Jarntagforge

The hammer is home! Thanks for the advice, friends! It was really useful to hear about putting wood boards underneath. I think it anchored the hammer well onto the truck bed - wood being a perfect mix of stoft and sticky and supportive. I couldn't notice any movement at any time. We really underdid ourselves on the fastening. A chain and a strap for the anvil. Two chains and one strap for the hammer (and one strap to hold the ram in the air). Yeah it was dangerous, but at least we drove carefully and had long safety distances between us and the car in front of us. Some cops in a car we passed on the roads really turned their heads to look at the load but they didn't stop us. That's my dad on the picture with all the trucks and our feisty steel horse. A thing the crane operator told us was that it was lucky that it was raining, as it cools the tires. The tires could overheat when driving long distances with heavy loads. The front tires got a little warm but not anything alarming. We stopped every 1,5 h on the way home. The way there took 7 hours and the way back took 8 hours. So sleepiness was also a danger. That's why we drove carefully and stopped often. The hammer felt small when I looked at it at home, and when I measured the footprint of it, I realized it was a size smaller. It's a 75 kg hammer, and the seller said 120! The closest model was a 100 kg one so I went by that. But I got it for less than scrap price so I'm happy anyway. With transport it cost me 900€. I'll have to fix it up, it's out of tune somehow and only has a 4.5 kW motor that they said is too small also. Best regards, Jakob Staffans @Jarntagforge

Thanks for the tips. I'll bring some 2" boards and place them under the load. As for getting it off, our neighbours have a JCB tractor so I'll ask them first if it has the capacity to lift it, otherwise I'll widen my search. The hammer can wait ontop of the truck.

Hey all, I've bought a 100-year-old two-piece self-contained airhammer. It's a Mammutwerke model MW3 from Nürnberg, Germany. It's in southern Finland though so it's not that far. The hammer body weighs 2200 kg/4890 lbs and the anvil 1300 kg/ 2890 lbs. The seller arranges extraction from the blacksmith shop and onto our Renault S150 midliner. I have a few questions I hope some wise man or woman could answer. Our midliner truck has a flat bed, made up of softer sheet steel on the frame, do I need to put wooden boards under the power hammer to distribute the load evenly on both the hammer and truck? Or is that even a stupid idea for some reason? I'm a little worried about the hammer possibly standing on a few bearing points and driving with it through bumps and uneven roads for 7 hours. What if the ring-like part of the hammer that holds the anvil cracks? Another thing I'm wondering about is what are the minimum requirements for fastening such a heavy load to the truck? We have 3 half-inch chains with tightheners and five 2-inch, 50 mm ratchet tie-down straps. That's 8 fasteners all in all. I assume 4 fasteners per piece is minimum. Are these enough for this load or do I need to buy more? Here's a truck with bed similar to my dad's Renault S150., minus the fold-down-ramp. I'm thinking I might put the hammer body close to the cab and the anvil behind the body. My dad and brother-in-law will becoming along. What do you guys and gals think, is there any other advice that's good to know? Best regards, Hobby blacksmith, Jakob Staffans Kimo, Finland Here's a link to a german forum with some pictures of a hammer of this make, but the hammer in that forum is smaller, a 50 kg model. and here's a video of that 50 kg MW1 running. Watch out, the audio is broken and gives "BEEP" "BLIP" sometimes so keep the volume down.

Thanks! Last weekend I and my girlfriend went on another trip. We drove up from Vaasa to Tornio on a friday where I bought this 250 gallon/1000 liter air tank. It's from 1988 but it had been inspected at least 4 times. Which is all really re-assuring! Last time was in 2017. I'm gonna use it mainly for my home-made airhammer. After that we drove over to Sweden to buy a 150 kg/330 lb sawyer's anvil. No dents or anything. I heard it's good for forging on as it rebounds really well all-over, as opposed to heeled anvils. Will be fun to try it. Then we stayed the night in Luleå, ate at a fancy restaurant, and drove down to Umeå the next day. We walked around town, ate at a fancy restaurant, had some drinks and stayed in a hotel which served a great breakfast the next day. Then we took the boat back to Vaasa on sunday. best regards, Jakob Staffans Vaasa, Finland

It seems faces is his thing. He does some other stuff too. Here's his gallery. http://oshipala.com/gallery.html

Here's another video of him, where he actually uses a jack hammer!

Do you know the stroke length of a 200 lb Chambersburg utility hammer? I built one homemade utility hammer and would like to modify it to have the same stroke length :-)

Related question. Could a 250 kg, 550 lb air hammer be used for making hammers and axes without the additional weight of the tup being a significant downside? Because you can cycle it down and just tap the work. A bigger hammer is always better, is my thinking. But actually this is my question so I shouldn't answer it myself. What do you guys think?

