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Brian, I have been studing the application of a hardy hole and have a plan. Once I try I will report. The point of my post was an anvil does not have to look like an anvil. Look for mass under the hammer.

Here is a photo of the portable striking anvil we use. It is a heavy equipment axle forging, 250# of 4140. At my home shop I have the bigger version 454# of 4140. We made the large split cross on the axle the cross is resting on.

John Larson, on the Eries I was around they had a treadle and lever, both performed the same function, and they had a spear to provide the tup recip. The spear system had a movable target so that the distance of tup was set. On ours the the treadle served as both motion and throttle. Hit the treadle a little and the tup travel moved down closer to the dies some and the speed picked up some, tromp the treadle and bang you got full stroke, full throttle. These were all closed die machines but were used open die on the edge of the dies to draw out tong holds on the bigger billets.

In my experience the throttle is a throttle for any working fluid. Steam hammers often had a tup at idle to keep the heat in the steam piping and the boiler pressures steady. Tup at idle is a waste of air if using a modern air compressor. Most of the valve chests on the older steam hammers had fairly loose fits as the steam needed to flow anyway, see above. For air, most install modified valve elements that have elastomeric seals. Think Parker Poly-pacs. Looks like a great project, enjoy.

On my hammer I used 3/4" bolts, with pipe rollers. Had to ream the pipe some. I also drilled the bolts from the hex head to center of the roller and then cross drilled to allow grease to be pumped in from a zerk fitting in the hax head. Allows easy lube'ing and I use moly grease. I also drilled one corner of the hex head for safety wire to prevent the roller bolts backing out. I pretty much safety wired all the fastners on this machine as i hate bolts backing out from vibration:)

I suggested to Frank that the original seal might be a linen thread, because that was one of several sealing methods forund in equipment this vintage. I also suggested that RTV silicon would serve. He responded that he found a cord and reused that, buttered with RTV. And that I have seen the proto's he posted I can see what is inside the three I have. I have never taken mine apart as I was able to flush them and get them in good shape without having to open the case. Frank you are welcome for the suggestion, and thanks for the photo's.

UHMWPE does not asorb water. One of the reasons it is used in replacemnt human body joints. I have a rusty style if you can call it that. Mine has been much modified and so I call it a Palmer patent style since Palmer first patented this type hammer in about 1870 I think. I used the basic slide nd ram design from the Clay Spencer prints for the tire hammer, but modified to adapt to the spring helve. I went with 1/4" UHMWPE. I use a generic equiv of Tri-flow as an oil, and have been using this hammer about a year now with a 70# ram. No issues yet, and my experience with UHMWPE tells me that I will probably get many years service. I bought my UHMWPE from a local plastics supplier in Louisville KY, General rubber. They sawed a hunk off a sheet big enough to make the 4 slide surfaces 3 times over for about $25, and since I picked up, no shipping. If you are near a city of any size there is probably a local place as well. Having used UHMWPE for over 30 years in industry, I see two ways to make it ripple or warp. Mount it to steel and let the temp change and it will ripple as it expands and contracts at a greatly different rate. Heavy impact will mush it and if contained it will ripple.

If you are a very good scrounger, and can weld and do light machining with a drill press, yes. I built my hammer in 2002, and it was a 32# Palmer patent style, that many call a Rusty. I had $43 US then. I suspect that if I needed to start today, I could do it for less than $200 easily.

Carbon Monoxide is a silent killer. As noted, no smell, and no taste and you can't see it. Mostly comes from incomplete combustion. You do NOT have to have smoke to have CO. IN my factory, we run propane forklifts inside an air conditioned factory. So... daily I walk every aisle of the factory with a CO monitor and measure CO. I also check behind every forklift. Now I DO NOT stick my monitor in the exhaust pipe as my monitor measures in Parts Per Million ( PPM). I hold the monitor at waiste level and about 18" behind the truck and that way I get cool mixed exhaust that does not fry my meter. I do get an indication of the trucks CO emmision. The OSHA standards are as follows' Action level is 25 PPM Permissible exposure limit for an 8 hour day is 50 PPM OSHA sets Action levels at half the permissible level and the permissible level at half the level known to cause danger/harm. Whith good truck maintenance we see typical levels in the factory of 2-4 PPM, and I see avergae truck levels of 3-4PPM. A truck that is running badley will peg out the meter at the 250PPM level. Propane often has residuals from the refinery in the tank, and when the tank gets very low, the exhaust will stink yet most of the time the CO does not increase. Now let those oily goey residuals clog up the vaporizer that uses engine coolant to wrm the propane and force good evaporation to vapor, and not only will the engine run poorly and stink but the CO goes thru the roof as you get poor combustion.

