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harrismetalsmith

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Everything posted by harrismetalsmith

  1. After a long silence here on this thread, I am getting on the ball with some of my info. This first picture is a picture of the drive setup I use to run these hammers. It is a rough shot of the setup on the #0 hammer. I am in the process of trading places with my #0 and #1. The #0 is getting moved closer to the coal forge, because I prefer it over the #1. I will post better pictures later, but this is what I have for now. The I beam, and pipe setup comes out of the base. The concrete foundation I poured the mounting bolts into it, along with a stout piece of tubing to weld the "line shaft" setup off of. The other foundation is steel, whith the I beam coming off it. My #1 came with the original bottom mount bracket and a large pulley, off the back of the main hammer shaft. However, I modified it to run overhead clutch style. The main reasonI did this is with the motor on the bottom style, the motor pulley is usually so small, it does not allow the belt to free run when the hammer is not in use. It will burn the belt if the motor is running, but the belt is not slipping. The 3 bottom mount champion hammers I have seen all had very large wheels on the hammer shaft. With the old overhead line shaft setup, you can let the belt have just enough slack to freely slip when the clutch is not engaged. This is how I prefer to run them, I do production smithing, and I don't want to flip a motor on and off.
  2. Francis,
    No I don't have any other documentation on Champion hammers. The pattent is all I have. I have never read, Pounding out the profits. Everything I know I leared from a smith who ran them 30 years or more.
    Original color, I don't know exactly. I have seen most of them a off grenn color, or grey. My #0 had no paint on it. I am getting ready to post alot more info on the ...

  3. Stewart, Yes, Pete did work at Mazzola's. Years before I came. I was the last smith there, besides the owner. I did production forging, and sharpening of mason hammers. Glad you remember. I checked Stortz web site, are they still forging?
  4. Sam, Not sure if you were asking me that or not. But no, I have never worked with Bruce. I worked at Mazzola and Sons. As far as I know, Bruce bought the two 3B's from my boss.
  5. Dave, I appreciate the info. I saw Anderson, on ebay, and wondered if they are worth it. I will probably drop the $ on your recomendation. I know the three legs are unbalanced, I just got sick and tired of trying to balance it with capacitors. I'm a blacksmith not an electrical engineer. I have the correct size wire running to the motor. I also checked it with your link. I have measured the voltage, acording to the meter, the "fake" leg is high. I think I read in another post that you are running your Nazels off a 15 hp converter? Is your 3B motor a 10 hp? Is that correct? If so I will add the box from Anderson, and I should have no trouble with the 7.5 hp on my 2B.
  6. FC I had the same exact problem when rebuiding my Nazel hammer. The ram dovetail was not square to the ram by 3/32". I had a machine shop mill the bottom flat, and the corner of the dovetail I finished with an angle grinder. You could do the entire repair with an angle grinder, just keep checking it as you go. I believe my hammer got worn this way from years of pointing work done with a tapered bottom die, which caused more wear on the back of the dovetail. Be sure to not get the corner of the dovetail to sharp, as this could promote cracking over time. I love to keep things original, but if original is screwed up, fix it right. Good luck! Matt
  7. Richard, What was the name of the shop you worked at in philly? I worked as a tool smith in a shop on Front St. Mazzola and Sons We ran a Nazel 3B, 100 lb. Little Giant, 50lb. Dinelt Eisenhardt, and a 50 lb. Barnett hammer. They also had a 3B and 2B not installed. When the shop finnaly closed about 9 years ago, I bought the 2B, and alot of other tooling. Anyhow, good to hear from you and Stewart. I am hosting a hammer in at my shop in Maryland on October 23rd. If you guys can make the hike come on down. My web site is harrismetalsmith.com
  8. Dave, Thanks for the info. I removed the plug just to test that, and while it made it easier to start the motor, I still think I am going to have to clutch start it for now. My phase conveter is a bit redneck. I am using a "pony" motor to get my 15 h.p. spinning, and them throwing power to the 15 h.p. It works for now, I would like to refine my phase convertor, and get more starting power. I am going to use that ball setup valve anyhow, because it takes strain off the motor start, hopefully prolonging the life of the motor. I have the 2B running on a 1200 rpm, 7.5 hp motor. Those low rpm motors are hard to come by, so I appreciate the info to make it last. Thanks, Matt
  9. Dave, No I am not aware of a way to take the load off the piston. Is that the ball valve setup on the side of your 3B? Do you hook that up to the plugged pipe thread hole between the valves? Yes I would love to know of a way to do that! Thanks
  10. John N. Thanks for the heads up. I will keep an eye on that. I think the crank shaft is slightly bent. About 20% of the teeth on the flywheel had been damaged by something. Maybe at one time the crank shaft and flywheel took a hit. I have it set up to run on a clutch type belt. My phase convertor is not powerful enough to start it cold, without the motor spinning. However, it does seem to be running much better after re-shimming. Do you have alot of experience with Nazels? Thanks, Matt
  11. Here are a few more pictures of the valve re-build. The first shows the valve after brazing, ready to turn down on the lathe. Ths second is an inside view of the valve sleeve, before lapping in the valve. I was able to get the knock out of the main crank shaft. turns out the back bearing was shimmed .010, which I reduced to .004. The front bearing was shimmed a crazy.045. I reduced it to .008. The beast is getting in shape!
  12. I use the conveyor belting under both of my trip hammers, it definitely helps a bit with shock. I think its easier on the hammers as well. I would definitely make the pad thicker than 5" 12" minimal 24" is better yet. I have a hammer mounted on a 36" base and it runs much better than the one I move around on the 1 1/2" thick plate.
  13. Hello John, I just read your blog, very nice. Thanks for the encouraging words. It has been a VERY LONG process.
  14. Very nice blog John, keep up the good work!
    I finaly got my Nazel 2B ticking, just have to rebuild the two main bearings and it will be good to go full time. Hope you can make it to the hammer in at my shop on the 23rd of October.
    Matt Harris

