Alan Evans

To work stock down with flat dies you use just the edge of the die and starting from the tip feed inwards taking a little bit at a time so a taper ends up stepped, or ziggurat style. The die edges must always have a radius and it is this radius which has a fullering action. A light dressing pass will take out most of the steps and if you like the texture you can leave it at that or use a half round section flatter to smooth it further. The flat of the half round conforms to the taper and the half round top allows a straight blow. You use the flatter again starting from the tip of the taper up towards the thicker section, from thick to thin will always attempt to parallel the taper. If you are in production making a lot of the same rate tapers you could have a fixed wedge, the half round flatter enables you to smooth any rate of taper. I have also made up a series of fixed top tool taper flatters for small runs. I measure them by millimetres per 100mm so I have 4.5mm 6mm 7mm 10 mm and etc. the 6mm gives about 1/4" per 4" for instance. I made up a frame which clamps around the bottom pallet and had a piece of 50mm (2") square tube which formed the socket and all the spring tools have a corresponding piece of 40mm (11/2"+) which drops in. I also made up some fullers which were held on top and bottom pallets with bolted lugs on the sides. The first couple of blows sheared off the bolts! so for 'mark two' I drilled the lugs out to 25mm (1") and cut off a slightly overlength piece of rubber hose which was compressed by the 12mm (1/2") bolt and washer and expanded out to fill the 25mm hole. This gave a shock absorption system and acted as an anti-vibration loosening system and works fine. The only bolts I have had which kept shaking loose were on my 50kg Reiter (Kuhn) the hold down bolts and the access panel bolts would always be loose despite spring washers and nylocks, As per Dave H's advice just check them regularly.

Aha! Now I know why it is called paw paw, getting thorns out of paws! Have to try and grow some in the polytunnel. 20 years ago a friend took me into a vast outdoor equipment warehouse near Berkeley in Cal... about 5 acres of camping gear! The reason he took me in and the only thing I came out with was tiny, an "Uncle Bill's Sliver Gripper", I carried it in the car until I lost it last year, absolutely brilliant device. Precise sharp points and a broad hinge/spring which keeps the points aligned. Enabled me to dig out hundreds of mine, my assistants' and family members' splinters! Happily I managed to locate a source for them here in the UK so I have replaced them. They have improved them with a key ring clip, the only thing that failed (after ten years) was the plastic bottle of the first set! Thoroughly recommended. Best fiver you could spend. Yes, he has got a real feel for it!

Now you have achieved it under the Little Giant, got your eye in so to speak, have you tried doing it by hand again?

When you say "used to" do you mean you have a different joining system for 3" now or that you just haven't had to do it recently?

Sorry Phil, I should have put a smiley face rather than an exclamation mark after my "anti clockwise" comment. :) I know you knew that it did not matter which way you turn, but I thought it worth expanding your explanation for those that may have taken your "clockwise" description too literally. Now the biter is bit by you expanding on my explanation of the explanation! :) Are we all confused? Good, then we can carry on! Now its got me idly wondering...Do all your hammers have the hand controls on the right hand side? I cannot remember having seen any with them on the left, steam hammers included. Though I am thinking mainly Massey. I suppose that would put the levers in the hammer driver's right hand. Have you ever seen a forge/hammer set up where the workpiece was not presented from the right side of the hammer? I am thinking of bar / shaft work by a team under clear space hammers rather than Double arch hammers and ring work I suppose.