Having designed and built guards for most of my industrial career, i would offer that this is an example of a guard designed by a safety guy fresh from school with no experience. I worked for about 10 years with equipment, and then was asked to make guards by a safety guy fresh from school who at least understood his limitations. I never say fool proof. I say Fool Resistant. The fools will always outsmart you.

I am personally aware of 2 fatalities from 9" wheels used on 7" grinders without guards.

I have a Lincohn Sa-200 on trailer, an oddball with the distributor, a Lincohn Weldpak 100, a Miller Thunderbolt Oxy-fuel and hammer:)

I agree a heated platen molding press.

Thank you to all my Brothers and Sisters in Arms. It has been an honor, not always a pleasure, but always an honor to serve. Jeff Reinhardt USA 1974-1977 KYArNG 1977-1979 KyUSAGNG 1983-1985 USAR 1985-1987

The IBA sattalite group meets at my shop in Floyds Knobs indiana, just across the river from Louisville. Sat the 26th, if anyone is interested

The Cholds size safety glasses, especially paired wih the behind the head strap to keep them snug work well. I like the Peltor behind the nape of the neck hearing protection muffs. It is very hard to ensure a good fit with earplugs on a little one. All 4 of mine wore safety glasses and muffs and I often had all 4 in the shop doing assembly line small tasks for projects they sold for their spending money. Face shields are required when doing something that threatens the face, but they are a poor substitute for safety glasses. Glasses under the face shield as Coleen practices is the right way. I wrote the PPE plan for the factory where I am the EH&S Specialist, and I require safety glasses period, at all times. When doing double ction sanding or metal conditioning wioth discs I require safety glasses with a gasket around the edge or goggles over safety glasses, and for grinding with a hard disc bigger than 2" (50mm) I require a face shield over that. we used to have a lot of metal bits in the eys but no longer do. Usually when I have someone who does not want to wear the PPE the infamous safety glasses test works You ask them to close their eyes, and ask,"tell me what you see?" They usually say nothing and I reply, "Any questions?" For the harder cases I ask them if they know how rusted metal is removed from the lens of the eye. When I describe the contraption used to hold the head still and the eye open while a medical grade Dremel tool grinds the bit out the usually shudder, and I don't seem to have problems from them again.

Try Louis Meyer in Louisville, who often writes on this forum.

Judson speaks the truth. I started my hammer at 32# and when I boosted to 45# ram I did not see the increase in moving metal I expected. I was able to scab on heavy plate and brought my anvil to 15+:1, and wow! I recently boosted the ram to 70# and am in the market for more plate:)

As a Jewler, I once had a job to make a chain outfit for a dancer. And since she had been enhanced, it took lots and lots of chain. The Rock heard about this after the fact, and asked me how many trial fits it took, and I told her I only had a fit once, the first time I saw her prance out in the chain:)

I have a guided helve like a Rusty, and I would say having built many machines it is far easier to scrounge for and to build than any other JYH design. I too have a spare tire clutch, and find it extremely controllable.

Dan, you have the photo above of exactly yhe type filter you need. Look at the threaded hole in the center. You need one that will screw down on a threaded pipe nipple. Most of the US car type filters will do do. Does not have to be a perfect fit, just use a bit of pipe dope. The 8 holes around the center hole are where the air goes in/out. The air has to go thru the filter to enter the tank. And since you weld the nipple vertically into the tank the solid side of the filter goes up making a nice little dust dirt and water shedding roof, and all for less than $5 for the filter:) You will need at least two for the flow/speed of your cylinders. If I were to add a magnet to the tank, I would thank about a stack of the cheap ceramic disc magnets spaced down an all thread rod, so that they run vertically from top to almost bottom of the tank. Find a coupling that will allow the magnets to pass thruogh, and weld into the top of the tank. Weld the all thread to the plug and you have made a magnetic system sold on the market for several hundred. Place it close to the return. The ball valve should not clog, if it is you either have a real dirt ingression problem or you waited far too long to drain. I would pull the magnet after say 3-4 hours of run, and maybe change the main return filter then as well as cheap insurance junk from the build and from manufacture of the fittings tube components etc.

