JNewman

When I origonally built my hammer I used an old hydraulic cylinder with a clevis on the end. The clevis clacked all the time with the small amount of clearance in it. It broke several times always in the middle of a rush job, I would weld it back together and get it back to work. After I moved into my current shop I replaced the cylinder with a used bigger air cylinder(smaller rod). With the new cylinder I was very carefull to get a very accurate alignment although it is a rigid attachment. I (ab)used it quite a while before the rod broke where Youngdylan's are breaking, I ordered a new rod but the job I was rushing on was for a big machine shop and they re threaded the rod for me. It has not broken yet but I am glad I now have a spare on the shelf. I do not do a lot of cold work but I was using the hammer hard, swaging larger alloy steels etc. Now that I am only using the Kinyon for lighter work I think that I may never use that spare. While I think that the custom built flexible/rubber couplings may add life to the rod ends I think that not having "slop" in the system is as or even more important. Even though the steel sections were bigger with the hydraulic cylinder, the ram was double the weight with the new cyliner and I had much more flexibility with two clevises, I broke the clevis much more often than with a rigid setup. Almost every time the clevis broke it was the steel clevis breaking not the weld.

Welcome to the forum Matt. My 14 year old daughter is a drummer and I was thinking about making her a cymbal. I have most of a sheet of 1/16" bronze left from an eybrow shaped range hood I made for a customer a few years ago. I forget the alloy but I think it was 5% tin and 95% copper. It is very soft although it does stiffen up quite well with working. I have no desire make cymbals for a living but I would really like to make one for her. Can you suggest any resouces for cymbal making? I had a thought about doing some repousse in the center of the cymbal rather than just the normal dome. I am thinking a face or a skull. Do you know if that would take a lot away from the sound? I know it would add greatly to the "cool factor" and help her realize I made it for her because I wanted to rather than because I am cheap.

It sounds like Clam River's problem relates to all the answers above. There is one other thing that can cause this problem and that is getting some leaded steel. I have a piece of steel in the rack that I bought for a little 1 hour job that ended up taking me all afternoon on a saturday. A guy came in with some clips that he needed duplicated the stock needed was 7/16" round. My steel supplier had no 7/16 hot rolled in stock but he had a shorter piece of 7/16 round cold rolled in a misc. stock rack. As I was drawing it down to a short square point it kept splitting. My first reaction was to work it hotter then I tried not taking bites on the anvil and working it down on the flat of the anvil. After some words not suitable for this forum I finally tried working it a little colder and this worked some of the time. To get 6 points on 7/16 bar I must have drawn down 20-30 of them. I thought the steel was just bad at the time but I later realized that it was probably leaded steel

Its hard to say what is right for you, it depends on the type of work you will be using it for and how much you pan on buying new and how much scrounging you plan on doing. Here are some pros and cons of both types of hammer. I have only run a tire hammer at quad state for a few minutes but I was quite impressed with the control, I had assumed that there would be less control with the tire hammer than an air hammer but it seemed to be as good or even slightly better for light blows. If you don't have a minimum 5 hp air compressor you will be able to work with more irons in the fire with a tire hammer and the tire hammer is certainly more energy efficient. You can buy plans for the tire hammer that give complete drawings so you are not doing any design on the fly. However if you plan on using a lot of top tooling the air hammer has all the advantages Youngdylan mentioned above. Energy costs to run either hammer is only pennies per hour so the energy efficiency is not that big a deal. If you use John Larsons control modification you can have the ram always return to the top of the stroke between heats. A friend of mine just bought a 75lb Kinyon style hammer then a couple of weeks later he bought the entire contents of another blacksmith who was getting out of smithing, he ended up with a new tire hammer that the other smith had built at one of the Clay Spencer courses. He feels that the Kinyon hammer hits quite noticably harder than the tire hammer. Maybe you can see if there are smiths in you area who have built hammers and you can try then out. I think Ralph Sproul has run some air hammer workshops for the New England Blacksmith group so there must be some of them around. The New England school of metalwork has run some tire hammer courses so there must be some of them around you as well.

As Thomas says there are no standards for the industry, different suppliers use different colours for different grades. One of my steel suppliers sells only mild steel and colours the ends to identify the thickness of the bars.

I have yet to use my 3" and 4" tongs for hand work, but have used them quite a bit for power hammer work. I have 3/4 and 1" tongs that are fine for hand work and light power hammer work but if I were working a long heavy piece I would have to be careful with them under the hammer, I have sprung bits that are 3/4"x1/2" while straightening out forgings under the hammer.

Nice work Brian makes me wonder why I need my power hammer. OH yeah, you hit harder than I do and that looks like hard work. I use 3/4 round 1045 for most tongs that I make and find it big enough for most tongs that are sized for hand work. I do regularly make some that start as 1" dia and I did just finish some tongs that I had to start with 1.25"x 4"x 30" but they are hard enough just to pick up by hand. The method I use most to make tongs now days is to offset the 3/4" round then flatten the eye and draw out the reins, but the offsetting is easier under a power hammer.

The videos available from UMBA have much of the unformation you are looking for and they are CHEAP!!!! I think they are $5 ea. Each one is a couple of hours. The other thing is to go to events such as Quad state in Sept in Ohio (where you can pick up the UMBA dvds) If you left Hamilton after school on a Friday night you could be at the Troy fairgrounds by 10:00 pm

I do use a lot of air die grinders. I should think about an air grinder although I usually don't do that much angle grinder work, I have a 24" disc sander that I use for grinding forging. and I recently built a belt sander for sanding/polishing.