My suggestion of 312 was for the hard faced parts, if it is just that hollow in the beak you want to fill then mild steel should be fine. Try it with a file, as Thomas noted if it is a Wrought Iron bodied anvil the beak/bick will likely not have a hard face anyway. The top surface of the beak will have work hardened over the years and the welding may anneal that and make it a bit softer in the HAZ (heat affected zone), but it will toughen up again. If it is a cast anvil then maybe I would stick with the 312. But the fact that it has got a hollow in and deformed looks like it is soft. Can't quite tell from the photo whether it is wear or displacement. For my 50kg Reiter which I used as my main hammer for ten or twelve years I invariably had a pair of fuller tools on it and made up a bottom table from mild steel which I could just drop on mid-heat. That was a piece of 12mm (1/2") mild steel plate on a 25mm (1") plate box which fitted the bottom tool and rested on the sow block and the top plate touched on the top of the fuller. That mild steel did an awful lot of forging and I only filled the worn hollow a couple of times with mild steel mig. It initially lasted un-repaired for 6 or 7 years when it was only me using it. But then I started having assistants and journeymen who got carried away by the apparent ability of the hammer to move material when it was too cold! It is not used as much since I have had the other hammers but it is still going strong over thirty years later. If your repair is primarily for aesthetic reasons, then 312 would not be good because you would see the stainless area. If it is wrought iron of course you could always get some mates around and stick it in a fire and re forge it. edited for clarity (I hope!)

Well we are all on the same hymn sheet then! The 312 is Stainless Steel based and is significantly harder than Mild Steel so it should do you fine. I think it is used to "butter" more exotic steels as a primer or foundation for the hard facing rods. It stands up to forging Mild Steel, 316 Stainless and Progen tool steel on both my hammers reasonably well. 3cwt and 1cwt . Alan

Three things I would say. Your anvil looks fine to me. New, sharp edged, flat anvils are a pain in the neck. An old worn one is much more useful, honest! Every chipped and radiused edge gives you another opportunity to achieve a particular form. Celebrate the possibilities! Get to know your anvil, use it for a few months and only then consider "improving" it. If you need a sharp edge or a particular radius you can always weld a Hardy Hole sized peg on the bottom of an appropriate block and use the anvil as a tool carrier. The third point is there is not much point in knowing the spec of your welding rod if you do not know the spec of the anvil if you see what I mean. I have a non-technical but "self-preservatory" approach to welding old anvils and hammer tools. I do not know the material or the heat treatment it has had so I make any repairs with 312 dissimilar metal tig or stick rods. It is tough and will stick to most things and not crack or chip off, you can always put a bit more on it if it wears. For our forging tools I think that is safer than trying to reproduce the hardness of the original and risking bits flying off at you. As long as you are forging hot metal your tooling does not need to be that hard unless you are in production. Like the old saying goes about moving into to a new property, live in it for a year before you cut any trees down. You might need their shade or shelter! Probably not what you wanted to hear, but good luck with it whatever you decide, Alan

I agree with that absolutely, especially if you can get the whole ring evenly hot so you don't stress the weld. I had forgotten you were going to fire weld the ring...the jig, lever and roller systems are more oriented toward fabricating work I suppose. I will post some images of the variations of wrenches and wheel follower systems kicking around in the forge in a few days, they might be useful for you down the line.

I have only just picked up this thread because of your todays update, sorry to hear of your problem. Although it could be thought of as being wise after the event ....as I was reading your earlier posts the bits in red jumped out at me. I could imagine the way oil being good for slow moving slides like the lathe and milling machine even a fly press but I would not describe the speed of a hammer like yours as slow. The "adhesive" property also seemed a sure fire way of holding abrasive dust against the surfaces. Machine shops don't have so much iron oxide or grinding dust bouncing around the atmosphere as forges do. The open slides do seem vulnerable in our workplaces, so I would even be wary of chain bar oil, that too is designed to be sticky, you really want a total loss system which will continuously flush the debris. There was always an old engineers joke about it being a dead loss system! I am all for mixing in a bit of graphite with the oil too, good for hanging around without the stickiness...in case you forget to keep it wet. I do remember Clifton Ralph telling me that his similarly configured hammers "run on oil"! You could do worse than do likewise! My hammers are all pneumatic and I have always used as near to the manufacturers oil specs as possible. Mainly replaced with hydraulic/compressor oils now...32 in the Reiter(Kuhn) and 46 or 90 something in the Alldays and Onions. I used to use Castrol Massey PH (standing for Power Hammer I presume) in the Alldays but sadly that is no longer available. The air hammer tups are always parked with the tup up in the cylinder to keep out the grinding dust and before starting up they have some oil wiped onto the tup guide flats from whatever happens to be in the oil can (SAE30 or other motor oil). By the time that has been exhausted the air fed oiling system has kicked in. There must be something along the lines of "If you spare the oil you'll spoil the machine" or similar! Alan

Yes good system especially if your pallets are not matched for position or if the edge radii are slightly different. I quite often turn it 180 deg if I have got a banana forming. Sometimes the weight of the curve trying to twist the bar is too much to hold even with a porter bar clamp. I always turn anti clockwise though!.....I am on the right hand side of the hammer so I roll the bar anti clockwise towards the front of the hammer so my mate with the spacing block can push it back central on the pallets. If I forget and turn it the wrong way he has to lift the block over the top to hook it on to drag the bar back.

