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I Forge Iron

lupiphile

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Everything posted by lupiphile

  1. Ah, thank you much. Its sort of a slow/ sick day around the shop,a perfect day for forge remediation. As for dimensions, the tueyre sits about 3" down from level to the sides, and the base of my "duck's nest" is about another 3" down from that. I had always been taught to settle pieces into the top of the fire, thusly always ensuring a good bed of coke to alleviate and oxidation problems.It did cross my mind that maybe this was making things harder on myself, though old habits die hard, and Ive never had much luck with that furnace style fire.It always ends up a little too oxidizing, and I've always have a hard time both feeding it and getting my metal in and out of it without collapsing the shell. I'm often working odd shaped/large pieces. As for disturbing the clinker , that makes a lot of sense. I do find I often have to stick my poker right down in front of the tuyre to keep the air flowing freely. This I know disturbs the clinker but most of the time I'm more concerned with getting one more heat.Like I said before,I know It's my habits mostly , but I'm not sure which ones are bad and which are ok. Thank you for giving me something to go on.As for the foundry sand, I just thought it would be advantageous to have a substrate thats easily delineated from the fuel so as to not be continually pushing ash and other undesirables into the fire. Thanks again, Matt
  2. Thanks for the advise. My coal tends to coke thoroughly (think Impenetrable bastille) around the edges,without much liquid intervention, but as I break it up to feed my fire, well thats when the trouble starts. As for the clinker, It just always breaks into a million insidious pieces, no matter how long I let it cool for. The aforementioned wall of coke, of course, does not help much, in the retrieval process. At some point I might try replacing the ash bed with old foundry sand, or the like, but the prospect of digging out all hundred pounds of ash and fines, not to mention getting foundry sand isn't much of an enticing prospect. Maybe some of you british folks could offer some insight, I hear side blasts are still very much the cat's meow in the old country. Thank you much, Matt
  3. After having been "raised up" on a bottom blast forge, I, having, more time than money, decided to build a side blast forge , ala blacksmiths journal, mark aspery/CBA ect... And I'm having considerable trouble managing the thing. It's been my principal forge for about six months now and I can't say I've gotten much better at removing clinkers, or managing two irons in the fire. I, of course feel fairly stupid for not just building a bottom blast , with a bought firepot, but , alas sheer cussedness prevents me from getting rid of the thing.Its clearly my lack of experience that seems to be causing such woes but I have little else to go on. My coal is, in part, comprised of an upsetting amount of fines, that just seem to fill up the duck's nest within about an hour of fire management, this also just helps to muck everything up with removing the clinker and keeping the work clean.I also find it incredibly difficult to keep from pushing the ash/fines bed into the fire accidently, when trying to feed the fire. I do enjoy the concentrated heat zone, but have yet to tease out enough redeeming qualities to out weigh all the negatives associated with my ineptitude. I'm sure some of you old timers can set me straight. Well any advise would be greatly appreciated. Thankyou much, matt
  4. Well I figured out why Ive been short on air....after a frustrated morning of back and forth with ingersoll rand(them purporting that my whole head gasket, fingervalves and all we're junk)I decided to take the whole thing apart...again. I quickly found out that one of my transfer tubes betwixt stages( the one covered with radiant fins) had a stress crack.I deduced this after painstaking, scientific, and empiric research. It fell off. Ah ha!, says I. Seizing both the moment and the day, I shrewdly bent a piece of 3/4" copper to rough(like sandpaper) dimensions, scavenged some compression fittings, and away we go. The hammer has plenty of air, now. thank you all for your calculations. It still doesn't run fast enough though, much better, mind you, just not as fast as I'd like. I think you're entirely right, John. I think it never ran at that speed, though I still am considering replacing the five way valve, I'm just stick of spending money and time on this hammer, so maybe later on. I'd really like to shorten the stroke, But I just can't think of a good way to mount another limit switch/ roller trigger thing, and am very unclear as to how to plumb two triggers effectively. My only real experiance with utility hammer's is this one. Well thank you all for everything.
