Judson Yaggy

By post drill do you mean the hand cranked-bolts onto a timber type? Like Frank I've only seen the adjustable feed type, a set screw of sorts limits the throw of the pawl, speed is according to how fast you crank. Some do allow for adjusting the length of the hand crank, kind of adjusting the speed at the expense of torque. If you can't find what you want, something's got to give. Which of your criteria is least important to you?

Sure seems to jump around a lot, especially on the up stroke, a bit disconcerting. I agree wayyyy too slow, you could do more work on a properly tuned hammer half that size.

That's probably full replacement cost for the insurance company buying a modern replacement, not an "I want an anvil for my hobby" price. They probably tacked on a little to the new anvil price to make up for the age of the original. Insurance companies just don't know the details of anvils.

Thomas is right, heat treating is a waste of money. Even if fully normalized from a plasma cut, forklift tines (4140? A good but unknown alloy at the very least) will be much harder AND tougher than all of those cast iron and ductile swage blocks out there. One piece of your design that I would change is the way your deepest V lines up with the end of your rectangular slot and the bottom of one of the round swages. This give you a major cross sectional reduction in one plane. I'd move some of those elements around to try and keep cross section changes to a minimum. Probably doesn't matter because of the aforementioned quality of the steel, but I bet your heat treater won't like it if you do go that route. Also, I'd put at least a 1/8" fillet on each and every inside corner. 1/8" minimum, slightly bigger would be better.

Wow, good nose Bruce. Those suckers are wicked rare. I'd love to see one run and see how well the air spring valving works. We should start a rare hammers thread, no LGs, Fairbanks or Bradleys need apply! What's that museum about? Perhaps another thread we all should start would be links and locations of historic and industrial museums with smithing content.

When I bought my 85# hammer the top die was stuck badly. The key was inboard of the edges of the die, and both ends were so close in size it was impossible to tell which was the skinny end and which the large. Beating with large sledges didn't budge it. I soaked the whole thing in a bucket of kero for a week, made a hardened driver that was the same size as what I thought was the skinny end, welded that to an air chipping hammer shank, and used the air gun to drive the wedge out. Repeated small blows did more to vibrate the wedge loose than a few big blows did. The real surprise came when the wedge popped out. It wasn't one key, it was two. Some gorilla had driven in two opposing wedges and that was why I couldn't tell fat from skinny end of the key. Both ends were the fat end! Barely got it out, and glad it didn't break.

If I recall, most oak species shrink from 4% to 5% from green to kiln dried. Once dry they move slightly less than 1% seasonally of course greatly affected by local conditions. This is across the grain, timbers do shrink slightly along their length but it's a very small amount.

NPR, Bluegrass, Irish drinking songs and Newfoundland sea shanties, occasional Dead and Beethoven's 9th, some punk to remind me of bygone days... thou when the ear plugs are in it's mostly listening to music by memory. NPR although great is not alway conductive to production as I find myself interested enough in the story that I will delay making noise. Glad to hear so many folks are using satellite, just built a house for one of the Sirius/XM executives hopefully the last check will clear ;)

Looks like I'm a little late with this advice, but do you know the trick of grinding a point onto your threaded rod to help it worm thru slightly mis aligned holes? Hope you got that stuck drill bit back out, or is that some special nut? As a former timber framer, I would recommend a drill guide like this for any one else doing this. http://www.timberwolftools.com/tools/protool/P-GDP.html

Heard the joke about the blacksmith? "What's the difference between a large pizza and a blacksmith? A large pizza can feed a family of four..." Black humor aside, good luck and it can be done as long as you can stay creative, flexible, and focused. Build a rainy day fund from day one. Ted's advice about a business plan and sticking with it is golden. Never lower your quality or your prices for a quick sale, your integrity is paramount. All of the rich people in your area know each other, all of the architects in your area know each other, and all of them will talk about you amongst themselves at some point. What they say has to be consistent and good. Finally, the late great Bill Gitchner alway said "Never take down your WELDING sign."

I know a few smiths that do production runs of smaller items, think door hardware or craft shop nick nacks. They use dry tumblers, home made out of plastic drums, things like ironworker punch outs or small saw drops for media. They hook a shop vac to the pipe/axle to remove dust. Not fast but turn it on and walk away. One guy at the last hammer-in told me he puts on his finish in the same tumbler, soak a dryer sheet in the ubiquitous turpentine/linseed/beeswax finish, toss into the tumbler, run till all looks good.

Hi Jim- New England Blacksmiths have occasional anvil repair days, contact Bob Menard on the NEB site http://www.newenglandblacksmiths.org/contacts.htm to see if he is planning one at his shop in Portland anytime soon. There is also often one mid winter in Western Mass., I'd join NEB (only $20) and ask around.

I'm rebuilding my Kane & Roach 85# hammer. Started in on the babbit for the main shaft today, and found a modification that I assume was done by a previous owner. A series of drilled holes to key in the babbit. Doesn't appear in the top caps, but they have a lip all the way around the babbit seat to lock it in. What do you guys think, original to the hammer or old modification? I've never re-babbited a hammer before, are keys and lips common? The rooster pic is just for fun, the iron clad rule here is NO chickens in the shop, a concept my wife's free range birds seem to have difficulty understanding.