  15. Yesterday I finally put the valves back together. As I posted earlier the valves were sent out to be profesionally cylintricaly ground. The guy told me the one larger one had a slight " belly" down the lenghth of it. They were dead on when they came back. First I brazed the valves with low fuming bronze rod. Then I turned them down on my lathe to within .001 to .002. I re-installed the sleaves into the machine and then lapped the valves into place. After putting on the covers, I powered up, and................. The ram finaly drew up into the housing!!!! It also now has good control in the planishing, light blows, another thing it didn't do before. I am PUMPED!!! This has been a way long process, and I can see light at the end of the tunnel. I still have a shake to take out of the main crank shaft, and get a new round belt to the oiler. I am manualy cranking the Manzel oiler during testing. Later on I will post a video.
  16. Dave, thanks for any info. I sent the valve sleeves out to be precision honed, they wound up cylintricaly grinding them because the slots are so large, the hone would slip through. I have brazed up the valves themselves, once the sleeves come back, I will turn them down, and lap them into place. Hopefuly this was a large part of my problem, air leaking around the worn out valves. If I still cannot get the ram to draw up, I am going to temporarily plug that hole with some UltraBlack, and see what that does. Bob Bergman suggested to temporarily plug it in an e-mail. An interesting note on the valve sleeves, the honing guy said they are not regular cast iron, he said they had a high nickle content in them. I will post some pictures of the process.
  17. Just wondering if anyone has read the book, Digital Temperature Control for the Blacksmith Forge available from artisanideas.com? I appreciate any feedback, I am considering ordering it.
  18. Hey Nazel owners, would you mind chiming in on this picture of my bottom valve on my 2B? I am wondering about the holes and grove on the end. I think this may be a later modification of the valve. For exhausting extra air. I say this because when I first got the hammer the cushion plug was way too long and instead of engaging the the bushing with a precision fit of a few thousands it was undersized by about a 1/4", and it was about 10" long. I think instead of allowing the cushion plug to cushion the top of the ram stroke they made that stupid plug, out of steel no less, and used the holes and grove in the picture to exhaust the extra air. The hole travel path goes from the main valve portion travels down through the valve to the grove on the end and gets dumped into the crank rod cavity below the bottom piston housing. In other words it gets dumped outside the pressurized portion of the machine, for what reason? I am thinking this is the main reason I have not been able to get the ram to draw up when I first power on. The only reason I can figure is that when they had the pedal all the way down, at full ram stroke, with the crappy cushion plug fix, they needed to exhaust some air to keep the ram from smacking up top. Just wondering out loud. Want I really want to know is if anyone else has holes and a grove like that in their bottom valve. I know from the patent info I posted earlier that they changed the design over the years. My hammer is a Nazel, not a later Lobdell or United. Serial # 1284 Also curious about the year of manufacture. I f anyone has a serial # close to mine and you know anything about it's date, please let me know. I think it's 1930'ish, not sure. Bring on your thoughts. Thanks for any help!!!!
  19. Hello all, I am fairly new here, but I wanted to share some valuable information with anyone interested in Nazel self contained air hammers. I have a 2B that I bought from an industrial forge and press shop in Philly, that I worked at. I am coming down the home stretch on getting this hammer up and running. If you own a Nazel you probably know by now that there is a limited amount of information available, let alone for free. I found several original Nazel patents on this web site and I wanted to pass them along to anyone interested. They are not an easy read as much of the language is legal, patent like, but it is good info straight from the original inventors. The web site is. In the search bar type the following patent no.s 1,051,510 1,084,707 1,268,231 1,268,270 1,429,421 2,119,975 You can download each patent as a PDF and print it. Hope you all enjoy this as much as I did!
  20. Thomas, very cool that you have the original motor mount. A mentor of mine has a #1 with the original motor mount. I did not have that luxury, so my motor mount was this. For my foundation I dug a 2 foot deep cube. When I poured the concrete, I set a very heavy thick pipe straight up about 6" behind the rear of the hammer. The pipe came up about a foot above the hammer. That gave a sturdy base for the motor mount to come off. I welded up a motor bracket and line shaft bracket, off of that heavy pipe. My drive motor has a V belt pulley that drives another V belt on a line shaft. The line shaft is held in place by two pillow block bearings. On the other end of the line shaft is a custom pulley I made on the lathe. That pulley is 2" wide and 4" in diameter. I use 2" wide cotton belting with alligator strips as the main belt that goes around the hammer drive pulley. The custom pulley I made has 1/4" thick plate flanges to keep the belt from working off the sides. The flanges are probably 5" diameter. This is probably not clear enough in writing so if you like I will post pictures on the blog portion of my web site, harrismetalsmith.com. I will also measure the diameters of the two V belt pulleys so you can get the right speed. The pulley set up should be the similar for a #0 or a #1, because the receiving pulley on those hammers is the same size. You may need to change one size to slow the #1 down. I copied my pulley set up off one of my mentors in PA, who had been running Champions since the mid 70's. He was the one who sold me on their use. As for other suggestions make sure the arm pins fit well in the spring arm holes. Where the spring wraps around the pin. Those pins should be no more than a 1/16" smaller than the spring holes. If they are sloppy the hammer won't hit right. One of the #0's I tunned had like 1 1/4" pins in a 1 3/4" hole. WAY to sloppy. The dovetail ways should be a little looser than you might think. Very scientific sounding, I know. But the best thing to do with them is after you have the hammer up and running. Move them in and out with the set screws until they are snug but not so snug as to stop the ram mid way in its stroke. The most major thing of course with any power hammer is the main shaft babbit bearings. If they are not right that is the first thing you should fix. The Little Giant book has great info on how to do that along with proper tolerances. I guess we could listen to a Little Giant for something Hope that helps.
  21. I've used bar oil with good success, on my mechanical hammer. I does cling allot better than the thinner oils. You may find it a bit too thick in severe cold.
  22. Feel free to visit my website harrismetalsmith.com. You can reach me on the contact page.

