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I've been posting this in a couple other places, but thought I'd post the whole thing over here too as it's a real hammer crowd and I could always use more input! The thread starts back a month ago in early June... Well, I had enough of trying to track down hammers, afford them, dicker over price, lose deals from distance and competition... so I contacted my friend Larry Langdon and sure enough, he had a good project hammer to sell me.It's a #9 Beaudry Champion, the slack belt type, the 300 lb. model. It needs dies and a sow block. Overall it's not too badly worn but has a good surface rust coat from sitting idle in a warehouse in Seattle for decades. Larry threw in a jackshaft setup including 7.5 hp 1100 RPM 3 phase motor, a big flat pulley he fabricated for it, the right 3-groove sheaves to achieve speed range, and shaft and bearings so putting together the drive tower should be relatively simple.I got a monster sow block from some old steam hammer with it too, which he'd found and been saving as a starter block to shape a smaller sow for the Beaudry from. That's the most daunting part of the whole project, it's a lot of metal removal but I have no doubt it'll get done in the end.I drove over to southern Idaho Memorial Day weekend to get it, 1200 miles round trip and 48.5 hours total.Here's some pics...You can see the big sow block in the pics, it needs the top and bottom dovetails cut off, and then cut into a round disc 10" thick and 16.5" wide. I have ordered a #7 cutting tip and am reading up on severing heavy sections, I have a very good old oxy-ace book from the 40's that deals with that stuff. Then I'll have to grind it nice and flat on both top and bottom and machine in dovetails that match the hammer.I've wire brushed a good portion of the frame, and am soaking everything with penetrating oil- the first thing I'll do probably to get into it is fabricate a treadle, that I know I can do easily enough. Then it's the sow block...I have just managed to source some used dies from a similar hammer, with slight modification they will work. 4" wide by 11" long by 2" outside the dovetails! Oh I can't wait to slap some hot steel between those big glorious flat dies and whale away... As far as I can tell from a spark test the sow appears to be mild steel. That's a relief! I think it'll cut ok.If I can get my gear and technique dialed in correctly, oxy-ace should be the fastest method by a long shot, to rough the block down... hopefully I can get a clean enough cut that the snagging afterwards isn't too horribly demanding. I do have big rocks for my big angle grinders.Abrasive gas saw remains an attractive option B. In fact, if the first cut doesn't go well with the torch, I have three remaining ones to cut off with the saw. We'll see. It would take a whole lot of sawing and a bunch of wheels, but would come out cleaner with less grinding afterwards necessary.I have a friend who has a moldmaker's shop, with a couple seriously large CNC mills- I thought if I could get the disc roughed in, I'd take it up to him to see if a program and cutters can be made to work on the big mill, as far as cutting in the top female and bottom male dovetails.If not, I might be looking for a shaper. I know where one is that I could buy, but it's likely not big enough. Can't remember. I got the #7 Victor tip in today, and wow the center jet for the cutting oxy is BIG! on that thing.I perused some reference material for a rough idea of the amount of oxygen I might consume... it appears that running that tip at about 50 psi oxygen will burn through one of my large full tanks in about 1/2 hour or less. Cutting speed might be 3-4 ipm, and I have roughly 14 inches of cut length per side of the two dovetails. So, if it goes well I might be able to cut the dovetails off before going to refill and then cutting the main puck down to a smaller diameter circle.It is recommended to use 3/8" hose or better and no flashback arrestors to inhibit the oxygen supply, so I dug out the heavy hose I had stashed, took the arrestors off, leak tested it all and ran the torch for a minute, and it all checks out- so I believe I'm ready to try tomorrow.I think I'll grind a path clean of surface rust; I've found my best cutting occurs when the preheat flames are not hitting a rusted surface.One factor of which I'm uncertain, is that the dovetail sections have a maximum width of 7" to cut, but the lead-in and tail-out portions of the cuts taper in from and out to nothing. I'll have to slant the oxy jet a bit so as to not blow through those parts too quick and rough, I suppose.I type all of this, to reveal my thought process in case anyone has advice to add- to hear from folks skilled in heavy manual flame cutting would be very helpful. Also, it will now be here as a record of my attempt and the results, for better or worse, should anyone else face a similar task! I didn't mess with the sow today, but tinkered with the moving parts for an hour or so, and made some progress.I got the brake cleaned out and freed up, loosened.Yesterday I cut the broken adjuster bolt out, and put a new one in for now. Probably go with something less tacky, ultimately.I reefed on it super hard, sprayed pen oil all over, left overnight.Came out today, and used a mild steel set hammer and sledge to rap upwards on the guide wedge. After a little of that, more reefing on the adjuster, until finally the wedge began to slide up a bit.You can see the rust line where the ram sat in one spot for a long time! Not super deep pitting though.I slapped some scrap together to make a quick "Big Ghetto Wrench" and hauled away on the crank pin nut.And voila! The ram dropped farther in the guides, to bottom dead center, and the main shaft turned fairly easily.Lots more drop with the crankshaft rotated and the ram free.Crankshaft rotated to bottom position. Not hard at all with the brake and ram freed up!Upon observation earlier, I saw some not totally dried grease hanging at the bottom of the crank bearings on both sides of the frame, leading me to hope that the shaft had not seeped full of water and rusted solid to the bearings over time. Seems like that worked how I'd have wished after all!Now I have to make a 2.5" square (IIRC) driver/wrench to turn the set screws for the spring arm tension adjustment, and break all that free and take it apart so I can remove the ram to polish all of the moving bits up. One end of the idler/brake linkage pivot shaft. It was well corroded from water getting into the oil holes and down into the babbitt bearings. The linkage was frozen and would not pivot, necessitating the freeing and removal of the old shaft.I finally got the shaft out, it took a lot of Blaster and