The flow goes around the baffles, not over.Think along the lines of give the oil they longest chance to contact the walls and transfer heat, and allow air to rise out and bigger debris to settle. You want the baffles to allow a nice SLOW movement. Too many make the fluid move faster and that is counter productive. I would go with one. You have the right idea about the return at one extreme and the suction at the other. If wleding your tank from plate, DO NOT PIAINT the inside. Bad chaice as the paint almost always fails and becomes filter clogging stuff. Remember that oil will protect everything under the level and the vapor above helps there as well. Industry standard is called "Pickeled and oiled" Now lets talk about breathers. As your cylinders travel the volume in the tank will change by the volume of the rod that travels. SO you will have a tank that breathes every cycle. Since forge shops are often somewaht less than pristene, have you thought about how you will keep the pump/valve killing abrasive crud from entering with every breath? My suggestion is to NOT use a standard filler breather. They are good to filter out dead rats and oil dry and cigerrette butts but will allow system killing crud to enter. Weld in a suitable threaded nipple and use a pipe cap to seal it as the filler. Now you can buy special spin-on filters and mounting nipples from you hydraulics supplier. My suggestion is to run to the nearest auto parts store with spin-on oil filters on sale and buy a number of a common spin on that fit onto the pipe nipple you take with to try. Then weld in the nipples to your tank roof and spin those $3.50 filters down to allow breathing but only clean air. You do plan to put a drain in as well? Use a ball valve, with a plug in the outlet, and place it at the lowest point in the tank. You are planning a gentle Vee bottom to funnel the water and debris to your ball valve to allow you to "Burp" the water and debris out every so often right? When you breath, especially in a un heated shop, cold air in the winter hits hot oil and then cools and then you have water in your oil. Solution is to change the oil often, or burp often or use a tank heater to maintain warm oil or to buy a very expensive water trap breather. I vote for a $6 ball valve:) Going to install a sight glass to check level? Starting to see why many companies buy ready made tanks?

Heat control in hydraulics are not a hard thing to control. the PRIME principal is this, If liquid under pressure moves to a lower pressure state, without doing work, the pressure energy degrades to heat. So... If you have a seal leak on a piston, as the high pressure oil leaks across the seal, no work is done moving a load and heat is generated. If you make back pressure by too small lines, when the oil gets to a bigger line or the tank, the pressure drops and heat results. If you have the worst case, a fixed displacement pump, deadheaded, and dumping the full flow across a relief valve, much noise and heat results, nearly the total Hp(Kw) rating of the prime mover. So, if you have a 1 Hp motor dumping full flow across the relief, you are sending about 750Kw of heat back to the tank the entire time the fluid is flowing across the relief. That is why a valve that dumps the full pump flow back to tank when the valve is at nuetral makes less heat. That is the reason the return valves are usually at least the next size bigger than the pressure lines. Return filters failing from flow? Probably had a filter without a bypass valve. A bypass lets a spring loaded poppet open when the flow would generate too much pressure if it all went thru the element. I NEVER use less than a 50 GPM spin-on as a return filter. At 20 gpm these bypass little. The Parker 50-AT spin-on or equiv is cheap and gives large filter capacity. There are charts to calculate the heat transfer of tanks but simply, a 28 GPM pump, on a 30 gallon tank, is too small. Usually the rule of thumb is to go at least twice pump flow and 4 times is better. This lets the oil returned travel around a long path as it goes around the center baffle, giving debris a chance to drop out is the slow flow, ai to rise out and the heat to radiate out the walls and floor. Too small and that hot dirty foamy oil short circuits right to the suction and then you often hear a gravel crusher sound as the pump cavitates. A caviating pump can self destroy in minutes.

Cut on a bandsaw, by Steve, an undertaking in itself. The opening was doen using tools made to grip the arms once a handled cut was used to start the opening. The tools were only 5' long and it took 7 men to open. May not have been as hot through as we thought. Next attemp, longer tools! Next attempt more attention to heat. The arms stayed straight and we never had to adjust an arm to 90 degrees.

I was swinging somebody's grandaddy 14# cross pien. The hammer I was using was given to me, and was from VOGT were I worked for 21 years. They had a large blacksmith shop up till late 80's. Mine is mstamped HVM for Herny Vogt Machine co, and was made in that shop. No date but I would guess maybe mid 20-30"s. We also had Steves very big straight pein and Dave Kunkler's 12# cross pein. So no, the smallest hammer used was a 12#. The do call us the BFH's :)