patrick

It is highly unlikely they are carbide nodules. It looks like you just got a thick layer of oxide on the your work and your haven't ground it all the way off yet. It looks like you etched it to get the scale off and that left the texture. Ball bearings are usually 52100 thought they don't have to be that grade. Since that is a 1% carbon steel, you need to keep the forging temperature around 2100 F, about 200F cooler than you would for low and medium carbon content steels.

Smooth Bore- I did address that a few posts up. The 300 series grades are alloyed with much more nickel than the 400 series. That alloys them to be austenitic to very low temps and keep their ductility bu they are realatively week. The nickel also aid in corrosion resistance. The 400 series lack nickel but are still stainless. Becuase they don't have the nickel they can be heat treated to develop martensite. Good for wear resistance and edge retention. However, they are not as corrosion resistant as the 300 series materials because they lack nickel. But that also makes them cheaper. 17-4 is in a family of stainless steels which are called martensitic precipitaion hardening. They are low carbon, but do form martensite. Instead of tempering them to reduce hardness, you age them to allow copper based precipitates to form and add stress. This improves the hardness and strength. They are also in the low nickel catagory so corrosion resisitance is coming from chrome.

The one on the stand has a massive weld right through the waist which is pretty typical of later Trentons.

It looks like the repair was not done properly which resulted in the crack. Personally, if machining costs are too high, have the machine shop just make the dove tail section. Then get a flat block and bolt or weld the dove tail in place.I'm not a big fan of combo dies so I would not try to recreate that feature in a new die set.

The reason the tubes filled with objects approach is less desirable than a solid block has to due with the fact that those loose objects will not move with the housing when the ram contacts the anvil. Since objects at rest tend t stay at rest when impacted, the mass resisting the force of the ram must move as a single unit. If not, then the filler material will stay at rest while the housing moves. This is the exact same thing that happens when you accelerate rapidly while travelling in a car. You (the filler material) tend to stay at rest while the car (anvil tube) accelerates. The result of this is that you are forced back into your seat during the acceleration stage of travel. In the world of hammers, efficiency is all about resisting the forced exerted by the ram and transfering that motion into the work piece. That is accomplished by the anvil which needs to be large enough to resist moving. Chambersburg Engineering published data showing that maximum efficiency was reached when the anvil wieghed 20x the ram. That was for steam hammers doing industrial work with industrial foundations. For a Rusty style hammer, you may find that the maximum efficiency is reached with a different (likely lower) ratio due to other losses of efficiency within the system.

From a metallurgists point of view 304, 316, 410, 420, 422, 440 (A, B, C) S32550, S32205, S32750 etc. are all types of stainless steels. The % of the various elements is widely different in each grade or grade family by they all are both stainless and they are all steel. The difference in scrap value is due primarily to the nickel content. The difference in function is that the 300 series grades are austenitic, which means they have very good ductility, even subzero temperatures. The 400 serials, most of which will transform to martensite, are not nearly as ductile, nor as costly. They can be made much stronger than the austenitc grades but they do not have the same level of corrosion resistance as the austenitic family. The last group are Duplex grades which means they exist as combination of austenite and ferrite. They have very good corrosion resistance and strengths similar or somewhat higher than the 300 series but are less costly due to a lower nickel content.

You wont be disappointed. Contact roger degner for dvds of cliftons public demos. I think there are 6 or 7 available.

I like big fast hammers so personally I'd go for the bigger one. BUT if your compressor isn't big enough for it you won't be happy with it. I'd definitely defer to John and his expertise. If you have or are willing to get a compressor to run a bigger hammer and your budget will allow for it by all means do it. You will not be disappointed. By the way if your willing to invest in an ironkiss dont make excuses about the cost of cliftons tapes. To get a similar amount of info I took a 3day class with steve parker another industrial smith and invested 10 times that amount in tuition and travel. I have since met Clifton bought his tapes and all the tapes of demos he did for clubs over the years. The quality is often poor but you can still learn a tremendous ammount. In his club demos he often covers things not covered in the more formal tapes.

