forgemaster

I clicked onto this thread by mistake thinking it was about making ladies, my bad. I'll go back to work now.

I know the hyd hammers work ok (you can see it working here), but I missed seeing the fluid sense of motion that you get with a steam or air hammer, that when you give a blow and lift the hammer off the job it springs off the job and does a nice little kind of flick/bounce in mid air until you lift it up to the top of the stroke for another blow. They seem to give more of a dead blow. That said it was good work on the part of the manip driver and the hammer driver, no real comunication, just each other knowing what was expected and doing their job, poetry in motion, very nice. Please post more of these if you have them. Phil

If needed for the weaklings, we can make another little anvil for them to lift, just so as they can say, "I lifted up moonys anvil" Phil

We normally joke that the guys at Bohler wear balclavas,(cause they are robbers) We have quoted on jobs where the customer has been buying steel from bohler, and supplying it to us free issue, we then forge it and they come collect it. We were able to buy the steel from another supplier, cut it our selves, forge it, with about a 40% markup on the steel and our normal shop rates, and we were still below the price bohler was quoting for the steel only, without cutting. A fact I only found out after I put in our quote, xxxx! We normally buy from Atlas steels, I believe they are a Canadian based company, but they are in Australia in a fairly big way. Phil

Isnt it cool how when the punch gets to the bottom, the job lifts it's self up off the bottom die. Thats when you know that you only have a wafer thin slug to punch out when you turn the job over. Our starting punch that we use under our press is 90mm dia so I suppose that is what size hole we punch. Can go larger, just would need to make a larger starter punch> Phil

Elastic sided Redbacks for me, I have 2 pairs on the go, one pair I use as my good going home boots, go to see th customer boots, the older pair are my workshop boots. When my workshop boots have had it (they are now coming up to two years of use) I ditch them make my good boots the workshop boots and go buy a new pair to wear home. I don't buy lace ups any more too many times I have had a big globdule of oxy slag land in the laces and youi cant get the boot off quickly enough, its a run to the water tub and stick the whole foot in. And why is it that when ever I drop or place something heavy on my foot it always misses the toe cap and lands behind it effectively trapping my foot? Phil

Just noticed that the photo listed for the peter pilkington hammer is mirror image or back the front (ie the writing cast into the flywheel is reversed) how wierd is that. Phil

Yeh a bit over priced A O'C to the tune of about $7000.00 overpriced. I reckon $1000.00 per CWT is about fair, but the littler the hammer is the more it will sell for, as all the hit and giggle blacksmiths will buy them to put in their garages to do wire work with them. 5CWT and over its only idiots like me and Moonie that will look at buying them and using them. Phil (the idiot on the hill surrounded by hammers)

If you are going to bring dunny paper, you may as well bring a fly swat to kill the dunny budgies while you are at it, thinking about it maybe a tennis raquet would be more suitable for killing Moonies dunny budgies than a fly swat. Dale does this mean we aint gonna use Moonies John Wayne toilet paper this year. You know the sort, its rough, its tough, it takes no ---- from indian.

Hey JA Glad to hear that Christcurch came off with no lives lost. Hope everything goes OK over there with the rebuilding and the insurance etc. After having a quake here here in Newcastle of 5.5 in 1989 we still today have some buildings with scaffolding and props supporting the walls(thats down in Newcastle not here at work).

hey Grant We have a little sullivan that I got tired of trying to refurbish so I stuck it in the corner of the profile-atorium (where we keep the profile cutter) you have just given me a good use for the hammer part though, (it always worked fine, it was the leather diaphram on the gripper that caused us grief). Recently picked up another upsetter from a railway quarry up north, I'll have to have a go at getting it to go. Now I have 5 upsetters comprising of 3 machines and 2 kids (they upsett their mum as they wont keep their rooms clean).

I'll side with Grant on this one, radius, radii, radiuses, when necking. When I tryed making my first pair of tongs in the back shed at home as a teenager, I used a hardie to neck in at the ends of my eyes, then as I bashed and crashed out the reins and the jaw I had a crack start and like you have had, run right across to the other side, then break off in my hot little hands (vise grips). It was'nt till I started my apprenticeship that the need for radii was fully explained to me. Phil

No we dont have a union in a 3 man shop, but we are a member of the Australian Industry Group,(an employer group) Weekly hours of work are set as the award, as are minumum rates of pay for employees. The federal and state, governments along with the unions and employer groups all thrash out minimum wages, penalty rates, holidays, sick leave, and hours of work. I always thought Austria was part of Europe. Does Fosters actually sell somewhere in the world? I know I would'nt buy it for love or money here in Oz. Matt, the customer usually states the hardness range he needs his jobs to finish at, normally for this customer 277-311 BHN. This is all done in electric furnaces which are temperature set and have timers on them. Frosty, going to see if we can incorporate that kind of point into our log tongs for the next order. thanks for the feedback guys. Phil

