lupiphile

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

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

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

If you want to calculate the true cfm your compressor is putting out at a given pressure, this is how you do it.

The time it takes to pump the receiving tank of a know volume from a known starting pressure to a known ending pressure will measure the cfm using the Ideal Gas Law with isothermal compression where we ignore temperature (adds some error in the calculation) and change the pressure and the volume.

First, determine the tank size in cubic feet. You can take some measurements and calculate it to confirm say if you have a sixty gallon tank (divide the tank volume in gallons by 7.48 cu-ft/ gallon). So a sixty gallon tank contains 8.02 cubic feet.

Second, slowly bleed off pressure from your tank until the compressor cuts in, start a stopwatch, and note the pressure in the tank before any regulators. When the compressor cuts out, stop the watch and note the tank pressure. Subtract the starting pressure from the ending pressure and you get psi increase for a given period of time.

I’ll use a compressor I recently added to my system as an example. It has a 60 gallon tank and the label says it delivers 12.35 CFM at 100 psi. The cut in pressure was 120 psi and the cut out pressure was 148 psi and it took exactly 60 seconds (that was convenient). So I get a 28 psi rise in 60 seconds.

Next, convert the psi rise to atmospheres of pressure (1 atm=14.7 psi). So 28 psi/14.7=1.904 atm of pressure added in 60 seconds.

The rate air is being pumped into the tank is the pressure rise X the volume of the tank (8.02 cu-ft X 1.904 atm = 15.27 cubic feet) in 1 minute at 120psi (cut in pressure). The error range in these calculations could be minus 30% because we are not accounting for temperature rise or a gradual pressure rise so the range is somewhere around 11 CFM at 120 psi. To my surprise, the label on the compressor is probable pretty close to what it puts out.

Depending on the time it takes your compressor to cut out you will have to convert to minutes to get the CFM. Example: it takes 50 seconds, 60/50 X 15.27 cu-ft or if it takes 90 seconds, .666 X 15.27 cu-ft.

I hope this helps.

Like Grant, I have not reviewed your math. No matter, your compressor is adequate. I appreciate that you could use my past info. That's why I'm here. The speed of the hammer is directly related to the speed of the shuttle in the 5-port valve. I don't really remember my attempt to help you but the advice may have been to change the shuttle valve. Cleaning it may seem to be a fix, and I've done this more than a few times, but some valves don't work as they age like they did new. I just spent about 105 for a 5-port so in the cosmic scheme of things a replacement is cheap compared to time spent trying a cheap fix. Second, I don't think the hammer was ever up to that speed. It strokes too much IMHO and thereby has high air usage. It may be slick to mimic a self-contained hammer, but then maybe not when all the effects are understood. If your shuttle moves too slow then too much air flows into the cylinder each stroke, the stroke length increases, and the beats per minute fall. In addition to old age 5-port frictions, it is possible that the air flow to the ends of the shuttle from the roller (aka trigger) valve is too impeded. I use 1/4" id hose and I suspect Phoenix uses 1/8". It may not end up making a difference, but little hose barbs, clamps, and hose are cheap. BTW, check out the roller valve to see if it is exhibiting friction so that the spring loaded flapper (as I recall) is moving too much to actuate the roller valve. The cost may be about $80. (It too is a shuttle valve but it is lever actuated/spring return whereas your big 5-port valve is air actuated/air return as I recall.)

Essentially, the shuttle has to move snappily for the hammer to be snappy.

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.

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.

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

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.

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