Shane Stegmeier

my father in law is an enabler he found me a Johnson Gas Appliance model 133 trough forge its rated at 400,000. BTUs per hour for 40$ nearly 8k new. I need to convert it to propane, and have a job big enough to warrent it, and a tank big enough it won't freeze up in a couple hours... :-) but very nice if you ned ti feed a power hammer :-)

Most guys prefer to use a water hardening steel for hammer heads old ball peins were supposedly W1 tool steel, but a lot of very good hammers have been made by blacksmiths out of 1040, 1045, and 1050. Which can be water hardened, and are less likely to be so hard that they will seriously damage your anvil, and don't spall as explosively as some of the fancy tool steels... A lot of modern smaller axils are 1545H, and larger sizes of passenger vehicles run 1050 axils ... OLD Cat track pins like mid 80s and older were 1050 steel, newer ones are mild and induction hardened to get the job done, and don't make as nice a hammer.... Mild hammers just normalized are good for striking tools, like chisels and punches... Water quenched steels are easier to do the differential hardening on than oil quench steels... Nice durable hammers can be made out of "nicer" steel;-), but really good tool steel isn't necessary, or even advantageous IMHO. At the end of the day if you need to make a hammer You use whatever is the correct size and weight, and work around the material's quirks.

Dude... plenty of room for tooling under those dies;-) I want a steam hammer big enough to forge anvils on;-) Fun little toy. I love steam hammers

Quality Control IS Good Business Sense!!! I am sick of buying things that are cheap (in more ways than one... ) and then getting them home and they don't work. In the present day John and the other reputable dealers should be commended, for actually making sure the hammer works. It is a shame that in our day an age that many people will sell things that don't work, and they know it... I bought a small clip on fan from Menards and there were several boxes that had been opened in the stack, I don't trust them and grab a box that was unopened, but when I got home it didn't work... I am very tempted to assume that the other boxes that had been opened were returns that they knew didn't work... Bad for business... and very annoying

Try welding something other than AS36 hot rolled 1/2 square... A LOT of what we are getting is polluted remelt, and is Hard and sometimes impossible to weld unless your welding technic is just perfect. I had a boy who was working with me some and he could make chain link welds all day long (I think he was using cold rolled 3/8 round, but it might have be HR??), but could not get a simple faggot weld in 1/2" square. The mill scale on HR can give you problems too, ifn you don't take it off first. If you were sticking to something else in the fire, then it is more likely something wrong with you your material or how you are handling it would be my guess... In our local group we have noticed and been talking about how hard it is to get the new remelt steel to forge weld one guy was guessing copper contamination as the culprit. Personally I have noticed that some of the AS36 seems to be hot short and will crumble because of excessive grain growth, especially on a narrow neck after you stop working that area. Modern materials have different characteristic than old wrought iron or even old steel. You need to modify your technics and your designs to avoid the weaknesses and play to the strengths of the materials you use. Good modern steel is very homogenious, and can be moved fast under the hammer. Old wrought iron isn't homgenious at all, and unless it is a Very fine grade of wrought it has a tendency to split if you push it too hard and too fast, but it forge welds beautifully, something that isn't true of mild steel;-) It is very interesting to note that some of the things from the past that we are so impressed with in our modern age were done simply to overcome the limits of the materials at hand, and to take advantage of some of the benifits of the material. Pattern welding in Europe, and Japanese laminated blades are prime examples... Of course forge welding was everywhere in the past... Sorry about the digression into a history lesson, I have been working in my head on some material for a demo at an up coming conference... ;-)