I have many items on wheels, but not all. The vises are mounted to stands bolted to the floor but those bolts can quickly be removed and the vise slid out of the way. I just built a new propane forge and it is on wheels. Probably the best thing I did was to put my welding/layout table on wheels that are retractable. That bench is 5 feet x 8 feet with a 3/4" thick steel top. It is mounted on some old machinery base that is a fair bit smaller in both dimensions, so I put a set of semi truck jacking legs on each end. I shortened those legs and added 8" casters. The table rests on the original base when the wheels are retracted but can easily be moved when needed.

Most tools that I use under my hammer are either 5160 (or similar) or mild steel. If 5160 I forge and air cool then use without heat treatment. For hacks I do use H13 but, and this is very important, using a hardened tool steel under the hammer is significantly risky. If you use a hack taller than your work piece you can drive the tool into the bottom die. This will result in damage to either the dies, the tool or both and could involve shard of tools steel flying around your shop. For your size of hammer and the size of work it will handle, I'd suggest sticking with the 5160/car spring/axle suggestions. They will wear out faster, but they are less risky.

WOW! I like it! Reminds a bit of the original Bradley design, but without the cushions. Also brings to mind the water powered hammers that predate the mechanical. Very cool!

Josh-The one thing I remember from the patents and liturature I reviewed about Fishers when I did my school project was that they designed the metal flow in the mold in such a way as to wash over the plate. I would think that would be extremely important, especially if you are going to preheat the plate. The washing effect will help remove the iron oxide layer that will otherwise make it difficult to get a good bond. Patrick

Oil quenching in a plastic bucket with an audience.

I think you're going to have to pull that out and have it ground. Depending on the size after that, you may need to have it chrome pated and ground again to get it back to the original size.

I attempted to do this as a senior project when I was getting my metallurgical engineering degree, but rather than an anvil, I used a generic square type shape. I used 1" thick S7 tools steel and built a variety of pattern heights. I worked with a local foundary pouring steel. The goal of my project was to see how much metal (height) was needed to bond to a room temperature steel plate. I triied a variety, up to 8" I think. None of mine bonded, but in doing the subsequent metallography I discovered the foundrymen had added a coating to the plates preventing them from bonding. Apparently they mistook them for steel chills that they use to locally cool regions of castings more rapidly and in that application you don't want the block to stick. What I did find out was that at 8" thick using liquid steel you do have enough metal to heat that plate to around 1800F. I know what I did is not exactly how Fisher's were made, but it was still a cool project and I do think you could design a mold system that would allow a room temperature steel face plate to stick to a low allow steel cast anvil.

I'd avoid rubber stall mats as I find them a bit too squishy for this application. hardwood planks are a very good choice have a proven track record in this type of service.

Looks good but I suggest replacing the hinged doors with sliding doors. The hinged style require you to hold them open with one hand while reaching into the forge with the other.

I've done foundations with plasticizer and without. It doesn't seem to make that much difference for a hammer foundation.

I have both the Ferguson and Midgett books and they are both very good. Ferguson's work is all based on bonding in an inert atmosphere with pressure applied during heating. He even made special dies to contain the work piece on all sides while pressure was applied. It is a very interesting technique, but not practical for most folks. My customer is doing the bonding and sends me billets ready to forge. He is using a technique much like what is described in Midgett's book with bonding temps around 1800 F. His process is extremely effective provided all the surface are clean. I agree I don't think I'm melting the layers. I think I'm just a few degrees cooler than that. At the point in the process where this is happening, a billet with 88 layers originally 2" thick has been forged to a thickness of 0.375. Assuming the starting stock is uniform in thickness (which I don't know for sure), the layer thickness after forging to 0.375" is only 0.0042". At this point, the billet is patterned via machining and sent back to me for further forging to 0.220" thick. It is during this second forging step that problem is happening. I'm wondering if the combination of temperature, time at temperature and very thin layer thickness are all working together to cause this problem. It is not showing up in other billet sizes or billets in which the starting layer thickness is greater.

