John Larson

I've got to try this. I read the famous book and the professor author made it very complicated compared to what has been said here. Bad Roger's clamp sounds like the approach I will try.

Super demonstration project for me at historic Jerusalem Mill. Thank you.

A stroy by an industrial smith in an old Anvil's Ring about big power hammers and their foundations mentioned Fabreeka. The memorable paragraph spoke of Fabreeka being used alongside the sowblock wedge. Not only did the job, but the wedge could not be dislodged by pounding. They had to cut it out with a wood cutting hand saw. :-)

Fantastico!!!!!!!! Just baby blows and that heavy material squashed like a bug. If there ever was need for proof that huge hammer heads do fantastic cogging down of stock this brief video shows it. BTW, Grant sure makes good tongs. Get him to help you size them for best grip. King sized congratulations to you and your extended team.

I can vouch for the superb Aspery books. He teaches you everything you need to know, how to make the tools you need, a good gift of gab, excellent writing skills, excellent photography. He is the best smith I've seen in action and has a very good web site. And posts occasionally right here on IFI.

The bellows at Jerusalem Mill was rebuilt a few years ago. The guys doing it said Colonial Williamsburg gave them an address of an outfit that sells hides for bellows.

The book Pounding Out the Profits gives an enormous body of information about the many types of mechanical hammers. Belongs on blacksmith book shelves.

Bellows work great as compared to a hand cranked blower. Old Jerusalem Mill forge (Kingsville, MD) where I demonstrate monthly uses a bellows suspended in a floor stand, as compared to an overhead mounting, and it blows into a typical cast iron Centaur forge pot. With good bituminous coal the fire just shoots upward and getting welding heat on chain links and such is very easy. With large blocks of steel an electric blower is vastly superior to bellows. Hand cranked blowers don't work very well at all in any circumstance so far as I'm concerned. If you do use a hand cranked blower, you can rig up an electric blower to blow into the hand cranked blower so you can either crank or flip a switch.

Grant, that pleated material idea is superb.

Thanks, Spears. Hope your hammer works well. If you need help, shoot me a comment on my new blog here on IFI.

One trick I have found on small broken bits and bolts is to use an annular cutter and drill around it. It wasn't the solution here, but it can save a lot of grief in cirumstances where there is a through hole. Without the through hole the annular cutter creates a tube that has to be broken off to remove. Then the space has to be filled before redrilling, of course. I sure wish I had an EDM.

I was speaking a few weeks ago to a Canadian firm formerly connected to Striker and was told the USA and Canada connections are defunct.

That trip sounds fantastic. I sure look forward to your further posts. Paley's piece is unique. The large number of manipulations stand in contrast to the elegant pieces exhited on the wall. I was able to watch Paley work on a studio visit in 1996. Fantastic showman. His success as a sculptor is huge. I sure am glad he recovered so well from his burns.

The only way to do this job reliably IMHO is to clamp triangular piecs top and bottom so that the drill bit enters and exits perpendicular to the faces of those added triangles. If you can band saw the triangles quickly than they are sacrificail and no need for hardening. Maybe you can tack weld them in place. That will prevent slippage.

This is getting interesting! Look forward to reports on its first day of work.

Great pictures! I see the video camera in the back ground. You planning to youtube something?

Thanks, J. Yes, straight ball valves are very touchy on a Kinyon.

The new IFI allows blogs. I've started one and it will be mostly focused on power hammers, especially Iron Kiss hammers. If it works over time, great. If it doesn't, that's okay too. Let's see how it goes.

At the moment I have the winch off the trailer and it won't be going back on until late February. So I can't get a picture of the set up for a few weeks. The extra screw jacks on the trailer keep it from flopping around as the crane moves. The movement of the crane is controlled by a manual cable winch. The overhead monorail system used for delivering caskets are industry unique, but could be adapted to the hammer and machine tool delivery bizzinezz. Most hammers do not want to be toted in a non-upright position, so that influences monorail height. I think a good toter crane could mimic a forklift. Mine mimics a skid loader. More about this in a few weeks.

John Newman, you can speed up the tup-up-at-idle by cracking open the exhaust/throttle valve a bit more when the treadle is fully up. On my machines this speed up can be dramatic. Two steps basically. Set the exhaust/throttle valve. Set the cam controlling the shut off of air supply to the roller valve. Enjoy.