Check out the link in the other air hammer post to John Linn's video "Controling your air hammer" he does an excellent job of laying out the options. I think he would recommend a 1.5" cyclinder, and I would too. With such a relatively small amount of CFM you will end up waiting on your compressor with a 2" cyclinder. I have a 75# Bull air hammer, and it has a 2" cyclinder and I can bury a 7.5hp Quincy Air Master light industrial compressor with ~22.3CFM @ 175 PSI, I run the hammer between 135PSI and 90-PSI most of the time. Do the math, do the research, try and understand the way it is suppose to work, before you go buying a lot of parts. If you are a famous scrounger, have at it, but if you are shelling out real money for things... KNOW what you are doing, it will save you time and money in the long run. Other interesting tidbits, I am told that hydraulic cyclinders are relatively cheap and easy to find new or salvaged, and are strudier than air cyclinders generally. Also the shackle ends on the cyclinder can be used to protect the cyclinder in the case of misalignment of the guides, there is a name for that type of coupling but of course I can't remember it. ;-) A well designed small hammer, that fits your compressor, and your budget will be a better investment than an overly ambitious hammer that has too small an anvil, and is constantly starved for air when you try and use it. The two best limiting factors to consider when designing your hammer are the size of the anvil, and the size of the compressor. Small anvil = smaller ram. Somewhere between a 10-1 ratio and a 40-1 ratio is best. I have a 6" axil forging that weighs 456# and that would be fine for a hammer between 25# and 45#. If you have too heavy a ram you WILL loose efficiency bouncing your anvil and your hammer around the shop, even if you bolt it down, it will vibrate more and will wear out faster if the anvil isn't heavy enough. Chambersburg did the studies on ideal ratios and found that anything above a 40-1 ratio the cost benifit analysis showed a seriously deminished return. There are lots of hammers out there that have been built with way too light, and springy an anvil, or nearly as bad a dead anvil, and people are happy with them... But the truth of the mater is a hammer with a proper balance between the anvil and ram ratio, will not shake the shop as badly, and is less likely to beat itself to death. Doing it right they just run more quietly and with less vibration. A power hammer should be overengineered, you really don't want one to fail catastrophicly while you are playing on it...

The Sorber Collection... book is also excellent sorry I am not a real bibliophile and cannot provide the complete title, author, publisher and ISBN;-) I had to check it out from the IBA libarary along with the Albert Sonn book they both seem to go for over 100$ used if you can find them...

IF you can find the tubing and have a bandsaw that cuts true, or a power hacksaw, then I would do it that way;-) having tried to free hand 12 diameter rings out of 1/4" by 2" I finally had to borrow a cone mandrel and it still wasn't easy... They may have been 3/8" thick??? I just remember it was hard to get an even heat on them, and they were slightly undersized and trying to get them so that a 12" pot would nestle down tight against the ring was a bother... They look great now, and I do get lots of compliments on them, but what is rotten is that they haven't sold yet:-P... Visually round is fairly easy with a good eye and some patients, but mechanically precise is a pain:-)

If you are North of the Bay area then I would suggest JJ, James Joyce at Bear Path Forge. He is an excellent working blacksmith and a very good teacher. There are lots of good smiths and lots of places to take classes in California, but I will still recommend JJ. Bear Path Forge

Just to clarify things a bit, and so that it will work a little better for you... Peyton missed a minor detail in his description of the little sloted hole type hinge bender... It helps to have the mandrel in hole for the stock to slip around. It is also recomended that you bevel the stock on the end. The bevel practically starts the bend for you, and being forced around the mandrel/pin it fits up tighter in the end. The stock should be started with the bevel faceing the outside of the die, so that it will slip along the outside of the circle, and finish nice and tight in the eye of the hinge. Hope this helps.

What kind and size of compressor do you have to throw an air hungry beast like that??? :-) For something with a 4" displacement I would want atleast a 10-25hp two stage compressor, or better yet a rotary screw compressor 100CFM or better. This is not going to be a hammer that you can get satisfactory proformance out of a 5hp compressor from Wallyworld... A 4" cyclinder should do the job if you have enough compressor so that you are'nt constantly waiting for it to catch up... To have the best proformance you want ALOT of free air in a high CFM rating on your compressor. You will also, want to get a big pipe and industrial sized fittings, including Filter/Regulator/oiler.... I have 3/4 lines and fittings, and can still bury my Quincy Air Master light industrial 7.5hp compressor, and I only have a 2" on my 75# Bull Hammer... Good luck you can certainly do it, a freind of mine built a 450# air hammerr, and had no trouble till he wanted to weld on the guides;-)

Several 4" light duty vices that I bought for 30-35$, one of which was a really sweet English made one with chamfered leggs and a nice fancy turned box. On 5.5" with a broken foot and missing the spring and mounting bracket, but it was only 20$ it still weighs ~80# a nice 90# 6" vice for 65$??? With everything there even;-) my latest find a 100-120# 6" Columbian?? Hard to read but it was stamped into the chamfer on the front? leg? had the bracket, but no spring or clip and wedge no biggey;-) 65$ All were bought here in Indiana, I passed on a beatiful 5.5" 80# Ironcity??? that the guy wanted 85$ for... Should have snagged it too;-) A guy I used to work with said he had a couple in his garage that he would let me have, I should head by his place and see if he still has them;-) before he does something silly like scrap them out...