The serious side of my response is that it is the outside edge which moves out of plane, the inside edge stays where you put it against the jig, Thomas' point about the advantage of a parallel or cylindrical former rather then a cone pertains here. Which is why concentrating on controlling the outside edge in a groove in the follower wheel or by holding it down against the base plate with a stepped wheel is favourite. The outside edge is of course getting thinner so your guide slot / step can be a good fit to your 1/4 and still not jam.

haha! Who are you trying to kid? I spotted your deliberate error, karnt fule me, I bin to kolij! *** I have made similar to John B's suggestions with a plate profile and centrally pivoting lever with a roller follower which can be stepped or grooved to hold the edge in plane. Depending on the number you have to make a ring of flat bent the easy way can be welded to a base plate and then the workpiece can be nipped around to it with scroll wrenches. ****how you going to take it off your jig after bending? One washer needs to be demountable! Edited to add that the inside of course thickens up so even with a demountable washer you would still jam.

Goodness gracious great balls of fire! Very cool! (Well you know what I mean!)

Thank you for sharing that with us, it has lightened the not-particuarly-amusing tone of my anecdote no end. :angry: Did they come into contact with asbestos that was being shipped through the marshalling yards or in some horrid process in the actual blacksmiths shop of the BR engineering works that I was talking about? i.e. was there any particular relevance to the post other than a link to Swindon, the railways and the wish to spread gloom and despondence? :mellow: I am not really having a go at you. :) The awe in which we hold those industrial 'smiths with the big machines is only enhanced when we think of the pretty rancid conditions they were working in. It does also serve to temper my "Health-and-Safety-gorn-mad" irritation when I am told that it is dangerous to use a 3 tonne sling on a 2 tonne chain hoist to lift a 250kg gate....

I put the recess for the end of the grub screws on mine after setting its rotational position as well. I say 'recess' rather than 'flat' because for things like punches or forming tools which require some pull to get out, if the grub screw bears on a flat parallel surface it can drag and spall. So I make the surface effectively a wedge/dovetail. The tool shoulder stops movement going into the work and the dovetail/wedge effect makes the grubscrews tighten as you withdraw the tool thus restricting slippage on the way out. This system will withstand 15 tonnes, and can stall my 30 tonne hydraulic press on the upstroke.

Terry Clark made some texturing tools by running a few beads of weld across a die, I cannot remember whether that was hard facing rod or not, saved him a lot of chiseling! Coincidently enough I used "knackered" as a description of my being physically exhausted earlier today in another thread. Must be the word of the day!

I remember there was some footage of one of the hammers working on a documentary. May be this one http://www.britishrailways.tv/british-railways?task=viewvideo&video_id=1415

It is all relative-context is all.... Back in the mid eighties I was asked to go down to the British Rail Engineering Works in Swindon and design some gates that the BREL blacksmiths could make. So there I was full of the joys of using my 5 year old Reiter 50kg hammer walking into a shop which dwarfed two or three 500kg Becher hammers (they called them basher hammers) chatting with the 'smiths to find out what we could do together. One of them asked me what sort of work I did and I went into "explain to student mode" and said "Well I don't work in the baroque tradition where you take a series of small elements and join them together to make a pattern, I start with a big bar and forge the forms out of it working like a sculptor with clay" As the words 'big bar' left my lips I happened to look down and noticed that my foot was resting on a billet of 200mm square (8" square) did I go red and start to gabble or what! :) Sadly they closed the works before we could set the project up. P.S. Do a search on BREL Swindon and you will get a clue as to the size. The works were designed by I K Brunel in order to build his railway. P.P.S. My Finlay 100 tonne horizontal press came from the similar BREL works in Southampton, complete with railway line profiled blocks.

