Shane Stegmeier

Ditto on what Thomas said... A treadle can draw material with the right tooling, and an overdeveloped right leg, but if you want to draw material out a fast mechanical hammer is the way to go. Treadle hammers are great for using tooling under, punches, chisels, and stamps. An air hammer is more expensive to build normally and is good for most of the stuff that a treadle hammer is good at, and can draw pretty well too. But for drawing out billets a mechanical hammer is the berries. Billy Merritt is a knifemaker / patternwelded steel maker, and he has a super tuned 25# LG that he has running FAST I would guess it is running atleast 400 Bpm and maybe faster?

You can also use the small sections as paddle tools with very thin handles especially under that Blacker;-)

I have a 2# Tom Clark hammer a freind gave me, and I made a 1#15oz right diagonal pein hammer, and I modified a 2# chinese hammer to a double diagonal pien that I forged to shape. Those are the ones I use the most... all have wood handles. I hate fiberglass and metal handles on hammers, those things will ruin you... I have a hammer rack that is ~18" x 5' that is loaded heavily enough I have considered adding braces to the 1.5 x.25 angle iron... and I have used probably half the hammers on the rack in the last year. I also have a pile of stock designated for making hammer heads, and a bunch of heads waiting to be mounted or modified.

Ring has a lot to do with the shape of the anvil... a wasp waisted late pattern Hay Budden will ring like a tuning fork and is hard to dampen. A nice thick bodied German double horn anvil won't ring like that even if it was as hard as the Hay Budden (which it likely isn't... ;-) (It's like comparing a Barbie Doll to an X East German shotputter ;-) The harder the anvil the higher the tone of the ring.

Couldn't you afford two of them? If this one broke, how long till the other one goes, and would you be better off replacing them in pairs? Just a thought... ;-)

You got a good forge weld... I used to get a nice gunshot report when I forgewelded quite often, (sadly not so often anymore;-) I would guess it is the metal sealing all the way around the edges of the weld, while there is still flux inside, and then having the flux Forcibly expelled. BUt that is just a dumb guess on my part. I like it when it welds like a gun shot, generally I KNOW I got a good weld when that happens... I like to hit it once or twice more after the POP and then put it back into the fire and reheat it to welding heat, and then reduce the weld to the finished size. Works for me;-)

Larry if you have just started smithing and you are useing a 4# hammer much at all no wonder you have a pinched nerve. Even if you are strong, and use a hammer in other ways, blacksmithing is different and will work you differently than framing up a house, or drywalling. Start small, focus on good technique, being relaxed and upright and build the strength while you focus on doing everything right, the strength and staminia will come... Just pushing through with an iron will, will just wreck your body, ask me how I know;-)

OK Ken you win! Very nice job on the home built grinder;-) I LOVE the way you made the flat platen so that you could pivot the whole thing, Very sexy... Very neat and clean job over all, its so pretty and clean (and you even used new metal;-) You really should paint it so that it stays this nice and clean looking. I was going to build mine out of scrap (I am sure I have all the stuff I need, wheels, motors, steel...;-), but this looks so nice, its almost tempting to buy fresh steel to do a nice professional looking job...

Here is the link to the site that sells the KMG and lots of parts for building your own belt grinder... Beaumont Metal Works If you have a lathe that you can use you can easily make your own wheels if you can find chunks of aluminium the right size. Find some bearings, and machine the wheels to accept them. You can also machine the shaft that the bearings run on, to accept a forked arm, for some small wheel grinding. Rubber coatings are nice for a contact wheel, but you can do good work on a plain metal wheels too.

Julius Schramm did a couple of studys, and a small gate with forged thistle elements, you can see pics in "The Artist-Blacksmith's Craft." German repouse' done hot on sturdy metal;-)

He is something I came across while googling Catalan Forges... There is an aweful lot of interesting looking links on the history of iron and steel, including a bunch on patternwelding and Wootz... Very cool A Steel Glossary with Linked References

Very cool link to lots of articles on steel and iron production... A Steel Glossary with Linked References An aweful lot on the history of iron production and a lot on historic patternwelding too

Keep the shop CLEAN... put things away while you are working, clean up really well when you are done working. Nothing is more discouraging to me than the idea of having to clean for 20 minutes just to clear enough room to start working... Its safer and you can get right to work... I like Bruce Wilcocks idea of scrapping out the stuff you aren't honestly likely to use, and if you have a scrap yard which will let you have a credit like Bruce was saying, Rock ON;-) I have too much good scrap I can barely get into or through the shop to work... Now I just need a week out two to follow my Bruce's advice...

Robb Gunter says that ball pein hammers were better quality steel than regular hammers I have that in my notes somewhere... Found it apparently most of them used to be W-1 tool steel, I wouldn't guess that the cheap chinese import hammers are the same, but I would water quench them anyway... If you can find some nice old ball pein hammer heads at the fleamarket, or garage sales use them. You will want to keep them well lubucricated and cool them often while using them or they will mushroom badly need to be redressed at best, and at the worst they will get stuck in the work.