Thinner punches heat up faster!!! For punching a hole in a railroad spike I would cool after EVERY hit, hit hard and work fast, and use the best lube you can lay your hands on... Slitting the hole in the shank of the spike is the best way to go since it will leave the most stock still around the eye. After it is slit you can open it up and drift it to shape without thinning the stock too much. The ductile iron tomahawk drifts are really only for doing the final sizing in my opinion, and should be sanded and smoothed and lubed up. On a more general note I either leave the tool on the steel too long like when I am doing splitwork and slitting off leaves and curls, or I try to keep to tool cool and don't hit more than once or twice. Better steels really do help, I use a lot of S7 and H13 for tooling that I make and it works real nice, and you can abuse it. You can use mild steel and even wrought, but you need to have very good form and be dilligent about keeping the steel hot and the punch cool... Have fun, use what you have, and upgrade when you get the opportunity. Hopefully God will bless you with an abundance of tool steel;-)

Do you mean a matched pair of combo dies for your hammer??? Or do you mean a fuller/flatter paddle to use on your flat dies??? Inquiring minds want to know;-)

Ingersol Rand used to make an Excellent compressor, Sorry to say I heard from a conpressor dealer that sold and serviced them (as well as a few other brands) that Ingersol Rand was running on rep for most of their stuff, and if you knew what you were buying it might be a good machine, but alot of their stuff is lower quality and higher priced than it used to be. The consumer stuff that most companies are producing is crap. I will say it again, the guy who came up with planned obsolecence should have been taken behind the building and horsewhipped, not given a promotion... John did you up size the motor slightly from the straight 5hp? I would have considered doing that, or making sure it was aleast a Marathon, or GE if not a proper Baldor motor. I got a Quincy with a Baldor motor cause I didn't trust anything cheaper... ;-) Good Luck to Both of you, Jose and John. Which reminds me its time to change the oil on my Quincy;-) oil is much cheaper than metal... And you know the company is thinking about the long haul when the manual discusses maintence schedules and how often you should change the oil on the machine... check your manual

Bradley were industrial grade hammers and were over engineered and underrated for actual fall weight of the hammer assembly. The motors probably would have been slightly oversized to be sure they would do the work in an industrial setting and being used on slightly over capacity stock;-) Good luck should be nice well mannered little hammer for you once you get everything line up properly... ;-)

Sam in your envy of all the hammers you didn't notice the Bader III with the variable speed DC motor... Shame on you;-) Jose I am impressed with the tooling you have aquired and made that is a very nicely equiped little shop

Thank you to all who posted and those who also prayed. Thanks be to God, who is Good all the time, because Beatrice's fever which was at 103.8 when my wife arrived at the ER was quickly and pretty consistently broken at the hospital, after a spinal tap and iv antibiotics (hospital protical for fevers that high...) they held them for observation for 48 hours and Momma and baby should be home this evening any minute now. I am thankful for all your prayers and the knowledge and hard work of the people at the hospital, but I know that God is sovereign, and to him I give the glory, in His precious name Amen. Sometimes these panicy little reality checks, remind us just how helpless we are as we stand before God, and we have to surrender to his will and trust in him. It is amazing the kind of peace you can find when you know it is completely in God's hands...

This is Finn my new baby Beatrice has caught the flu and it has gone into viral pneumona she has just been admited to the hospital ~10pm 2/23 the fever spike has been brought down somewhat but she is only 6 weeks old, and my family and I would appreciate your faithful prayers. Thankfully she and I missed the first strain of the flu that hit the whole family, but the upper resperatory strain will be dangerous enough. The rest of the family has been sick for going on three weeks, I started to fall ill Tuesday evening. Beatrice had some congestion Friday and a fever this morning...