  5. Thank you all for you're speedy responses.Ken Ive already sought the kayne's intervention. That in fact how I got this far. Tom has been very thorough in his emails, but has gotten fed up with my questions. He kindly wrote up this flow chart thing, the details of which I've gone over and nothing has gotten better.At this point it seems easier to field my questions toward you all. Grant, everything you said makes sense, per usual. Thanks.I had to start somewhere. John, the spring valve seems pretty well frictionless and the paddle that actuates it has plenty of spring tension, maybe the five-way is contributing. Any thoughts on why the hammer is using so much air? You're right about the stroke, I've been trying to figure a way to shorten it for a while. Any thoughts on adding a second spring valve? I recently had a chance to look at the inside of your hammers and I thought the valving was quite deft.My hammer's cylinder ports are 1/2" npt but connect to 3/8 id tubing . I know you're a big fan of both large ports and large cylinders, but do you think in my instance that it would make any significant difference, to solely replace the tubing with say 1/2" id stuff? And I still find my compressor's behavior vexing, I cleaned the air filter and gave it some oil, but I know not what else to do. Well thank you all, Matt
  6. Hello all, I started a thread detailing(complaining) about some trouble I was having with my phoenix hammer,a little while back. After a extremely protracted correspondence with the hammer's maker(I actually got him to respond!), and some good advise from you all(should someone make john larson the saint of all fabricated utility hammers? we could just prey to him directly whenever something goes awry?) I've managed to get the hammer mostly right with the world. That is, excepting the speed thing. I've cleaned all valves and plumbing, installed a full port oiler, even went so far as to, run a new 3/4" air line with no right angled bends(pex, you're a godsend to a poor boy like me) and, though it's infinitely more snappy than ever it falls short of that elusive 200bpm mark. The new problem seems to be partly my compressor falling short. It's one of those 7.5hp ingerssol rand with an 80gal reciever. It claims 28cfm at 100 psi. I've been running my hammer at about 120 and been absolutely burying my compressor with one iron in the fire. My calculations for air usage go something like this, cylinder volume= 71.24 cu"(2.75"cylinder X 12" stroke), HOPEFULL bpm = 240, multiply them= 17097.3"cu, right? divide that by 1728 to get cubic feet, and you have 9.89. Any help or corrections would be much appreciated. It seems that even if my math is wildly off(more than likely) I still shouldn't be getting so under water with my air supply. I get it down to about 90 psi rather quickly. Well thanks everyone in advance.
  7. oops...well on the bright side, the snap sure has returned to my hammer. I did in fact use a small amount of wd-40 followed by a fair amount of air tool oil. The hammer responded kindly to that. It was like night and day. hopefully I haven't inflicted any kind of permenant damage. But in any case, that did seem to be the problem. Now, on to the guide conundrum, as it stands it has sort of a sloppy rolling hit, when it tighten the guides anymore than they already are, the ram slows waaay down and sometimes sticks. It would work beautifully if I was really into parallelograms but as yet I've yet to find the clients whose tastes are so mechanically accomodating. If you all know any tricks for those hmw nylon guides please let me know. This forum is like throwing your two cents into a wishing well and getting fistfulls of quarters thrown back at you. thank you all.
  8. thank you for all of your responses monster metal, Ive got plenty of air methinks, 7.5hp 128cfm compressor, with 3/4 air lines and full port regulator. Ive also installed an extra air resevior right next to the air intake on the hammer. sadly it performs all the same. Mr. nichols: I was hoping you'd offer your insight. The shuttle valve eh? I'll try that out. Also, I'd been having trouble getting the ram to hit squarely and without wobble, though whenever I tighten the guide blocks enough, to keep the ram stationary, it does just that, or sticks at the top of the stroke, or moves even more sluggishly. do nylon guideblocks really work or should I impose a bronze standard on my shop. So kayne and sons, are the folks to talk to huh? I'll give them a call. Monster metal, about polluting the river, I'm not sure if you've been to philly and seen the mighty, sinking, fetid, schuykill, but the only worries Id have, would be getting the hammer to sink, in that mess. thank you for everyone's interest
  9. Before I had purchased the hammer, I wrote the company several times and tried calling after that,all without any luck. This coupled with the fact,that everyone,I know has pretty much the same amount of luck getting in touch with them , led me to seek the guidance of you all first, but your right I hadn't even tried contacting them recently. Thanks , I'll try that out.
  10. hey Y'all, long time looking, first time posting ect.ect......, so I've procured one used phoenix forging hammer, all fine well and good, exempting it's host of ailments. Despite what I've always considered to be a mechanical inclination(ahem..) I cannot,for whatever reason, get the hammer to hit beyond about 90bpm.Which is just too slow to get anything done.Previous to this hammer, I was best versed on a saymak 88, so this is just an entirely different thing. I thought it was an air problem,but I put in a larger regulator, and an extra resevoir close to the hammer, and have tried adjusting the valve linkages all to no avail. I did succeed at getting the hammer to hit the ram assembly harder than the bottom die a few times, hardly progress. Mayhaps one of you extraordinarily informed, hammer obsessed older gents,might lend a helping hand.Thankfully it wieghs 4500lbs or I'd've thrown the thing in the river by now. thank you all
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