These blokes were just like Cherynoble power station, an accident just waiting to happen. They broke, wrecked, lost, threw out, so much stuff we are still finding things over 15 years later. Mainly they were out of work trained monkeys who the government put into a training program to upskill them as trades assistants, gave them some manual skills training, then let them loose in our workshop. Unfortunately this was before I was running the business from there, so they only had supervision from a more highly trained monkey than themselves. They tried to repair the damage, before we realised what they had done but they could'nt even do that successfully. I nearly cried when we found out what they had done. Phil

yell if you need a lift to Moonys Grant. Happy birthday too. Phil

This is our production for 38 hours 2 tradesman one 1st year apprentice. 6 log tongs forged and assembled 6 fencing bar heads forged 40 semi trapazodal links bent welded swaged and tapers stamped. 17 pinions forged and heat treated (starting with 300mm of 100 dia 4140) using a 400 ton press 2 x 160mm dia rockbreaker moils reforged (sharpened to a chisel) 8 chain anchors forged (23kg of 130 dia 4140 each) and normalised them. (don't have a photo of them, though there is footage of us forging them on Utube) we also found time to do some profile cutting, re heat treated approx 100 jack hammer moils (they were too soft 1st time around), Not our best week, as we had a couple of distrations, (me to the accountants for a day, apprentice to help one of the steam loco blokes for 4 hours) I don't mean this as a brag session, just to give the people who may wonder what a small forge shop does to earn a living. Cheers Phil

We have dug this Naysmth and Wilson steam hammer out of the graveyard to be put on display, It is dated 1901, when we had this hammer donated it was in working condition, but we had a job skill program working in the building where it was stored and they managed to drop it, bending the rod and cracking the base of the cylinder. Apart from this damage it is complete, I have to dig out the anvil and the baseplate yet. It will have a Dulux overhaul before it goes on display within the rail museum complex.

It was the NSW artist blacksmiths newsletter. They call it solid wrought. They are based at Wauchope (Timbertown heritage Park) North coast NSW

We set up a seat like that that hung off a monorail beam so as to ease back strain when swaging out long jobs. did'nt work quite as well as I had hoped, but maybe that was because my back was already sore before we made the seat. Interesting that I see so many blokes forging under hammers but only turning the job through 90 deg back and forth. We always teach to go around 360 deg as that keeps the job in the centre of the bar forged and also helps to prevent a high corner from developing, this is especially so when forging jobs that have a head on one end and the shaft needs to stay on centre. Phil

You need to know there is a lot more than just a handshake for the keeper of the door to let you pass. Phil Ancient Master Forgers Company of Australia (No.5005)

A young guy we had serve his apprenticeship with us he made his own "touchmark", his initials were WM (William Maguire) so he made a stamp we called billys double bums. Really just one syalised M inverted against another M the right way up. Hi stamp was small and easily stamped, he used to stamp all of his jobs with our company stamp and also his personal stamp. Pride of workmanship. Phil

Depends, when we have made seats and other park furniture we will normally stamp in a out of the way place, more to assist the police with identification when this stuff get stolen (which happens). If we are forging gear blanks or other stuff that has to be machined we will definitely stamp the piece, as the stamp normally is machined out, but at least the guy machining it knows where it comes from and he knows what sort of quality he can expect and he can rely on our sizes being accurate, therefore he does not normally have to check his jobs to ensure they will clean up before he chucks it up into the machine. With tools if we are making them to sell to a customer who is going to on sell them we will not normally stamp the work, some of our customers have supplied us with a stamp of their own to use. However if we are selling direct to the end user we always make sure we will drive the stamp in good and clear. Lifting gear will normally be stamped with SWL and test No. by the testing house who has tested and certifyed it so our stamp does not really add any more real stress points, but we kept stress points in mind when we developed our stamp, we had one customer who supplied us with a stamp that had a horizontal diamond on it, where we were required to stamp his stuff ((spring steel security anchors heat treated pretty hard) even after I said that it would cause a stress point he was not convinced until all his anchors started snapping right at the ends of the diamond impression, his problem after I had advised him of his error. We got paid to remake all the anchors and stamp them with a revised stamp that had the diamond ground off. My guys are proud to stamp stuff that they have made and made well as it can allow them to identify it years later still in good condition and they can say, Hey I made that X years ago. Pride of workmanship can be a good motivator. Phil

We always try to stamp all our work with our stamp which is our web address, I figure that where ever our equipment and tools goes in the world people can contact us, something which may not be able to be done with a post code (zip code) or phone no. Phil