Thanks, Beaver! If anyone else have any ideas I'd be curious to know more about in-slides power hammers vs clear space hammers. At some point all manufacturers moved away from in slides. Is there some disadvantage to them? One think I'm thinking of is throat height (if that's the term). As in height of the working piece and top tools. Clear space hammers seems like they can fit more stuff. If I were to say for example "I'm going to buy this in-slides hammer for 3000€." Would anyone quickly remark something like "Don't buy that 100 year old technology, buy the newer Bêchés!" ? 250 kg Bahco (this is the potential seller's instagram)

I don't know, I didn't ask anyone for permission I just did it First we picked up the spring hammer from the retiring blacksmith on the first photo, and then we went to IKEA So the girlfriend was happy. I borrowed her dad's big Ford Transit van and I pushed it near its payload weight limit with this... The van should be able to hold 1500 kg and this hammer was anything between 1000 and 1400 kg, maybe 1100? On top of that was the large old-style electrical motor whose weight we just ignored but probably weighed at least 200 kg... we loaded the hammer from the back of the van and you could hear all kinds of creaking sounds. The suspension sunk down... to still an acceptable height. *phew* Then we drove to Ikea, loaded up some furniture and drove home. Thinking back on the loading I get anxious. Would have sucked so hard if anything on the car had broken down, 5 hours ride away from home.

You could look on online flea markets or ebay or such. I found exactly what you were looking for but in Finland. A local reclaimed steel and steel trader is retiring and selling his stock. Even if he hadn't been retiring he would still have a bunch of it. Maybe there's someone local. You could ask local construction steel suppliers for info on such traders.

You could look further. Netherlands and France. Ask french or dutch friends for good websites where they sell that stuff. I've had good road trips with my girlfriend when buying equipment.

Yeah sure, I would like those plans. You can send them to me at [email protected] Thanks a lot. I have a question. There's a similar hammer for sale in Sweden. It's a Bahco and it's identical in design to yours so I guess they perhaps bought a liscence or something and made copies of Massey hammers, those old ones, like the one you have. The one I know of is 550 lb. I was wondering what's the practical difference, or difference in operation or longevity or similar between those old air hammers with in-line rams and the newer cylinder-rams like on newer Masseys or Anyangs? Rectangular rams and cylinder rams.

What a great thread. Thanks for all the information and sharing from everyone, especially you, BeaverNZ. I have a question, I read it all and I don't think I saw this anywhere. Shouldn't the anvil have wood directly under it? Maybe it does? I tried to see if you wrote you put wood under it but I couldn't find anything. I ask because when reading this book on page 543 and 544, https://ia600205.us.archive.org/24/items/machineryfoundat00crof/machineryfoundat00crof.pdf it seems to me they put wood under the anvils. To my understanding to absorb the impact so the slides don't have to, and that the frame would break otherwise. But then again of course I don't know the answers either way, I'm just asking. I dig you hammer!

No, I don't do production work. There doesn't seem to be much activity on these forums (from what I can see) so I thought giving my opinion to bounce ideas on was better than nothing. Quick change dies is always a pro, but everyone I see on instagram and youtube use saddle tools or other types of tools on top of flat dies. Unless it's axe making, it seems to be flat dies all the way.

Regarding motor and power transferral, Little Giant 250 and 500 lb hammers may not be eactly the same but they're very similar. It's easy to imagine - is your hammer sluggish? Add power! But other than that I agree with the previous posters - if Clay's design says 65 lb then that's what the frame is designed for. You need to reinforce the frame in that case (all of the hammer) if you want a heavier ram.

The point with that socket type is for easy die change, from what I can see. Is this something you need? I think people find extra dies are superfluent. One set of flat dies and one set of combination/drawing dies is all that most need. Also those dies are a pain to fabricate, and the receiving parts on the hammer likewise. Another advantage of the Abno no.1 dies may be that they can be rotated for better access. But the lower die can't be rotated so forget that point. If rotation was important then the 800 pound air hammers would be total failures... If you want easy socket change then make your own dovetails. It shouldn't be that hard with careful angle grinding. I have bolted flat dies on my home built airhammer and have plans for spring tools to hold in my left hand. You can have all your additional dies in your hands instead. That! Is elegant! Take a look at Brent Bailey's youtube videos. It'll change your outlook. I think one set of flat dies and one set of either combination dies or drawing dies is all you need. On flat dies you can put all kinds of saddle tools and also top tools and spring tools. Abno socket dies may be overdoing it.