A striking hammer is a very useful tool and guys who have Grant's and Bob's KA hammers tend to like them as striking hammers. Nathan Robertson in northern Minnesota uses them to make his hand-held hammers, for example. I say, "Go for it!" It is very easy to turn a Kinyon style hammer into a single blow machine, as you may well know. The roller valve is foot or hand triggered instead of Kinyon style tup position triggered for repeatitive blows. Air flow can be hand adjusted to control power. Grant's video about his steam hammer shows hand control for both down stroke and power. Long strokes require long tup guides for die mating precision. Tup-in-a-tube guide systems such as Ralph Sproul and many other shop-mades use can provide that and it becomes easy to do so when the tup weight is high; it's the little machines where a long enough tup becomes problemmatic. With long guides the offset cylinder like a Bull/Phoenix enables a really long stroke, probably without the back of the guide tube slotted for the connection of the cylinder rod to the tup top via a through-tab. I very much advocate tup guides to be centered instead of offset like in the original Kinyon design. The problem IMHO with most tup-in-a-tube designs is not providing a long enough stroke; the guide tube is too close to the bottom die. A person should be able to use traditional hand held smithing punches and chisels (despite the danger relative to shorter tools) so that a long stroke is desired. With a single blow hammer the critical air flow consideration is on the down strke. The lifting can be less snappy by far than what is needed for an automatically reciprocating machine. And no big problem is likely to arise from use of a cylinder without a top air cushion. Therefore a customized cap can be used on the cylinder to port in air faster than typical NFPA port sizes. The rod end cap can be factory made with the bushing and seals already perfected and replaceable. You already have more than enough air compressor. Norgren and others sell cylinders with "Hall effect" sensor capability for triggering magnetic switches. I've never gone down this path, but they seem ideal for electronic control. Finally, what pneumatics do not do well is the movement that is a precise distance with a hard stop. Kiss blocks are needed. With hydraulics the electronic switches permit reasonably precise start & stop positions. Electric actuators give less power but probably more speed than hydraulics with the same precise electronic control characteristics that automation engineers favor. Jesse James knows a good bit about them based on Monster Garage episodes. Then there is the whole new technology of linear electric motors, which I think are the real future of power hammers.

The Nazel's bottom air circuit valve system (as I recall without referencing my literature) provides a check valved by-pass (around the bottom throttle valve) to allow the tup to pump up when the treadle is released. That circuit detail suggests that the check may not be fully efficient. If it is working properly the pumping up should occur, but with a few more pump cylinder strokes. Yes, the reduced air density can be exposing this and at lower altitude it may have been less obvious. BTW, in principle this air duct could be tested with a shop air hose connection. If the check valve is leaking, it would probably be audible and maybe the hammer head rise could be tested at various line pressure settings. I agree with idea of a lighter weight top die. Pretty darn clever IMHO. To avoid undue expense just to test the idea, try leaving the dies as originally dimensioned but use an alternative lighter material. Got a block of aluminum, delrin plastic, or a piece of good oak? This way you won't accidentally use a short top die with the original height bottom die and injure the machine via piston-to-cylinder bottom cap collision. Even more simply, remove the top die and use a compensating wood block on top of the bottom die. That way the test takes only a few minutes and doesn't require fabrication. Use tongs to hold the wood block.

If the machine was delivered with a plate restrictor then it has an issue not related to altitude. Grant is right that it is a kludge. The machine rebuilt in Bob Bergman's video had this kludge and Bob said so. Very high probability of leaking rings and seals on the ram, whereas the pump could well be just fine. It is a very low air pressure/very high volume system. How an old Nazel performs has little bearing on how a new Sahinler will perform, so I'd say fear not. Does your regular air compressor work at you altitude? If it does, no problem with the Sahinler.

Monster, good looking truck door art. To deliver my machines I use a trailer similar to yours, but I've equipped it with angle iron tracks (that can be extended off the back of the trailer; jack supported) and a rolling hydraulic crane with V-grooved steel wheeels to lift on/lift off the hammers. Toting a forklift is the heavier way to do it. I can by-pass DOT scales and my F-150 pulls it fine. It might carry a Saymak in the bed, but I have a Miller Trailblazer welder there. Your air bags are a dandy way to provide overload support.

I build my hammers with 36" to 37" height of the bottom die face. Be sure to practice keeping the work pieces level when hammering and if possible keep your elbows tucked in. All this tends to become self-evident once you get going. If in doubt, take a video of yourself from the side as you're working so that you see what your stance and work movement are accomplishing.