JNewman

A few weeks ago I forged 50 scraper/chisels for a customer out of W1, quench and tempered to 50-65 Rc. which is what the customer specified. The chisel is 1" diameter then is a 3/8 thick blade tapering down to a 1/8" thick square edge. In heat treating them myself I had two of them crack near the edge so I had to make one more, I should have made the extras to begin with but this customer will not accept extra parts so I didn't want to sit on the inventory. I had 30 more to make this week so I made 34 of them and decided to take them to my heat treater to avoid the cracked parts and because I have a fair bit of rush work right now and I figured that they could do it cheaper than me anyways. I went to the heat treater this morning to pick up the parts and deliver them to the customer they had cracked SEVEN!!! out of 34. I now have to make more chisels and the job is already late. I questioned the guy at the heat treater trying to figure out what they did differently than I had. I had used warm water to quench the parts, they had used BRINE!!! he claimed that with W1 using water the hardening would only be .030 deep I can see this in a part a few inches thick but this is only 1/8" thick in the area that has to be hard. Do any of the Metallurgists on here know how deep the hardening would be on a 3/8 thick piece of W1? I think when I heat treat these I am going to re-harden on of the chisels that is cracked on the tip cut it appart at the 3/8 end and see if it is hard. Till now I have been very happy with this heat treater but this experience has me questioning there knowledge.

John, have you ever considered selling your exhaust control valves separately?

I recently replaced my 5" makita which had put up with many years of abuse and always worked well, I burned it out running a 7" diamond cup wheel grinding the concrete foundation for my hammer. After reading this thread I thought that soft start on the grinder would be a good idea. I do like the soft start and for light grinding the soft start allows more control. However with the Makita the soft start does reduce the torque. With my older grinder if I leaned into it, it would just bear down and grind away, with the new one I can stop the wheel.

Because I am not using an Iron Kiss custom made valve I found that cracking the valve to allow the head rise up reduced the control of the hammer. The adjustment of the roller valve also became very touchy. What I ended up doing is to drill a small hole in the hose nipple that threads into the valve. It works very well that way but maybe I should try drilling the hole out larger for a faster return when using the hammer for single blows. I had forgotten what a difference your modification makes till I demoed at the OABA meeting on the weekend. The hammer I demoed on was very well built and had excellent control but I had to play with the treadle to get the stock and tooling under the hammer. Setting up higher tooling such as for punching is much easier and safer using a hammer with your modification.

Too bad it's not going to work out Grant, was it the machining time that killed it? This thread has been interesting and has got me thinking. While I am not sure I could have justified the cost of this anvil when I have three in the shop and like Danger Dillon I use my anvils with motors connected much more frequently than a regular anvil. I have a several dies for my hammer that are machined for making clevises, as I have no intention of producing lots of clevises, one of these days I am going to anneal a set and make a power hammer die version of this anvil. Either that or I will make the body out of mild steel so I can make it wider, the dies are only 9 in wide. While I have the mill set up to cut the dies I will cut a matching dovetail in a block of steel that I can bolt to my platten table both so I can use dies made for the hammer by hand and also so I can use it for custom made horns. Now to get the 10 or 20 other jobs on the list done first.

It was up and away that I saw and in your earlier video it looked like if you were not paying attention and were standing in the wrong spot you could get a good thump. So I guess your counterweight has solved that issue. Our current nanny state society and over litigious lawyers have made things like this something I worry about. It probably comes from my time working in the ski industry where I saw people do stupid things get hurt and sue.

I don't know if Tom Clark was using the same glue as you Hofi but I have had to add wedges to my Hofi hammer that Tom produced. There was some glue that fell out of the end and it loosened up. It was made when he was still putting your stamp as well as his on it.

I really like your kinetic sculptures Danger. Movement just adds so much to them. I have been wondering since I saw one of the other sculptures you posted which seemed to have moving parts come closer to the ground do you worry about people getting hurt by moving parts. I would imagine there is a fair bit of inertia in some of those pieces. I have thought about building some large simple exposed clockworks but I worry about little fingers and liability.

Some new tongs I forged for a customer last week. They are called Scrap tongs because they are for pulling scrap sheet metal out of a rolling mill. The bent over end on the bits are to really bite on the sheet. OAL is 40"

Thats a nice looking hammer Dave. Good to see it saved. I don't know why, but the older hammers just seem to run nicer that the new chinese hammers.

I used to know a guy who manufactured tool handles. His homebuilt lathe was one of the scariest looking pieces of machinery I have ever seen. The wooden blank locked between centers there was a changable steel oval that was a quide to move the cutters in and out. The cutting head was a series of arms welded to a shaft with adjustable cutters on the ends this ccutting head was about 12-14" dia. In use this cutting head rotated, the blank rotated and the cutting head swung in and was guided in and out by the steel oval. Cutting took a couple of seconds. He stopped making handles because he could buy handles for about the same as the wood was costing.

