Judson Yaggy

Rough it out square. Tip the sow block, not the mill head. Finish cuts with a ball end mill cutter. Steel hates a sharp corner.

"art long, life short"? Trying to learn more Latin.

tongs

My recomendation is for best practice, smaller hammers need not apply. I ran a 25# LG for 7 years on a 4" slab not even bolted down, it was good enough. Would I do the same today knowing what I know now? No. A friend has a 3b set up same as Bob B's, it's totally destroyed his slab. Frosty's thickend slab is a good compromise for hammers of a certain size.

Just a smaller get-together, often hands on. Bob got to you too?

That is a Jere Kirkpatric (Valley Forge) treadle hammer. Don't know if he's still around. Google it. He made them commercially and sold the plans and a kit for same back in the 90's and early 2000's. They were around $700 25 years ago. I sold mine a month after buying my first fly press.

Keep your power hammer inertia block isolated from your structural concrete unless you plan on running a hammer of 50# or less and don't have close neighbors.

I own one, a V&O 20 ton OBI. And I have forged with it, only a little, because I have other better forging tools. Many high end blacksmith shops around here have them for dedicated tasks. But those same shops all have more than one power hammer and hydraulic presses for the simple reason that hammers and hydraulic forging presses are more versitile and user friendly. Punch presses are useful for a certain type of work, no, in fact excellent for a certain type of work, but I'm not sure I'd advise a newbie to get one. I personally know 2 guys who have lost fingers to punch presses, skilled machinists both. If I HAD to scrap one tool in my shop it would be the OBI. If we are to ballance economy versus flexability a home built Rusty type or spare tire hammer could be built by a resourceful beginner for the same price as a scrap OBI press, with the added benifit of not having to deal with the (probably) 3 phase motors found on old punch presses. Remember, the OP sounded like a beginner. A punch press is less of a backyard/garage shop tool than a home built power hammer.

update The NEB 2018 Spring Meet will be June 1-3 in Brentwood, NH The 2018 Spring Meet will be a working meet at our Brentwood Teaching Center. We will be making tools to be used at the teaching tent at the 2020 ABANA Conference. Conference attendees will be divided into multiple teams led by experienced forge masters. There will also be teams fabricating six new forges. There will be tasks for all experience levels so come join in. Once the ABANA Conference is over, all the tools we make for the teaching tent will be returning with us. They will make it into our auctions, Iron-In-The-Hat, our raffles, and as prizes for our forging contests. Dinner Saturday night will be by Goody Cole’s Smokehouse in Brentwood. There will be coffee, tea & probably donuts Saturday morning, a pancake breakfast on Sunday morning. I don’t know what the arraignments are for Saturday’s lunch are at this point. There is camping available at our facility. No hookups, though. As always, bring eye and ear protection, non-synthetic clothing, and anything else you will need for a working meet. Check back for full meet information and registration info.

Really rare hammer! They were built not far from where I sit, and even here in the NE USA where there are a LOT of antique mechanicals I've never seen one in 25 years of smithing. Good score. The linkage is similar to the Bradley Compact hammers or Kane & Roach, try looking up those brands for info on tuning. There are still rubbers (springs) available for similar hammers from Cortland Machine (the surviving Bradley dealer) and several hammer rebuilding experts who mostly hang out on Facebook. Can't post links here, it's against the rules. University of Vermont has a rare book section called the Bailey-Howe Library, if I recall it was partly endowed by an industrialist family from Rutland.

+1 for John N. for all things Massey. Interesting how long the ram guides on that thing are!

About 10 and 15 posts down from yours.

I like smooth jawed tongs and go so far as to ease the corners and edges of my bits with a file to a little radius so the tongs don't mar the work. Surface finish is improtant to me. YMMV

You stole that thing! I paid around $200 each for mine and I was super happy with the prices.

I have 2 of that size vise, it's a Fisher #4 if the jaws are 6" wide. Yes, the bottom screw is bent, someone ran the top screw too far in before starting the bottom screw. You have to be careful to start both screws at the same time and keep the rotations matched if there is no chain to keep them indexed. Try to back out the top screw a little and see if that loosens up the bind on the bottom screw. With care you can probably get it straight again. The body of the vise is cast iron (jaws are steel) and the screws are either wrought iron or mild steel, with the cog wheel that would hold the chain being cast iron. This cog is held on the screw shaft with a thru pin, and sometimes that pin comes loose and binds against the crescent shaped cover part of the casting. Check to see if the pin is binding on either top or bottom screws. If it is you can gently drive it back into place with a punch. Around here we call the chain "gutter chain" as it was used to pull clean-out paddles thru manure gutters in dairy barns. On ebay or to a collector you might get $500 to $1000 for a Fisher that size in good working condition.

Antique double horns are in the minority, but look on ebay and there are still lots for sale. And I would wager that there are more NEW German/Italian/French/creative double horned hydrids currently being made than London patterns.

Modular design- if you don't like the shape of the horn or heel, just break it off and weld on a different one!

Treemont Cut Nails in MA has some machinery shown on their website and facebook pages.

25 years ago in a school district that was mostly rural with the exception of a few towns that were trending towards sub-urban we had a great shop, welders, sheet metal set-ups, Johnson forge and 2 very nice Peddinghaus anvils, jewelry making tools, etc. As well as a wood shop, and a drafting lab (mostly paper back then but they did have 2 CAD systems). Despite some funding fluctuations the school has managed to retain most of it and apparently the jewlery classes are the most popular electives offered, waiting list every year! They also have an agreement (and daily bussing) to a near by vo-tech highschool for access to machine shop, auto tech, and trade classes. Everyone got Geometry and Algebra I/Trig, and if you were headded for college Algebra II and Calc. I have yet to find much use for the calculus but I use geometry and trig every day, the trig really clicked when I built my first complicated roof! My son is just entering highschool one district over from where I lived as a kid, and his school has a similar academic regimin. The shop classes are slightly different from what I had, they have a minimal wood shop and no fabrication shop to speak of, but they have a pretty good machine shop and an absolutely incredabel 3d printing/CADD lab, and a good robotics lab. The kids also have the bussing to a tech school option as well. They also have a jewlery making studio with popular classes. We are not a wealthy district, the school admin has just prioritized educational activities over other stuff. The athletic fields and gym are pretty shabby and the less I say about the cafeteria the better, but despite years of level funding or cuts they have managed to keep the shops and labs open.

Thoughtful and well said John, thank you.

I get that effect on my round end power hammer punches when I either over-drive and work the tool down too close to the bottom die or when I try working a piece too cold.

Das, don't want to alarm you but there seems to be some sort of car in the way of your anvil. Heads up.

Change the angle of your cross pien as you work so you end up driving material back towards the stem.

I don't believe there are any commercial makers of self-contained hammers manufacturing in the USA. Utility hammers, yes, but not self-contained.

Pretty big flats on the feet for a PW, and the general confirmation says Trenton over PW to me.