  23. You have an excellent hammer there! I have spent about 2000 hours running champion hammers in my 12 years as a full time smith. These are my recomendations for the champion hammer I would run it on a larger motor for production work. I have an #0 and I burnt two 1.5 hp motors. I have it running on a 3 hp and have had no problems since. I rebuilt two #0's and one #1. The best thing you can do with these champion hammers is oil the heck out of them. The only place you should not oil is on the drive belt surface area. One main thing to do. Make sure the toggle arms. The four arms that conect the ram to the spring arm, are drawn up so they are almost level. Not level. About 3/4" slop. you can measure this by holding a straight edge across the pins holding the arms at the spring, and the main pin through the ram should be about 3/4" of an inch below the straight edge. Play with this to find the optimum stroke for your hammer. This will also be affected by how far down you set the whole ram and spring arm assembly. To start tunning I would set that halfway with the double set screw holding the main pin. Going back to the toggle arms. If they are too sloppy, the hammer will skip or double hit. When they are too tight you stand a good chance of snapping the toggle arm at the spring pin junction. One other member recomended not over driving the bottom die wedge. RIGHT ON! My hammer was repaired due to this long before I got it. It is much better to re tighten the wedges every so often than to crack that front piece out. When mine was repaired they set the cracked piece back in place, drilled and tapped for three 3/4" bolts, bolted the 3 bolts after that, then they ground a V all the way around the 3 outside planes and welded it. I have had no problems with it, but I baby it there. If you get the arms tunned correctly you will love this hammer. And yes as onother member said it will out work a little giant any day. The first 4 years I smithed with a blacksmith who owned a little giant. After switching to the champion I will never go back. Have fun and good luck!
  24. Hello; I have a hammer for sale on ebay that was made by the Dienelt and Eisenhardt Co. I too have been unable to come up with anything on this co. Let me know if you do.
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