolted to 200# of gluelam block. It hardly makes any noise, and is a joy to work on. My everyday anvil is the worst in rebound, but fills my needs better. It's a 6x5x28 post. It's not hardened, hence the poorer rebound, and makes hardly any noise. The movie sound is some Foley guy beating the, uh, stuffing out of some poor ringy anvil, like a Peter Wright, with nothing on the anvil face. You're just going to have to find some other way to advertise when the forge is running. Geoff

There also were small tools that a shooter kept in his kit. I have seen ones that were single piece with a screwdriver on one end (for tightening the lock and other bits) a vent pick on the other, folded in the middle to make the hammer face (the pick and driver blade are at right angles), often these are brass, or brass faced (to avoid sparks). Geoff

If you would like to see a shop built hammer like you're describing, I have one. I'm in Duvall, east of Seattle, and I can always handle a shop visit. Geoff

I recently had an opportunity to work in L6, a steel I've not used before. I ran across a thread from another forum which suggested that L6 could be treated as an air hardening steel. I wanted to test this before getting in too deep. I took some cutoff from the project and following this http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php/655904-All-about-L6, used the procedure in the PDF below. I had 4 coupons of the steel (Aldos L6, 0.225 not ground to remove the decarb) 1 I left as delivered 1 air quenched with no temper 1 air quenched, tempered @ 400 for 2, 4 hour sessions 1 oil quenched, tempered @ 400 for 2, 4 hour sessions Detrich at Podforge allowed me to use his Rockwell tester and we got the following results #1 tested 18 Rc +/- 1.5 #2 tested 65 Rc +/- 1.5 #3 tested 55 Rc +/- 1.5 #4 tested 54 Rc +/- 1.5 There is a very nice PDF for L6 here http://www.burgessknives.com/media/L6.pdf, and this is the procedure I used. I can't talk about the project, yet, except to say it's a hard duty blade and in the informal tests I've done so far, it's beating my expectations by a lot. Hope this is useful to folks, Geoff

http://video.pbs.org/video/2365021516/ This is really cool. Now if Roy would just shut up Geoff

The deciding factor for me was the cost of 3ph equipment. I now have 3 machines that came to me wired for 3ph. By having a converter (I bought 30 hp of rotary converter) I was able to save the cost and labor of converting the machines to 1ph. Lots of old iron goes for cheap because it's 3ph, and people don't want to bother with it. One other thing, 3ph motors are often cheap, because people can't run them. Just my .02 Geoff

I hear you got a bit of a rumbler today. Everything OK on your end? Geoff

This would be a seriously difficult undertaking. How big an anvil are you thinking? What kind of equipment do you have? A hand forged anvil of any size, say 50lbs and up would require a team of smiths swinging big hammers, not to mention the problems with heating and moving 50lbs of steel at heat. What would you forge it on? A bigger anvil would require a big hammer or a huge press. How would you heat treat your product, once you overcame all of the other issues? Some of the best anvils are cast steel, there is nothing magical about a forged anvil. A good process could get you a good one, but a bad process will just net you junk for all of your effort. Geoff

Frosty, we'd be happy to host a visit, though I'd love to see your part of the world. I've only been to Ak once, just long enough to get on a cruise ship headed south. Marianne (aka The Lady Wife) bought up a fleet of Canadian Production Wheels (pretty much every one in the PNW) and a 48" floor loom this year, oh, and a Columbine, and she's got me working on an "indian head" wheel on an old treadle sewing machine. Ian, should you get back here (Ries lives about 1 1/2 hours North of me) I'm sure we can take you to a reenactor event. TLW is part of the local scene of fur trade/Hudson Bay/Mountain Man groups (roughly 1750-1850, to include the American Colonial period, French and Indian wars and the opening of the West). It's fun times, some shooting (blackpowder) drinking, eating, drinking, some drinking and eating, and all while wearing funny clothes. It's interesting how many of us have "crafty" partners. Geoff

Cooking from scratch, canning, just this year I've gotten into smoking meat. Now that the weather is turning toward cooler temperatures bacon (mmmmm, bacon) and smoked salmon are on the list. Beer brewing (aren't all smiths brewers?), ciders and meads, I'd like to try my hand at distilling as well. The Lady Wife is a fiber wonk, she has raised angora and cashmere goats, gathered and cleaned the fleeces, processed the fiber, is a spinner, (both wheels and hand spindles), a knitter, and a weaver, and is the local expert on historical knitting and weaving techniques. Oh, and dyeing with natural dye stocks (not everyone moves a 5 gallon jar of pee from one house to another) She also knows quite a bit about traditional leather tanning. And she shoots a .68 caliber smoothbore flinter. Those are the just the highlights, the stuff we do every year. Geoff

Don't have the hammer, all I have is the book. Pounding out the Profits, Pg. 136 "...was offered as the "Dead Stroke" Power Hammer. This term referred to the fact that all of the energy of the descending hammer ram was transferred to the work before the crank and it's linkage lifted it upward." I believe that this means that the preload let the tup rest on the bottom die at BDC. The Bradleys and Beaudrys preload the tup so that the springs are actuated before the tup reaches BDC. It was done intentionally in the S&J and may have had something to do with Sharp having designed trip hammers and pile drivers before taking up a forging hammer, which the book goes into at some length. I do agree that this is a rare hammer and restoring it is a good idea. However, in it's original configuration it may not be the best forging hammer. They were considered the preferred hammer for open die forging and were very robust. So it depends on the kind of forging one is doing. Geoff

According to "Pounding out the Profits" the S&J is a crank actuated strap hammer, the tub is suspended from a leather strap attached to the spring ends. It works more like a pile driver than what most of us think of as a powerhammer, the tup is in free fall and delivers all of it's energy before starting the next cycle. It was not designed for light tapping blows. That said, it would be a simple conversion to a toggle arm design. There is a bunch more in the book about S&J, the most interesting is Shaw's design for a gunpowder driven pile driver. Geoff

It looks like the top of a bigger anvil, grafted on a piece of rail or H beam. Geoff

I would go with your first idea and buy new. Old springs (which I have used and with few failures) are liable to have hidden cracks, leading to the dreaded BTM (see above). While I am a fan of picking through junk yards, I would not do it here, and the cost is pretty much zero for new springs, in fact, you won't need all of them for a #25, so you'll have some stock to work with afterwards. Just my .02 Geoff

There are a couple things to think about. I built a hammer with a design like that. We had access to a 300 ton press, and, with some patience and a few broken springs, were able to bend them cold. We also heated and rolled the ends of the longest spring in the pack and left them as forged. Those rolled ends have not moved in 15 years of use. You could also leave the springs as found. It would give you a different motion (longer and lazier) but would also work. I have seen a design that used 2 spring sets, one facing down, once facing up, with the tup attached to the upward facing springs. I would bite the bullet and buy new spring stock, old salvaged springs may have hidden cracks, which could fracture unexpectedly, creating a hazard to life and at the very least, a Brown Trouser Moment (BTM). You might investigate spring shops that make springs for cars and trucks. They might be able to make just what you want for not too much $. Geoff

Pretty nice, makes good splinters, run any hot steel yet? It does need to be bolted down, the dance it does is pretty scary, Geoff

Why do you think they cost so much? Geoff

Musta miss hit a key on my calculator. a cubic foot at .28 a cubic inch comes in at 483.84 lbs, near enough to 490, I knew that :lol:. G