I recently bought a soft start 5" Makita, right from the start it didn't seem to have the guts my old Makita had. I don't know if it is because of the soft start or jst a bad grinder, it seemed to get worse over time, it worked ok for dressing things up but not for cutting with a zip wheel or really removing metal. I returned it and am waiting for its return. I would be cautious buying the same grinder again.

Very nice tongs, I wish my first pair had looked that good.

I do try to quote based on Grant's percieved value but I find I usually end up quoting a fixed price using an hourly rate to calculate the price. My rate is a sliding scale however depending on how much work I have, how much I want to do the job, risks involved with the job and how quickly the customer pays. For patternmaking I typically quote at $70/ hour. If a job looks particularly interesting I might quote it a little lower, but if the drawing is crappy or unclear or it is a dirty repair job I will quote it higher. Several times I have gotten jobs even though I was not the lowest price but because I could deliver faster, I have also gotten extra money to change a 2-3 week delivery to a 2 week delivery. I try to give myself a little extra time in my quote but I will often put a note in my reply to call me if my quoted delivery is an issue. Before I put in the Massey, my typical rate in the blacksmith shop was $75, now that I have the bigger hammer I try to quote at $100 for work in blacksmith shop. Right now I rarely get that rate because I find I am spending a lot of time making tooling. If the tooling is specific for the job I do try to build it into the quote but things like bigger swages spring fullers, spring swages and fixtures for holding tooling to the hammer I don't. As I get repeat work I am finding that I am starting to get the higher shop rate. When I was still chasing after ornamental work I asked most customers for their budget and never got a reply. One of the reasons I have decided to avoid ornamental work is I have spent way too much time visiting a potential customer getting no input as to what they want, making up several designs and pricing it and then getting no reply or having them go with a cheap fabrication.

I wonder if the 30 hp is really necessary on the 5cwt hammer for normal operation. The only time I have had the motor working hard is trying out the clamping feature. After several hours of running the hammer is hot but the motor is still cold. I wonder if the motor size is based on the clamping feature requirements. I don't use the clamping feature because you really need to have a hammer driver running the hammer to make use of it. On my hammer the oil dipstick also blows out if I use the clamping feature I would have to figure out why if I used it.

They are not the same company. Soluquip tends to have lots of things on their website that they don't own. I suspect that the tables are here in Hamilton because the scrap dumpster in the background is a local company. I have been to the Cohen Warehouse and seen the stacks of t slot tables that are also on their website as well as lots of machine tools.

These guys have a couple of platen tables they didn't have any when I was looking a few years ago and dropped in. They are about 5 min form my shop. Ya I am a tool junkie as well but I am finding that I have to get rid of some things when I bring in others so I have room to work. I have a few friends who have so much stuff in thier shops that they have almost no room to work.

I just drilled and tapped holes in the tube and then used flat head machine screws countersunk into the plastic. If it will fit heavier uhmw would probably bulge less around the screws. I think I used loctite on the machine screws because they have not shaken loose. They would be a pain to tighten if they loosened up.

The UHMW on my hammer is only 1/4' thick I wanted to maximize the size I could make my dies.

My kinyon style hammer is a bar in a tube when I built it I lined the tube with UHMW and put in adjusting bolts to tighten it up as it wears. 10 years in and after a lot of (ab)use most of the adjustment bolts have long since fallen out and I have never had to tighten them. I OCCASIONALLY give the ram a spray with some dry moly spray. I would highly recommend UHMW for a home built hammer and advise running it dry or with a dry lubricant. I have never had a problem with scale getting into the plastic.

Cut from plate may be your only option to buy it that size, but it can be pricy. You may want to price 5/8" round put a kiss block on your hammer and forge away. If you have not used kiss blocks before you may be suprised how fast they are and how on size you can end up. If you need long straight pieces or need it annealed get the plate, but if your pieces are a couple of feet or less it may work out cheaper especially if you can source the round locally.

Old propane cylinders work but getting rid of the mercaptin stink is a pain. Make sure all the propane is out and DON'T USE A TORCH TO CUT THE BOTTLE use a jigsaw or plasma cutter to cut it open. Try local pottery supply businesses for the Kaowool. If you cannot find anywhere local Pottery Supply house in Oakville ON. will ship.

I always value your input here Forgemaster, that practical knowledge is invaluable. I just checked out your website, thats quite a shop you have there.

I never mentioned a scrap yard. A couple of the steel suppliers I buy from sell "secondary" steel it is sometimes labeled ususally not. It is sometimes recycled steel, sometimes drops, somtimes leftover steel bought from fabricators, machine shops or bankruptcies. I have yet to find any of the scrap yards around here willing to sell to the public, although one of them owns one of the loscal steel yards that does sell some secondary steeel. I guess it is one of the disadvantages of living in a city that has 3 steel mills that buy thousands of tons of scrap.

The tool steel thing is a small thing but many steel suppliers that carry 4140 don't carry tool steels. If you call and tell them that you need tool steel they will tell you they don't carry tool steels. Better to use the proper terms from the start. If you can get a piece of secondary steel for much less money that is a good way to go. The 4140 or better yet 4340 would make a beter anvil than mild steel, but for most hobbiests a mild steel anvil will last a long time.

4140 is NOT tool steel. It is generally defined as a machinery steel. It can be used for tools but is not a tool steel. A heavy block of any steel is infinately better than a small piece of hardened steel on top of a sand filled base. I think you have a good idea. Take a look at Brian Brazeals anvil before you buy the steel though, even if you dont want all the features his has, a curved section is a good idea. I would price out the prehardened 4140 vs hardening the block. You could weld a fabricated hardy hole to the side of the block before the heat treatment if you want.

Hot rolled mild steel it's much cheaper and your chisel should be hard enough that mild steel should not dull it. Softer backing plates can cause burrs on the back of what you are cutting.