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I Forge Iron

Judson Yaggy

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Posts posted by Judson Yaggy

  1. Hinge on the bottom after a design in the Hammer's Blow (ABANA publication).  Rolled barrel.

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    One piece forged corner pintles and forge welded barrels.

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    Big barn door hinges, 4 foot long.  Forge welded.  The ring pull is also a latch, it rotates.  Barn is new construction but traditional timber frame, all wooden joinery.  

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    Entry door hardware on a 1806 English style timber frame barn that I restored and rebuilt a few years ago.

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    Forge welded faux hinges on a clad refrigerator door.  The same functioning hinges were on all the other cabinetry so when closed you couldn't tell which was the fridge.  Just the kitchen in this house cost more money than I will make in my entire life.  

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  2. Definitely canceled.  Big bummer, JLP and I were supposed to be some of the demonstrators and as much time as we put into our demos it pales when compared to the time and effort donated by the organizing committee.  

    They will still be holding the large items raffle to help offset some of the losses from the cancelation.  They are raffling a Big Blu power hammer, a BAM box full of forged tools from the best smiths in the country, and a large anvil.  

  3. Careful measurements, by that I mean machine shop grade, will tell you the size of your dies and dovetails.  Once you have good dimensions of both the male and female parts then you can see if other more modern dies will work.  But once you have good numbers it might be just as easy to get a local machine shop to make new dies to your specifications.

    There are few if no Beche owners on this mostly American forum, and only a few Nazel owners.  Nazels were originally designed by and the manufacturing licensed from Beche, and I don't know if  Beche and Nazel dies were ever interchangeable, but perhaps that could be an avenue of investigation.  For what it's worth original Nazel dies are unavailable but there are some people who know how to make them.  Google Mark Krause.

    Most of the professional power hammer owners and all of the hardcore power hammer repair guys hang out on Facebook.  

  4. It's just another arrow in the quiver.   I use it especially on one off or limited run tooling.  That saves me both material cost and time needed to produce the tool.  As an architectural smith I often make a tool for one job and then never use it again, and making that tool involves welding and machining more often than not.  Doing it in an easy to work steel saves a tremendous amount of time, and then superquench gives it a shot in the arm.  Taking a mild steel tool from being able to survive a few heats to a few dozen is very valuable to me.  

  5. 4 hours ago, Old Crew said:

    I don't think that tightening the bolts on the rubber cushions would do much.

    We should probably move this to the power hammer section. 

    The lowest of the linkage arms, the toggles that connect to the tup, should be close to horizontal at rest.  Yours are out of spec.  No hammer can ever get to truly horizontal but the closer the better.     Upping the tension will pull those arms closer to ideal.  If that doesn't do it, the rubber may be tired.  I know I would be after almost 100 years!  The rubber is the spring, if tightening doesn't change anything then the spring is worn out.  There are threads here on IFI and other places about replacing rubber on Bradleys.  As a stop-gap you could rotate the rubbers 180 degrees, they are slightly wider and less fatigued at the bottom of the rubber due to the inherent geometry.  

    From the photos the babbit in the lineshaft portion looks ok, just a little scoring.  The leveling and alignment bolts are fairly common on old lineshaft stuff. Like you said, probably just overtightened.

    The worn out brake is a problem.  These were designed to function with a factory brake, as were all industrial grade mechanicals.  Lack of a brake is one of the reasons why Little Giants are considered farmer not industrial grade.  Definitely fix that.

    Tune up the brake, tune up the springs, and go to town!

  6. Old Crew, can you show us a picture of the linkages square from the front side of the hammer?   I have a Kayne&Roach which has a very similar linkage, perhaps I could help out with spring tension if I could see the positions of the arms.  

    Jennifer, you can adjust spring tension on these, the nuts on the outside of the rubbers can be cranked down to increase compression.  

    I would make the drive belt nice and tight, no slip obviously.  Then I would adjust slack belt tension so the hammer just barely cranks over with your foot off the treadle.  Then tighten the brake band till that overcomes the slack belt.  Be sure that the brake is fully disengaged when you stomp the treadle.  These are very well designed and built hammers, you should be able to get everything from single slow kissing blows to single hard blows to full on metal munching if everything is adjusted correctly.  

  7. I make a lot of tongs, both for sale and for prizes when I run the New England Blacksmiths forging competitions.  It really does make a noticeable, functional difference to have tongs matched to your handedness.  95% of what I make are right handed, the remaining fall into the scrolling tongs or power hammer tongs categories as noted above.  Power hammer tongs in particular get used in either or both hands at the same time.  Once in a blue moon someone asks for leftie tongs and I actually find them more challenging to make well as my muscle memory is so used to cranking out righties!

  8. 22 hours ago, Chris Cruz said:

    Can anyone tell me

    I should add that Fisher has been out of business for 50 years or so.  You are not going to find a stash of NOS parts.  But we here will give advise and comments for the low low price of posting photos of your tools!  We love photos!

  9. The legs on my #4s just screw into the casting.  Making a leg should be as simple as threading the end of a round bar of the appropriate size.  Even if you don't have a die set, this is something your local machine or fab shop should be able to do with their eyes closed.  

  10. Sherman blunted all the horns!  

    Citations needed before suggesting that purposeful abuse was more likely than the very common exercise of using the tip to enlarge an eye or turn a small curve, weld a whatnot, use it as a small fuller.  We all miss sometimes, I suggest that in 100 or 200 years of 12 hours a day 6 days a week use mis-strikes happened frequently.  As modern smiths we underestimate wildly how often an anvil in a production shop was struck.  2000 times a day?  10,00?  With strikers?  No wonder we see worn tools!

    Also some anvils were made with blunter horns, look at some of the German anvils.

    Bicks are bouncy, lack mass, and inefficient for forging.  They do work well for some operations, but given the choice I'll work over the tip of the horn any day.  And would fire/kick out of the shop any apprentice or journeyperson who purposely degraded a well made tool.  

  11. Don't forget that they were an agricultural tool, and mostly made for use by slaves or subsistence farmers.  They would have been made of mostly wrought iron the cheapest way possible (forge welded, even the eye) and then used, remade, used again, etc.  Surviving historical pieces are mostly worn out!  Originals were probably bigger before wear.  

    Unrelated note, those are my favorite kind of tongs!

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