:) suckers for big bars all!

:)

What a good idea. Most of the long length stuff I have forged has been over 50mm (2") square so that tends to need a very robust support, it would jam in a tube . I have a couple of pegs sticking up from a frame clamped around the bottom pallet to keep it centered on the tools. As a general safety rule with long heavy stuff you should try and keep the centre of gravity your side of the anvil. I quite often cut things double length so I use one as a handle while forging the other. If your are forging a long length always work outwards towards the end of the bar. As the bar grows you have more of it on your side. If you start at the tip for instance on a taper and double it in length you have a much longer lever on the wrong side of the anvil working against you by the time you get to the thick end. It is counter intuitive and the opposite from forging a short taper over the anvil.

If that is the case I would be more concerned to find out how to normalise/anneal it rather than harden it. I make a lot of my hammer and press tools out of mild steel just so there is no risk of bits flying off. I would rather dress/rebuild them occasionally than risk a chip in the face. Obviously it depends what you are forging but for mild steel or non ferrous and occasional 316 stainless my MS tools stand up fine.

And another thing to clear up the apparent contradiction between your statement here and mine in post no. 6... "One can't do much about the generation of scale, apart from taking short heats (not long slow soaks) in a carburizing or reducing atmosphere as stated above". You are referring to a coal or coke fire I believe and I am talking about gas furnaces! On bars over 75mm (3" square) I have had a build up of over 3mm (1/8") thickness scale if I have left the piece in the furnace too long!

It is a perfect example of a cryptic comment...look it up! :) enigmatic, obscure and an apparent contradiction in terms, a masterly example. Your perfectly straightforward explanation perfectly decryptified it, but you knew that didn't you:) I have a couple of memorable experiences of the phenomena too. One was as a strapping 23 year old working with the then (as I perceived him) old man of 60 Alan Knight on the restoration of the Davies Brothers' gates for the National Trust Erddig House that constituted my main blacksmith training. We were working heat for heat on rolled snub scrolls and water leaves in wrought iron. First thing after I had lit the fire he would take a bar heat it work it , I would have my piece in the fire beside his and as soon as he'd finished try and reproduce exactly what he'd done, brilliant training! Trouble was after a few heats my piece was lagging and I was trying to copy what he had done two heats before! By the time we got to coffee break I had to work through with another 5 heats to catch up. I was absolutely knackered and running with sweat from the strength energy and speed of movement, he, the bastard, never broke a sweat or seemed to hurry! One day I will act out the tale of my mate Jeremy who trained as a thatcher at the same time in the 70's. I witnessed him working with incredibly hasty movements... but he was moving across the roof much slower than his master who seemed so casual and slow in his! In all seriousness and deference to the OP's question, the reason I did pick up on both your and Rich's comments was that they were not explicit responses to the practical question however true they may be. Sadly some people will work for many years and not learn anything from experience. Being given some practical pointers to look for can help speed up the process. My favourite epigram "A wise man learns from his mistakes, a lucky man from the mistakes of others". As a young smith making domestic fire tools and the like I used to hate scale on my work and invariably descaled and armour bright burnished all my work. My main consumable after coke was wire brushes. I even did it on architectural size work when I made the gates for Saint Paul's Cathedral, and for the hospital chapel in Guildford. I think the main thing that experience teaches us about scale is to accept it rather than fight it. We alter our perception of it. We can minimize its production by turning the air down in the furnace or keeping a large fire; we can remove it from the surface with scraper wire brush or the shock of water or by running the hammer down the arras' to flake it off. We can keep the anvil clean mid heat, we can work the metal at black heat to remove the marbled height differences and refine the surface. Or we can celebrate it. One of the delights about forged metal is that it records the process of its forming, scale beaten in to the surface at orange heat leaves a gorgeous pattern! I often use graphite powder in the top coat of paint to bring it out and enhance that hot-worked texture. On some projects in stainless steel the surface after electro polishing is magical. Methinks I profess too much, I must go and make a punch!