johndilsaver

I have made scrolling wrenches and bending forks from grader blade and been satisfied with them. It's too tough to forge by hand, but with a power hammer it will forge. I was surprised that the grader blades I came up with were not high carbon. I tried the classic test of heating small pieces and quenching in air, in oil, and in water. Even quenched in water the metal would still cut with a file with no problem. I scored 6 or 8 used grader blades, all from the same source, several years ago, those are the only ones I have any experience with.

It's taken me awhile to reply here! Here's a report on my (slow) progress with the tire hammer. I had a bit of analysis paralysis in thinking about this. I cut a groove 6" outside the footprint of the hammer and epoxied all thread into the slab and bolted the hammer to the slab. It's in use about every day I'm forging in the shop. I'm about 6 months into using this by now. First of all I'm having a lot of fun learning about the hammer and using it. There's either one new crack in the floor or an existing crack is more visible. I'm not bouncing a lot of stuff off the shelves, but near the hammer, things move. There's an anvil on a stump just a few feet from the hammer. The anvil stump unit slowly rotates as the hammer is used, and tools laid on the anvil face usually end up on the floor. I'm really glad I got the hammer, lots more forging is happening now.

I have one of these, the photos are helpful. I'll try to get some shots of mine.

That is exactly the plan! jd

Randy and Frosty, thanks for your quick replies. Randy, I didn't know those details of Big Blue down at ESSA. That's interesting. Just thinking about the hilltop ESSA's shop is on and the fairly level karst area I'm in, my situation may not be quite the same. My first thought was to just bolt them to the slab and have at it. - I guess I might still try that, but seeing how things were bouncing with just my buddy and I hand hammering kind of got my attention. I've had some drainage work done around the shop, essentially a french drain with an underground pipe draining to the highway drainage ditch, all done about 18 months ago. This was to address the fact that the land on the east side of my shop is a few inches higher than the shop concrete slab floor and with heavy rain the water would pool on that side and actually stand on the shop floor. Not good. The drain I had put in has helped a lot. Water never stands against the building now. Frosty, thanks for your information. I'm thinking I'll be starting to dig soon. I found an extensive soil survey of my county online, but haven't really made a lot of sense of it yet. Frosty, I read your advice about the french drains and draining downhill and kind of have to chuckle. The ground right around my building isn't absolutely level, but it's pretty close. I've had drainage problems for all the 27 years I've been here. Also, the drainage that does exist in my immediate area is all karst. There's not a surface stream that goes anywhere. It's all sinkholes, water drains into them, and in most cases drains out quickly, but in some sinks it pools and drains away very slowly. Here in my area this summer has been unusually wet. The ground is wetter than average, no crunchy grass in August to temporarily pause the lawn mowing season this year! I'm going to try to make some sense out of my county (Christian Co, MO) soil survey. I have a class over a John C Campbell in a few days, looking forward to that. It may be a couple weeks before actual digging. I have a youthful friend or two I may be able to draft for help . . . Thanks again for your thoughts and I'll post more as I know something! John DIlsaver Sparta, MO

Hi All. I know I'm replying to a dormant thread. The "back of the envelope" sketch above is making pretty good sense. I'm not sure what one would use as anti-vibration matting. I recently got a rubber mat at a farm supply that was sold as a stall mat. What I'm looking at installing are two hammers, one is a recently constructed tire hammer, and the other is a 50 lb little giant -- still with some work to do on refurbishing, but there is hope. So, both are in the same general size range. I gather that the diagram above was drawn with a much larger hammer in mind. My initial thought was to just bolt the tire hammer to the shop floor and see what happens. My shop is the pretty typical 30 x 40 metal building on a concrete pad. I bought it from the previous owner, so I wasn't there when it was built. I've drilled through the floor for mounting bolts for other purposes, it seems to be about 4" thick. Just a few days ago I was forging with a buddy (this is still forging by hand, the hammers are not installed) and just using a 2 or 3 pound hand hammer on the anvil, and noticing stuff falling off a table maybe 20' away. So thinking about this and scaling up the size of the hammer from 2 pounds to 50 or 70 makes bolting to the existing floor seem like possibly not such a good option. The soil here contains a lot of clay, or I would say the topsoil is thin and the subsoil tends towards clay. I'm not a soil expert! In fact I'm retired from teaching math and some physics, so installing heavy machinery is somewhat out of the range of things I know much about. So back to the drawing above. The idea of isolating the hammer inertia block from the surrounding floor and soil makes a lot of sense. Any input or thoughts are welcome. Thanks, John Dilsaver Sparta, MO

I just thought I'd note that this discussion gave me several good ideas.

Hi Arkie, I've been a BOA member for a couple years (NW) not sure who to send dues to, will I get an email sometime soon? I'm a foreigner from n of the border up here in Mo. Also, is there a nw chapter meeting this coming Sat? (Jan 13). Thanks