Here is the link to Nicholson files and the website has a lot of information carefully hidden in the file descriptions of patterns and types... Nicholson

Files and rasps have teeth, and generally come in: single cut, double cut, bastard cut, and mill bastard. Single cut will tend to leave a smoother finish and is better for draw filing. Bastard cut will tend to cut more aggressively and remove material faster. Mill Bastard cuts pretty aggressively, and you can leave a reasonably smooth finish if you are careful. This is my memory we are talking about, not neccessarily how the file manufacturers characterize them, for what it is worth;-) The bodifile you have was probably designed for cleaning up bondo repairs in autobody work, I have a curved belly file like that, with no teeth on the sides or back, it was not supper aggressive on steel even brand new, again for what it is worth;-)

There are business's that sharpen file's and rasps, they use an acid etching process. Try searching under "tool sharpening -file" Some farrier's have their rasps resharpened and I have a few AFA Convention directorys that list suppliers and there are few companys that offer file and rasp sharpening (but that is on the shelves in bedroom, so try Google again, my wife is asleep...;-)

The Big Blue's are nice hammers, not as much clear space between the dies as some of the other makers, but still a nicely built hammer, with good control. What kind of air supply will you have??? and what do you really plan on doing with it??? You will want all the air you can get especially if you want to draw a lot of material... I have a 75# newstyle Bull hammer and if I am drawing a lot of material I can bury my 7.5hp Quincy air master light industrial two stage compressor and I have 22.4 CFM @175PSI I run the hammer at 135PSI and have an 80gal reciever. I have flat dies and use a fair amount of hand tooling and never run out of air doing that, its just drawing long tapers, or streching billets that gets deep into the compressor. Tom Berenger has his B3 power hammer school and has people teach different methods of using your power hammer. If you get the chance take the FLAT DIE power hammer class with Steve Parker, he is a very good teacher and he is an industrial smith who makes tongs for the highspeed hydaulic forging industry on a Nazel B4 all day long. And makes it look easy, but he is really good;-)

a 12 volt DC blower like what is found in the air conditioner/heater in a car works fine, unless you try to plug it into an AC outlet cause someone put a standard plug on it;-) I had a horseshoer coal forge designed to plug into the trucks DC system, but it had a standard plug on it... Oh well I fixed it (several different times so far... ;-)

The rail is nice because it will also work harden quite a bit, old rail that has seen a lot of heavy traffic might not have started with a hardened face but after years of heavy rail traffic, it is good and hard... A nice tip is to make a starter cut with a cut off wheel before trying to cut it with the bandsaw;-) If you wanted to you could just normalize the hammer head and work only hot steel to develop the set for your hammer, at your anvil. Use it till it takes a definite "set" where you can see where you aren't hitting perfectly flat, dress it slightly and you can do a normall selective heat treat or just continue to use it as is. The Maganenes make it a deep hardening alloy so try the selective heat treating methods, John B suggested, be sure to temper the edges back good;-)

Big smile... But Thomas say it isn't so, we all "KNOW" that leaf springs are 5160 and should be oil quenched... lol ;-)

Traditionally a lot of that was done with forgewelded collars that were then swaged to finished shape. I am pretty good at upsetting too, and kinda enjoy doing it, but for the most part traditionally forgewelding extra material on was more common that upsetting to thicken things, upsets were common to set up scarfs for forgwelding, and were used other places where needed, but if you don't need to upset stock then don't, unless it is a design element;-) Making a living is not cheating, sometimes it can be a little distasteful, but you have to swallow your pride and do what a man's got to do, provide for his family, if your not getting paid for traditional technics, then fabricate at will;-)

The steel specs have changed a lot in the last 30 years, maufacturing processes have improved, and new industrial heat treating processes are becoming commonplace and this changes the materials that we are salavaging from different applications. The salvaged metal charts can declare authoritatively that a particular whatsit is a particular alloy, and unless it is published by the manufacturer as a current product spec it is only a good educated guess. 4140 used to be a common steel used for lots of applications where toughness and a bit of wear resistance was needed, like shafting. My impression is that even though it is still commonly available and spec'ed in a ton of older reference books, I think in many applications it has been replaced with alloys better suited to induction forging and hardening. I trust Jeff's Reinhart's information on the alloy on new forged axils, but I also know that some of the 800ton Cat dump truck axils are being cast at Harrison Steel just down the road from me, I don't know what alloy they are using but they are hollow (the hollow in the axil is the brakefluid reseviour, and lightens the axil and they don't have to find a 12" upsetter and machine them for a day or two, to change to a new design... Saves Cat time and money, but it is a pain for Harrison, because the casting have a bad tendency to crack in heat treat, and then the cracks have to be ground out and welded solid then back to heat treat to roll the dice again... Bad stress risers between thick and thin sections of the casting... due I would venture to guess because of specs from Cat, they are trying to cast too close to finished demensions to save on machining costs and weight...) Just an example of how manufacturing technics are changing to fit changing design requirements and that includes the alloys they use. I can't help but be dubious of "KNOWING" what a certain steel is. The charts are a good guideline to start with, but what it comes down to is, heat it, beat it, then try and heat treat it... Then test it to see how it proforms. A simple heat treat test is all you need to do, draw out a thin section of the unknown material, allow it to air quench or normalize, test it with a file, if the file skates then great its an air hardening alloy, try and temper it. If the file bites after the air quench, then it is mostlikely not an air hardening alloy, and you should heat it back up to critical and quench in warm oil, file test it again, if it skates try and temper it, if the file still bites, then try a water or salt water quench, if the file still bites its a mild steel with limited hardenablity, you may need to try superquench or just a cold hose and a lot of water. You can also do this same testing, by using 4 identical test bars, then you can try and break the test bars after heat treat to give you better idea of the working characteristics of the steel. It is good to know how a particular supply of scrap will react in your shop, to your technics...