Alan Evans

I remember the wonderful feeling when I finally installed my 3cwt Allday's, it had been in the yard waiting for a building to house it for the best part of ten years! Please excuse me if you already know about the stuff I mention below, once I started remembering things about the Alldays it all came in a rush! One thing I notice from your picture is the lack of air gap between your inertia block and the floor. It may not be a problem for you but I found I had to cut a gap in the floor to prevent the vibrations being transmitted to the walls via the floor and they then acted like a sound board. Not good news for me or my neighbours. I actually left a gap around the 3cwt's inertia block when I cast the floor, but thought I could just run the 50kg Reiter and my 1cwt Alldays directly on the floor slab because they were on 8 and 10 Ø150mm rubber buffers...wrong. I had to hire a diamond saw and cut down the sides and front and stitch drilled across the back in order to have them sitting on a floating platform to reduce the racket. The other thing I did on the 3cwt to reduce the chuff noise and the oil mist in the atmosphere from the exhaust was build a plenum chamber on top of the master cylinder and pipe the tup exhaust and the air inlet into it. The same air then pretty well shoots backwards and forwards through the machine...an almost closed loop. I made a baffle system inside the chamber out of MDF in order to smooth the vent to atmosphere. I guess it is a bit like the one illustrated on the enormous image earlier in the thread, only more squat in shape. If you do not have near neighbours, David Petersen's 3cwt Pilkington (or early Alldays) had a pipe connecting both inlet and exhaust and that poked out through a hole in the wall. I am afraid I came to the thread 6 months too late to offer the handbooks and installation info in time but If you need any info let me know...you have sourced oil and such I presume? As far as the damage to the frame goes, if it is at all reassuring after 5 years use my top tool and wedge come loose one day and I discovered the front dovetail lug had cracked from the root of the dovetail to the front! I thought that it would be the end of the tup if not the hammer. I then discovered the crack was along the line of a welded repair so instant relief...if that weld lasted for 5 years then I could weld it again...that was 10 or 12 years ago. I veeed it out carefully and tig welded it with 312 rod, been fine ever since. The slave cylinder head cracked and I machined another out of mild steel. We reproduced the hollow dish form by rowing the capstan of the lathe with a piece of scaffold pipe and a heavy boring bar! That was the classic instant repair, it failed at 3pm I managed to persuade my local profile company to cut and deliver a 75mm thick disc that afternoon, we machined and drilled it the next morning and had the furnace up and forging again by 3 that afternoon! Happy days! Incidentally noticing your slings around the tup when you were investigating it, I found that the eye bolt that fits the cylinder head thread also fits the thread in the top of the tup. Lastly, the little cushion and primer valve at the top of the slave cylinder you rightly identified (as far as I know) can sometimes get sticky and not seal properly if you over oil the air ways. That can sometimes cause the tup to hit the cylinder head. And finally lastly, I had to rewind the motor a few years ago because a well meaning assistant had dutifully given the motor bearings a couple of pumps of grease every time he did the plain bearings and slides on the other hammers, unfortunately it ran into the armature windings and burnt them out... Hope something helps, Alan