patrick

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.

So, are you still considering these Bradleys or, after seeing the Chambursburg are you planning to head in that direction? They are great machines too if you have the means to run them effectively. Patrick

Impressive, but super dangerous and slow way to make that part. In US shops today a part that size is handled with mobile manipultors.

Bradley hammers are supported to a limited degree by Cortland Machine out of Cortland New York. They have all the drawings, some wood patterns for castings and they can make almost any thing you'd need, but it is not cheap. I just ordered a new pair of sow block keys from them. Ask to speak with Stan Pierce if you call them. Bradley hammers are not complicated so if you do need parts you can often make them yourself if you have access to fabrication and machining facilities.Manuals have been posted in a few places on the internet or you can contact me directly and I can email you a copy. The biggest issues with Bradleys are their size and weight. This one probably weighs around 7800#, maybe more depending on when it was made. The other issue they have, which is true of all mechanical hammers, is that the stroke is limited and you will reach a point where the size of the work or the height of the tooling will not permit the hammer to complete its rotation. That is not an issue with air hammers. However, you'd be hard pressed to find a more robust machine. Within its design limits they are fantastic forging tools. I'm in the process of setting up a 500 lb Guided helve, which is very similar to the strap hammer you're interested in and I've been running a 300 lb Guided Helve for the last 10 years. The strap hammer style will actually have a bit more flexibility in its stroke than the Guided Helve type and the blow will be a bit snappier. I've sometimes thought of converting one of my machines to that design. Bradley did make a few big strap hammers, but found that in production environments the leather belting supporting the ram just didn't hold up on those big machines. I think we could overcome that limitation with modern materials. As far as pricing is concerned, that's a very flexible issue. I would say that in really great shape $4000-5000 would be fair. However, Bradleys don't seem to command the prices that Little Giant style machines bring. There just doesn't seem to be the demand for them. That being said, I'd probably offer something more like $2500-3000. I paid $2000 for my 500, including the 15 HP 880 RPM motor and the electrical connections for it. The hammer is in great shape. I was able to test drive it before purchase. I felt like I got a steal, but the owner was content because he'd been trying to sell it for a couple of years with no interest. He was happy to get scrap prices just to make sure it didn't get scrapped. The trade off for me is that the machine weighs 18000 lbs, has 15 cubic yards of concrete under it and about 700 lbs of 3/4" rebar embedded in the concrete. I had to get it out of the shop it was in and move it about 300 miles to my shop. My set up cost, including running 3-phase to my shop to power the machine, is going to be roughly 3 times the purchase price. Because of the higher costs of transportation and set up, there seems to be much less demand for the really big hammers, consequently they often sell at much lower prices than the small and mid sized machines like the one you're interested in. In the case of this hammer you'll still need a foundation and power, but nothing like what I have set up. A foundation 4 feet wide, 4 feet deep and 9 feet long would be more than enough. You could probably even get away with 3 feet thick. A 7.5 horse single phase motor will run this machine just fine. These machines were designed to run directly from a motor running at 900 RPM. If you don't have such a motor, you can jackshaft a fast one. That is how my 300 has been set up and it works just fine. Before you jump on this, think carefully about the type of work you want to do. Because of the limitations I noted, there are some things an air hammer will do better. Also, if you already have a large shop air compressor that will support a utility style hammer, you will save a great deal of floor space going that route. If you anticipate doing production type repetitive jobs, then a Bradley is the machine to use. The large guides, dies and die orientation allow you to create dies with multiple stations. This way you can run several steps of a job without have to change tools. Air hammers tend to have fairly short dies in comparison and they don't usually have guides as robust so they don't handle off center blows as well. Also, Bradley dies are held in with two keys instead of one. This means that neither the die dove tail nor the matching dovetail tapers along its length. The results is that it is very easy to machine, fabricate or even forge dies for Bradleys. If you still have questions, PM me and I send you my phone #. Patrick

Nice work. What metals are you using? How big a billet are you making?

Have you already posted pictures of the 500 Beadury? If not please share. I'd love to see it.

Michael-The reason they look the same is because the 300 is sitting on 10" of timber. The 500 is on about 5.5" of 2x12 planks. There are a couple of thin sheets of plywood, about 5/8" total, serving as shims between the anvil and the frame. Under the anvil is 1.5" thick oak planks. The overall length of the 500 is about a foot longer than the 300. The anvil is MUCH bigger. Remember, the anvil on a 300 lb hammer sits even with the bottom of the hammer while the anvil on the 500 lb hammer sits 4" below the hammer frame. So, the anvil from the 500 lb hammer is siting on 1.5" of wood, the anvil from the 300 lb hammer is on 10" of wood and the top of the sow block on both anvils is nearly the same height off the floor. The concrete turned out fine but it was a bit dicey at the end. We came up about 1/4 yard short. Based on the dimension of the pit we should have been about 1/4 yard over what we needed. To make up the difference we shove a bunch of big chunks of concrete from the floor section we cut out into the pit at the back of the hammer. The foundation is 11 feet long and the rebar cage is only 9 feet long. I left 18" between the back wall of the pit and the rebar to allow access to the rebar so we could get it level. This open space is where we put the floor chunks. Thehammer itself sits forward of this location, so even if those chunks didn't bond the best to the new concrete, I'm not worried about a failure of the foundation.