I think I have a simple solution for you Larry, no electrical actuators etc. needed. I modified my Kinyon style hammer a few years ago based on a post John Larson made on Keenjunk (thanks again John). I can set my hammer up for single blows but it does retract quite slowly, however i think I have a solution for that. I am assuming you are familiar with the origional Kinyon valving. The modification I made is to add a second pilot valve in series with the pilot that is tripped by the ram, the second pilot is connected to the treadle so that when the treadle is up the pilot that normally trips the 3 way valve does not actuate it allowing the ram to go all the way up. A small leak is introduced to the exhaust valve so that when the treadle is released the air on the top of the cylinder is allowed to bleed out. If I place my ram pilot in its lowest position basically locking it open I can strike single blows hard or soft and when I remove my foot the hammer slowly retracts. You however do not want the hammer to reciprocate so you can eliminate pilot valve #1 leaving you with a pilot valve that is actuated by your treadle. You do want the ram to retract quickly so rather than using a 2 position 3 way valve you could use a 2 position 4 way valve http://www.parker.com/literature/Literature%20Files/pneumatic/UPD_2009/0600P-11_D-Inline.pdf page 4 shows the valve style I am talking about. One exhaust port would hook up to your control valve(treadle) the same as a Kinyon hammer the other would have enough restriction on it to prevent the ram from slamming into the top of the cylinder (a cushion here would help as well). I would probably use a valve here but once it was adjusted it would probably not need adjustment often. I just re read John Larsen's post above and his third paragraph is basically saying what I have just explained.

I have a book called "Book of Tables for Forgers' which has tables which calculate how much material you need to need going from one size to another. You need to go to one table for a key number then use the key number in another table to get the length. This slide rule seems like it would be faster to use. So when are you going to have OCP slide rules made Grant?

Rather than a leather or aluminum pulley you could try a pulley made of hardwood, I have seen a lot of wooden lineshaft pulleys.

Blacksmith depot has similar wedges for the outrageous price of 50 cents http://www.blacksmithsdepot.com/Templates/cart_templates/cart-detail.php?theLocation=/Resources/Products/Hammers/Round_Safety_Wedge&PHPSESSID=222b636c74fe83c7d3f9cd5ebf44e1de

Be careful to talk to someone about your local laws regarding sprinklers before installing anything. I talked to my neighbour who installs them about putting a simple sprinkler system in my shop. He advised against it because around here if you have any sprinklers the system has to be up to code and the code says you have to have a large (maybe dedicated) water service for the sprinkler system. I would have to have had a larger service run to the main out on the street. If you have a home shop you can probably get away with it, but something you think may help your case with the fire inspector may cause a huge problem. He mentioned once you install a sprinkler system they won't let you rip it out, so if you install it not up to code you could be into a huge expense to bring it up to code.

It is impossible to say how much radius is on your new hammer from the picture on the website. As I said before knock the sharp corners off and use it. Technique is far more important than minor adjustments to your hammer face.

Sam's description is good EXCEPT 500 degrees is not nearly hot enough to temper a spring, the spring will likely break when loaded at that temper. You need to be up around 750 degrees depending on the material the spring is made of. An old method I have seen demonstrated is to temper a spring in molten lead, I am not sure I would use this method due to the toxicity of lead. The reason I recommended trying just normalizing A SPRING STEEL it is will be less likely to break. If this is going on a bike or car and a breaking spring could be a disaster You should send it out for heat treatment unless you have a proper heat treatment oven and know the proper heat treatment for the steel you have.

I just looked at that nordic hammer and the pein is way too sharp for drawing but is perfect for texturing leaves etc. You can always grind more off but it is hard to add it back on.

I would carefully break any sharp corners on the hammer and then use it, you should also probably thin the handles out a little as well. If it requires more dressing your work will tell you. Just because a hammer is old and worn does not mean it is dressed properly. When you are starting out most of your hammer marks will be from you not the hammer. Personally I rarely use the pein these days, if I want to draw more quickly I use the edge of the anvil rather than the pein. After time if you find you are consistently marking things up with a particular part of the hammer face then it is time to modify it. After time you will decide what you like and don't like. Years ago I looked at the swedish style hammer in catologes and decided to myself that was the hammer I needed, I eventually was able to afford one bought it used it a few times and hated it. I still use it occasionally though because that pein is perfect to fit into tight places.

My big hammer is 28" high and it is lower than I like. I recently raised my small power hammer to 34" and I am going to be building a new base for it soon and I will definately be raising it to 36" or even 38", I am just over 5'10".

Winding a spring shape or wrapping steel around a weld to hide the weld is a situation where using a torch with a heating tip is much easier than heating the steel in the forge. You need to clamp or insert the end in a slot on your mandrel that you are winding the spring around. Then you start heating the steel where you want it to bend and wrap away, if you have too long a heat it is difficult to get the steel tight around the mandrel and hard to control how tight a spiral you get. You can prebend the ends of the stock or cut the straight section off when you are done. There are all sorts of jigs and special bending forks you could build if you needed to make lots of them but I am assuming you only want to make one or a few.

Yes it will work BUT if you want to keep the full springyness you will have to heat treat the new spring. After you wind the spring you would have to heat the spring to its critical temperature quench in oil and then temper to probably a blue. If it is critical item I would send it out to a commercial heat treater. If it is not I would probably just try shaping the spring and normalizing it, if it bends then I would try heat treating it or just make it heavier.

You are assuming it is not part of a larger product that a range of them are commonly called "Stainless" and that has stainless steel as part of it.

I guess a stainless steel duck call is just too obvious. While I agree that making the fireplace set out of stainless is probably the way to go, one of my bigger customers extrudes aluminum, brushes it and then anodizes it to look like stainless. Extruding aluminum is MUCH easier than rolling stainless into the various shapes they make. I bet many of the people on this board have these extrusions in their houses and don't realize that they are not stainless.