To see finished products made from what I've forged look up William Henry Studios. Most of the Mokume they use is supplied by Mike Sakmar, who is my customer. You can also look at his website for images of stuff we've done. Some of the coolest work I've done is to forge large billets that are milled into cell phones. Do a google search for "mokume cell phones" and you'll find lots of images of those. I've forged something on the order of 150 billets just for that product. As far as eutectic formations, that is a function of composition and temperature, not really time at temperature. A eutectic is the one unique composition that has the lowest melting point. The classic example of this is with copper and silver. Not all alloy systems form eutectics. I'm working with copper, red brass and nickel silver. The constituents of those are copper, zinc, nickel and tin. Copper and nickel do not have a eutectic. The copper/zinc and copper/tin do but those alloys are already combined in the red brass and nickel silver so they will melt rather than form a eutectic. The melting temps of the alloys are as follows: Copper-1984 F Red Brass-1832 F Nickel Silver-1870 F Diffusion could be accounting for what is happening and this is very much a time and temperature dependent phenomenon. The billets in question are laminated with all 3 of the alloys listed above and the copper/red brass layers are the ones that seem to be washing out. I find this a bit odd since most of the time overheating of this material will result in actual melting of the brass and it will squeeze out or even splatter if you hit the billet when it is this hot. I've had a few billets where this has happened and if you catch it without hitting and let it cool you can still successfully forge it. Interestingly, I've not had feedback that these billets had the washed out appearance. That makes me think I'm dealing will something that is very time dependent within a particular temperature range. I'm really interested to see the microstruture as that should give me a pretty good insight into what is happening. If I'm getting too hot, I could have both the copper and brass layer melting and mixing together, but I would think that that much melting would have been notceable during forging. For those interested, feel free to PM me or start a new thread with any questions on mokume. I'll do what I can to answer.

I'm pretty confident it's not a material issue. I've heard of the same thing happening in some damascus billets. Over the last few years I've probably forged something on the order of 4000-5000 lbs of mokume, always supplied to me pre-fused so it is possible it a material issue. My customer, who supplies me the billets for forging to his sizes, is going to send me a piece of what he's seeing and I'll do some metallography on it to confirm the root cause of the problem. I wanted to do a new forge anyway so this is good opportunity for that, even if the problem I'm trying to solve is not temperature related.

As you may know, most of my forge work over the last few years has been production forging of Mokume. Lately, I've had trouble with over heating. The billets are not melting, but the brass and copper layers are diffusing into each other and resulting in billets that should have 3 colors only having two. My plan to fix this is to build a new forge, which I've been planning on anyway. The dimensions inside will be 20" wide, 24" long and probably something around 12" high. Roof and walls will be 4" thick kaowool. Floor is hard splits over 2.5" soft fire brick. I'm thinking of a 4 burner arrangement with two on each wall, off set so that the burners don't blow right at their counterparts on the opposite wall. The burners be mounted fairly high in the wall because I don't want them blowing on the work and making hot spots. I'm currently using a 2 burner arrangement made from 2" pipe with a couple of smaller pipes nested in the flame end of the burners. System is forced air/propane. It works OK, but with both burners on one wall, you don't have good uniformity. You can get it if you're running hot as when forging steel, but most of what I do needs to be done at around 1800 F. My thought is to scale down this burner design and go with 4, but I'd like to get the input of others on this. I'm also planning to incorporate at least 2 thermocouples into the forge. I'd like them to be permanently fixed in the walls. With that arrangement, they would need to be able to withstand the temps for forging steel since it do that on occasion. Any recommendations on specific units I should look at and places to purchase same? Thanks. Patrick

That is one I hadn't heard of and I haven't heard of any big Bradley's changing hands since I got my 500. That is a pretty raw deal for your friend. It is possible it went back into a manufacturing setting rather than to an ornamental ironworker. There are a few shops that still use this machines for production.

Ric-Do you know who the prior owner of this machine was? I think is probably the 6th of these machines I've ever heard of: 1. Mine 2. One in OK owned by the man who I got mine from 3. One at Wessel Machine shop in PA 4. One at Frog Valley Forge 5.One in IL owned by Mark Gardner As for the 500 lb uprights the ones I know of are" 1. Mine 2. Michael Dillion's 3. One at Max Wiess in Milwaukee 4. There was one at Rockford Drop Forge and I was told it was sold to a machine tool dealer in Toledo for inclusion in the owner's private collection. Does anyone know of any other of these big Bradleys?

The expense of a foundation is one you'll have with any big hammer but some hammers do have a smaller foot print than others. However, I really think you be glad you invested in it if you go that way. By the way, a local heavy tow truck company may be cheaper to move and install the hammer than renting a fork lift or using a rigger. In my area they run about $200 an hour but if you plan and prep well you can keep their time on site short.