The hammer is in!!!! I'm soooo excited! It's been sitting in my yard for over a year and half whispering "USE ME, USE ME" every time I walked past it to get to the shop. Well now it's in. Here a few shot of the foundation pour we did on Monday and then setting the hammer in place this morning. It was an extremely tight fit to get the wrecker boom in the door; only made it by a few inches, but it made it. Using the pattern to set the anchor bolt positions was slicker than snail snot. We had to jockey the hammer around a bit with the wrecker and a couple of come-a-longs but once we got everything lined up in dropped on those studs as pretty as pie.I still have to run power to the wall behind the hammer and install the motor. I'm going to mount the motor above and behind the hammer to reduce the impact on my (now) much more limited floor space.

The reference to Scott steel is not to Scot Forge products. At that time Scot Forge was known as Atlas Forge and it carried that name into the 1970s. It wasn't renamed until Peter Jorgeson, the last private owner, started the transition from his ownership to an employee owned company. That transition was complete in the lat 1990s and ever since Scot Forge has been 100% employee owned.

Did you look in The Hammerman's Emporium". It's by the same author as Pounding Out the Profits with a focus on air hammers.

That reminds me of a 50 lb Erie steam hammer I saw once. What is the ram weight in that machine? How big is the bottom die looks pretty big but maybe that is just the scale of the over all machine?

I have done foundations with and without floor isolation and I don't see that it makes much difference so I'm not doing that this time.

This is the third large Bradley foundation I've done. The factory plans do not call for any rebar, but I had them reviewed by our head engineer at work the first time I did this and recommended 3/4" rebar mats 9" on center for my 300 lb machine. Since this is a bigger hammer, I narrowed up the spacing. As for leveling, we'll run a 2x6 board across the floor to screed the foundation even with the floor. We'll smooth and finish as best we can, but I'm not worried about minor imperfections since there will be several inches of wood between the hammer and the concrete. If it is really uneven, I can use several layers of tar paper to help even it up, but I don't think that is going to be an issue. I'll let you know tomorrow. Concrete is coming right after lunch.

That layout table is set up with the jack stands from a couple of semi trailers. That lets it be mobile, but I can set it down on a stationary base which is bolted to the top. It has a smaller foot print than the jacking legs.

Well, I finally got the funds to set up the 500 lb Bradley. I've been working on the rebar cage for the last several weeks and that turned out to be a great opportunity to teach my 7 year old son to weld. I set him up with some 7014 and a auto darkening helmet and let him loose. The cage is done with the anchor bolts welded in place. When I bought the hammer I made a template of the base and have been working from that. For this machine, I'm using 1.25" x 6 foot long all thread. Plain carbon steel since I welded them directly into the rebar cage. The cage itself is two mats of 3/4" rebar 6" on center. These are spaced 5 feet apart. The concrete block itself will be 6 feet wide, 6 feet deep and 11 feet long (15 cubic yards). The cage itself is 5x5x9. The extra length in the pit is just to allow access once the cage is in the pit so we can ship as needed to make it level. Some friends and I dug the pit and set the rebar this afternoon. Concrete will be coming on Monday right after lunch. I'm not sure if I'll set the hammer on the foundation the weekend after Thanksgiving or wait till the following weekend. Either way, I hope to have it up and running by the end of the year.

I just had the foundation pit for my 500 lb bradley dug today and we set the rebar cage in the pit before coming in for supper. In my case I made a template of the base of the hammer and the welded all thread rod into that. In my case each rod is 6 feet long, I have done used the method of drill holes after the hammer is in place an then setting the anchors in expoxy, but both times I did it I hit rebar and didn't get the hole as deep as I wanted and I also had trouble getting all the dust out of the holes. I've the the template method one other time and it really works well if you take time to make sure the all thread is positioned just right

Stamping die for silverware?

Alan- You are right about the abrasive nature of scale. It certainly does result in wear on power hammer and press dies and no doubt could contribute to wear on anvil faces, but I would draw the same distinction you did between wear and deformation. The anvils I've owned and seen with sway back show the swelling you observed beneath the face. As far as wear is concerned, I actually think that the chipping of the face would contribute to more uneven work surface than wear from abrasion.