Yup, Thomas is right, just checked AIA. Columbians were all cast steel, not half and half. It was the Trenton anvil, made by the Columbus Co. I was thinking of. Columbus, not Columbian. Sorry. Good catch Thomas.

Warning- Off topic and could get political, so this is all I'll say about it. It's very well documented that women in America with similar degrees/qualifications/work experience to their male counterparts make 60% of male salaries. If she was a spendthrift and bad with budgets then it would be her own xxxx fault, but hard saying not knowing.

You guys all live in the wrong place. ;) Round here we have a few ticks that have arrived in the last few warm years, a small patch of poison ivy down by the river, and the usual May thru August mosquitos and black flies. Poisonous snakes are apocryphal, someone's granddad said he saw a timber rattler up on the big cliffs east of town back in 1973, spiders are harmless and fun to watch weaving webs that catch aforementioned mosquitos, and scorpions would drown in the puddles. Even the honeybees have never heard of a place called Africa. Of course you have to put up with freezing and sometimes sub zero F temps 5 months of the year and possible rain every day all year long.

Interesting anvil. The small step made me initially think Brooks/Vaughn, but the heel is too thin. Looks like a mild casting defect in the parting line under the horn, but the edges of the face look honestly worn, chipped and rusted. Perhaps one of the cast base/forged top half anvils like Columbian? Never seen a live Columbian on the hoof, just going off pictures here...

You probably already know this but the factory literature for the model D calls for 300 bpm and a 5 hp motor.

I went reading on the JSME archive today, like Don Schad said in the other thread, the paper on anvil to tup weight ratios seems to settle on a number of about 10:1. As the husband of a research scientist I understand the importance of peer reviewed research and would be slightly skeptical of charts like the CECO one on anvilfire or the one Bruce posted as both were produced by folks trying to sell stuff and neither seem to have cited their sources or explained their research. Interesting that they seem to say opposite things. Here is the address of the Japanese anvil ratio paper. http://ci.nii.ac.jp/...=1341018106&cp= The first thing that struck me about the Japanese paper was that as engineers do he assumed perfect conditions and the cross sectional transformation of tall rectangular stock to a shorter wider rectangular work piece. As practicing blacksmiths we all know that when you hit hot steel on an anvil it will either belly out from the center of the stock, or fish mouth out from the top and bottom. You can get a finished product with both, but we know which will be better. As blacksmiths we live in the margins of our modern world, perhaps it's fitting that the difference between a good forging and and great one is also in the thin margin of anvil to tup ratio. Like the great Mark Asprey says, "I'm just a blacksmith." This is a wonderful discussion, let's keep it going.

There is a link to a Japanese study in this thread. Also there is some text on the Phonex hammer website, not sure how scientific it is. Also remember someone (John Larson?) talking about old Chambersburg? literature where they tested anvil efficiency by measuring the squish of lead blocks. Perhaps he will chime in.

The middle number will be a 0, 1, 2, or 3 , if that helps in deciphering the scratches.

From what I remember from last time we had a Fisher vise thread NJanvilman said the #1's and #2's came without a leg. IIRC the #1s are more rare. Looks to be in good shape! Read down to the bottom of page 1 in the thread below.

Like Red said, you see them around here from time to time. I passed on a mint Green River one a few years ago for $100 and have been kicking myself ever since. A tailgater at the last New England Blacksmith meet had a fair condition no name for $75, had an interesting curved step/ cam mechanism to the treadle. I suspect that if you are in old farm country near old manufacturing areas they might be more common as they were often used as horseshoing vises.

Sounds less than ideal with both the quality of the stair and the scheduling involved. Perhaps neither are your fault, but they could become your problem. Hope you priced the job accordingly, I'd want big $ for what you've described or I'd walk away. That being said there are a few ways to go about this. If you have a portable bender take it and a piece of tube with you to the site. Bend and twist the tube till it kisses the nose of each tread. If you can't run torches inside a finished house this will mean a lot of back and forth to your truck in the driveway. Be sure to put down protection over the stairs, you don't want to damage them. Then using a laser level, take an overall rise of the stair measurement. Use this number along with your template to build the rail. It's a fine line between a tube thin enough to be bent on site and strong enough to not sag when being used as a template. Method number 2 requires a stairway where the stairwell is open. Make a reference point on the floor, measure over to the first nose, snap a chalk line from point to nose, record distance and nose hight. From same reference measure to second nose, distance, hight, angle from chalk line. Repeat for all noses. Use these numbers to either bend a bottom rail or build a mock-up stair out of wood. Third, you can weld up a bunch of telescoping L shaped pieces of pipe, drill and tap in some set screws, and fasten them to the shape of the stairs on site. This gives you a rigid template, but watch out for shifting if it's really long. Good luck.

Thanks guys. The z for odd shaft makes sense, it's extra long to pass thru the blower housing.