Rheis

It seems like I’m a bit late in this conversation but… I’m an artist blacksmith fabricator and have been for about 15 years now. I’ve stored metals in many configurations including the way you’ve illustrated here but my most preferred method (if your ceilings are high enough and walls tough enough) is to store the material vertically with dividers for types and sizing…it seems to save the most of what people don’t have much of.. floor space. Also, the majority of the steel weight is supported by the floor with only a minimal amount of wall lean weight. The picture is too poor to tell.. (sorry, I pulled it from a video) but I also installed a anti kick out piece of angle iron at the floor level which keeps it in place while I’m rummaging through it to find the right piece. Any way, happy hammering y’all!

Hey guys, yea I'm sure you could modify the spring portion in many ways but I'm gonna stick with the single leaf spring for now, it just makes the most sense to me. I'm sure you could move the air rod connection point to anywhere within about the halfway point on the spring to the front, but my guess is that each hammer depending on the material dimensions and pivot connection joints has a sweet spot for the best control of hammer blows from light feathering to heavy blows. I'm also guessing that Mike and the Gearhart fella have them adjusted to the best sweet spot they could find.. I'm looking forward to giving a more definitive answer in the coming months.. :-)

Hey Andy, I've only started with my hammer build and am a newbie as my status shows, but not a newbie as far as mechanics go. I believe that the spring will act as a whip to a certain degree and should absorb some of the stresses from the hammer impacts. If these stresses aren't absorbed by the whip they will most likely show up somewhere else in the form of stress cracks at the welded joints or bolted connections, but hey that's just my opinion! As far as the brass sleeves vs the UHMW - you might have something there.. I like the idea of the UHMW in place of the brass. I'll be honest, it was the only thing about the build that worried me. The accraloy steel shaft cylinders I'm using are coated for hardness and wear protection but I did notice in some of the gearhartironwerks videos that there might be some form of wear in the slide portions. Maybe Mike can shed some light on this since his hammer is currently operational. It could be that the dark portions of the accraloy slides that I can see in the videos is just residue from the oil impregnated brass sleeves or may be just shadows? It would/will be interesting to hear Mike's opinion on this as he's been through the build process twice already!

Hey Mike, WOW thanks! That's going the extra mile! Thanks a gazillion.. that's really going to help. I'm starting the project in the next couple of weeks and hope to have it finished by New Years. I'll send you some pictures when I get it done, but you'll probably hear from me if I run into any issues okay!

Hey Mike, thanks for the advise. I do plan to use the double round bars for my slides so I'll make sure to line bore every thing after words. Did you turn your own bushings or purchase them? Also can you give me the approximate dimensions of your slide block that the round bars go through and the length of your bushings, that would be much appreciated.

Hi Mike, I own a decorative metals business and dabble in blacksmithing and I'm finally ready to build my own power hammer. Like most people, I've wanted to build one for about five or six years now, after doing quite a bit of research on the different types of hammer styles I've decided to build the Kinyon style. I've seen your hammer videos and gearharts also and probably hundreds more, yours and gearharts are the cleanest non production hammers I've ever seen! Do you have any advice from your build as a what not to do, or should have done, to make any of it easier?