Sure. I have pictures of the process on my instagram, @jarntagforge There were two 13x6" I-beams put parallel to each other. I cut out the flanges on both in the location where they were to be welded, kind of partly a stair step cut. Then I welded them. Then for the S-curve I took two new plates in the same size as the flanges and bent a smooth curve in each using my fly press. Having two curves gives me an S-shape. Then I used them as a guide to cut away the excess material from the I-beam where the curve is. After that simply weld them in place. When making this hammer I had these qualities in mind in this order of priority: 1. Looks 2. Mobility 3. Strength 4. Function I wanted the hammer to resemble Chambersburg utility hammers. It might be far from it but I see it and I like it. Also the function can be altered using different valves in the future so I'm not worried. It does okay and can do single hits. Also I forgot to mention that I also included a 200€ air compressor in the price. So it was a cheap hammer.

I haven't built one using the kit, but I have built a kinyon styled hammer using the local hardware store's air components. My hammer uses a 5/2 valve and two roller valves. 400 lb anvil and 88 pound ram. What does tup mean? I guess it's ram but why is it called tup? Yeah, this hammer wasn't that hard to build. Only thing is you need a plasma cutter and a good welding machine. I'll have to make a good base for the hammer because otherwise I'm sure the welds will break. I'll either place it standing on concrete, or on I-beams sandwiched between a second base plate and bolted through. My air components cost about 700€ and then I got the cylinder for real cheap. The whole machine was about 1700€. Partly reclaimed steel, cylinder, and dad's welding rods. Oh, and I haven't gotten arond to making a proper foot treadle yet, I just put the valve in front to test out the hammer.

I asked an experienced blacksmith with a utility hammer and he said he bought his hammers based on price and proximity. Essentially he said not to make things too complicated or too expensive, and simply buy the cheapest, closest and easiest setup hammers and get to work to make money to buy more hammers.... That's very reasonable and sound advice. It's easy to get carried away. He didn't comment on the differences in operation between utility hammers and self-contained ones, which is still a very interesting question. I'll provide some links here for comparison. Grant Sarver's 700 pound Bell hammer. Obviously he has finetuned this hammer very well, which is hard to do. But look at the control he got. https://youtu.be/sjrENY6wZm8 Russian airhammer, M4129. Without the "a" on the end it should be a 75 kg model. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWYVJcrlMcY Here's some industrial forging with a bigger russian self-contained hammer. Maybe it can shed some light to the usefulness of self-contained hammers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h55FH3mgHmY

Seems like the anvil is its own piece free from the hammer. Was it free standing in a hole or was it covered in concrete? Don't people sometimes cover the anvil in concrete, maybe more on Massey self-contained ones?

marcusb, congrats on your own hammer, I saw it in another thread. I don't have a large air compressor and neither a surge tank. It would drive up the cost a lot, that's true. I would estimate the price to be 3000 for the hammer, 500€ transport (it's in Finland), 1000€ for an air compressor, 1000€ for a 2000 L surge tank, 800€ for the concrete, that's 6300€. The treadle seems to be missing but I think that'd be the least of any worries. From the pictures it seems it has a pedal, connected to an additional air cylinder which operates the directional valve. It could most likely be replaced by a treadle. That is some work of course, probably nothing compared to the move and concrete foundation. The self-contained hammer then, 2500€, 700€ transport, 800€ concrete, that's 4000€. With any hammer, there's a lot of work involved. And the cost is probably not the biggest concern either, compared to being satisfied with the purchase afterwards. A bigger hammer is always better... I have dreams of doing large sculptural work and even industrial forging or similar. Is there any benefit to self-contained hammers operation-wise? Say you have a utility hammer installed, modified and operates well. Is one or the other more reliable, or easily maintained or repaired? How about long running times?

Hey! I've been wondering for a year about two hammers. I don't have a large enough shop to put them in at the moment so I'm not meaning to buy them right now. But if I had, I might! These are the hammers. Massey utility power hammer. 110 kg/242 lbs ram. he's asking 3000€. https://www.nettikone.com/muu-merkki/b-s-massey/1770310 He said it needs 2 cubic meters of air/minute which is 70 cubic feet/minute. If it's anything similar in size to Essential Craftsman's hammer it needs 90 cfm. 3000 kg machine, of which is 1500 kg the anvil and 110 kg the ram. Stanko MA4129A 80 kg/176 lbs. 2500€. I think it weighs about 3300 kg. https://kaup21.ee/toode/sepavasar-ma4129a/ The question I've been wondering about is how do I compare these hammers? One is bigger, and a utility hammer, the other one is self-contained. Michael Dillon has shown that utility hammers can be just as good as self-contained. The old russian Stanko hammers I heard are based off of German Bêché hammers so they might be quality work horses. Watching instagram and how many people have utility hammers they don't seem too bad either. (why would they be?). So how do I compare these hammers? Thanks! Jakob Staffans, Vasa, Finland.

I'm thinking this could be a German UAT anvil. Could it be so?

Okay, thanks for the info, mates!