There are LOTs of variables to consider in determining "Best" not the least is taste and personal preferance. For a given weight of power hammer: A steam hammer running on steam hits hardest, then a mechanical hammer, then an air hammer. As far as speed goes: a mechanical hammer will generally run faster, then a self contained air hammer, then a utility hammer, then a steam hammer... When you are drawing material out you want harder/faster/more;-) Within reason and the starting thickness of your stock;-) There is a HUGE variety of mechanical hammers, some work very well indeed and have very nice control, others a rude and crude and make more mashed potatoes than useful work... Sadly LGs are on both ends of that spectrum, I have seen well mannered LGs and rude dogs, other less common mechanicals were actualy beter designed and were easier to control. With a LG if you are a good mechanic and know how to keep it adjusted to the work you are doing and it has a brake, you can get some excellent work out of it, but it won't have the control of a selfcontained air hammer, ever... It takes a lot of skill to make a mechanical hammer a versitile as an air or a steam hammer, but if we are comparing hammers all in the same weight class the mechinical will likely out draw the air or steam hammers, and do it CHEAPER!!! Compare the size of motor on a mechinical hammer, verses the selfcontained air hammer, or the compressor to run a utility style air hammer or a converted Steam hammer, and don't even think about running a steam boiler;-) Personally I prefer air hammers and steam hammers, I really like the control you get (I love the raw power of a Steam hammer, but in the right hands you have wonderful control as well;-) but don't knock the mechanicals they have their place. They were always cheaper, and more plentiful, and still are. Look at what you pay for a used LG, compared to a new air hammer (unless you build your own...) The trick is to know what each tool is good at, and to use it to it's full potential.

The quality of the tools that a craftsman made and maintained in his shop spoke of the over all quality of his work. In our post modern, post Christian world, everything is disposable. A low price, beats a high price every time. Tools along with everything else are designed to break, and need to be replaced so there is a continuing market for new product... YUCK the man that invented "planned obsolescence" should have been taken behind the building and horse whipped, not given a promotion... And sadly all we have available now is cheap xxxx, because that is all most people are willing to buy... Have a nice day, and please shop again... ;-) Sorry hot button topic with me;-)

Snappers are also used for shearing material cold or at a black heat, you can snap small stuff on a small hammer. Clifton Ralph talks about shearing 4" square bar cold on the steam hammer with snappers. The snappers should have Nice Square edges, and when used to shear material they are lined up so that if they were sitting side by side the edges would be touching or would overlapp maybe a 1/16th. If you have everything lined up right it doesn't take a huge amount of movement to shear the bar, even on big stuff. I don't remember how big a set of snappers were used on the big bars, but as I remember it wasn't very big in comparision to the thickness of the bars... I think I tried to set up to snap some material on my little 75# utility style air hammer a few years ago, and didn't have much luck. At the time I attributed it to poorly made and designed tools and a lack of three hands and two perspectives;-) Clifton and Kurt Farenback made it look real easy on a 250# LG ;-) You can also look in Lillico's "Practiacal Blacksmithing Illustrated" he describes the use of snappers too.

I love Bruce's method of developing a "set" to the hammer face before you harden it. If you are using an anvil at a height that is either too high or too low for you this can be very important. A lot of people ignore the best biomechanical height for their anvil because they can't see, and or just aren't comfortable trusting that they are hitting what they are supposed to be. For light work a smaller anvil set higher is fine, but for heavy work you want your anvil set low enough that your arm is in a nice neutral position at the end of your stroke, especially if you are swinging hard. As far as dressing the pein on your hammer, that will in part depend on what type of work you really want to be doing. Right now I use a 2# Hofi type hammer made by Tom Clark, it has a blunted and somewhat broad pein, and I like it fine for most types of work. I have a 2# double diagonal pein hammer that I forged out of a cheap chinese hammer, it has a rounded and broad pein as well, and it is great for lots of stuff. But if you want to spread material like to make a shovel, or a swelled round boss on a hinge a sharper narrow pein will do the job better. A narrow pien will spread material better perpendicular to the pein, you can focus the spreading better... The cow pie apology is very helpful to get people to understand how the steel moves under the hammer. Hit a cow pie with a stick: it divides along the line it was struck. Hit it with a brick: and the pie flys mainly away from the long sides of the brick, and less along the short sides, and only a little at the corners. Drop a square paverstone on it: and the pie will fly away from the sides, and a little bit at the corners. Drop a bowling ball on it: and the pie flys equally in all directions.

Farrier, which is a fancy word for horse shoer... I have done the starving artist thing and it doesn't suit me, and that was while I was single... Now with three kids, a wife, a horse, a dog, three cats, a hundred chickens, 30 guinea fowl, and 22 goats, I don't have the luxury of that, or the time... If it were just me I might be able to starve, but since there are so many that I have to feed... My goal is to get back to where I am more blacksmith than farrier, that has been the 10 year goal for about 6 or 7 years now, and I am up to maybe 3% blacksmith by income;-)