hammering back and forth on the ends, using a mild steel set hammer to cushion the blow of an 8# sledge. It was rusty enough to be scrapped, but the babbitt itself in the frame will live to fight another day.Linkage yoke removed, and a piece of 1" round cold rolled steel try-fit in for a new shaft. It fits just a little loose, but this is not an area where precision of movement is key. I'll re-babbitt or perhaps bush with bronze later if warranted. More steps along the way...The new treadle/brake linkage shaft needed tapered holes for the pins, and neither I or the local machine shop had a taper reamer the right size... so I cut a piece of coil spring, straightened and annealed it, and chucked it up in the lathe to make a tapered "D" style reamer.With a 1 degree taper cut onto the reamer, I milled off half of the diameter and stoned it smoothish.Quench hardened and drawn to a straw temper...Drilled some 19/64" holes and followed up with the tapered "D" style reamer. It cuts nice and smooth!New shaft installed. The brake and treadle are workably linked and operational once more! A problem though with the inboard yoke for the treadle link, is that the pin hole drilled through the casting is not centered with the through shaft. As the hole in the shaft is centered, this creates a slight misalignment. A taper pin still fits OK but it may need more attention later. I had an old tie bolt... 1" round mild steel, just long enough to make a treadle from. Here I'm roughing the bend in cold using a big piece of RR track as a bending "fork" and a cheater pipe. I then tuned the curve a bit with a 10 lb. sledge over the big sow block.I cut and drilled some 2" x 1/2" bar to fit the treadle pivot dogs, a short one on this side, with the bolt/treadle welded directly on...It makes a nice arc matching the outer circumference of the foot of the frame, and is adjustable in height/angle by the arced slots for the front mounting bolts.My Airco CV300-II Mig over to the left... made short work of solid welds for the round-to-flat joints. The spring is too wimpy to work by itself, regardless of that I left excess treadle bar running out to the back, which will have a sliding counterweight fit to it. I plan to have both counterweight and spring there.Next I have to get a piece of sheared taper pin out of the bottom linkage yoke inside the frame, and make/install a new one. More tinkering to relate...There was weirdness in the lower treadle linkage... found there was a shattered pin in the bottom yoke, which enabled the yoke to slip on the shaft rather than pivot to push on the connecting rod.It was a pain in the NECK to get out. In the end I had to break out a flashlight and inspection mirror to line it up correctly, then use significant force to punch and pry the pin pieces up and out.The yoke is in a position that makes it hard to get to the pin from below! Had to pry against the frame with pinch bars and various short punches against the pin.I measured the old pin, which was 3.5" effective length, and found it to be about a 1 degree taper- .360" on the small end, .500" on the big end. Set the lathe up and used the compound rest to manually cut a new taper pin. I should really be using the 18" Hendey for this stuff but it's not as tooled up as my little Grizzly is, yet... I was too brain fried at this point to calculate the taper exactly, so I first turned the major and minor diameters on the ends and then set one degree on the compound and just observed how that came out as I cut the final passes. As it turned out the taper did not extend quite down to the minor diameter, so I tapped just a tiny bit more angle on the compound, took finish cuts, and it blended right down into the right taper over the length. My bonehead approach, plus that little Grizz lathe needs to be observed and adjusted rather than taken for granted as a stiff, precise machine!Not the world's best finish, but good for a pin!It tapped down in there nice and snug, and presto the linkage works how it should. Now I can step on the treadle and yell "bam bam bam!" all I want. I do a lot of work on my knee mill. It's already proved invaluable on the hammer rebuild, as it has for the rebuild and ongoing maintenance of my Little Giant power hammer and other machines. Just had to give it a shout out, it's an Index model 645, with power X feed and quill. I used it on the wrench to follow...The big set screws for the spring tension on the Beaudry have square sockets, which are a little irregular but are pretty much 1.940" both ways. I got a chunk of 2" hot rolled mild bar, and on the knee mill, roughed the sides down to 1.940" square and bored a 1" hole for a handle.The Beaudry Tension Wrench in full... 2' of 1" cold rolled 1018 for a handle, sliding smooth with little play through the wrench head. A cheater pipe can of course be added as necessary.The custom Beaudry Tension Wrench in action... gonna need to work on the threads a bit more with pen oil and possibly even heat though, we'll see. As I was driving to a gig the other day, my thoughts were on the hammer... imagining the fabrication of an idler pulley. Then I realized- wasn't there an idler pulley on that old straight six agricultural motor I got with some old trucks? Had a look the next morning, and voila... there it is, lower right, 5" face and 8" in diameter, mounted on its own bearings (which are still in good shape.)Turning to matters of adapting the idler to the hammer, the first item was to design a mounting method. The idler arm is bent from some unknown past force, such that any wheel mounted directly to it would be severely out of plane with the hammer's drive wheel.So, I got one of the old 3/4" nuts from the idler arm, and made a custom T-nut with it to fit into the idler arm's slot.Neither of the big bolts I had were the correct length, one being too short and one being too long. I decided to use the too-short one as the threads were better.There had been a large washer/standoff on one of the bolts, on the idler- so I turned a counterbore into it that the big washer can seat into. This on the 1911 Hendey 18"x10' lathe.My big Hendey lathe, take a bow old girl!With the parts modified, and a plan in my mind, I decided to use my Airco 3A stick/TIG welder, as the leads are 50 ft. long and can run right over up to the top of the hammer to tack weld in situ.It was pushing 100f as this photo was taken... the wheel is shimmed up to the right height with the idler, and I have a big flat old chainsaw bar clamped to the hammer drive wheel to transfer the plane of it to the face of the idler wheel. This should make it track right when tensioning the flat belt. I have the idler mount bolt tightened onto the arm, and am tacking the wheel's shaft mount to the angle adapter plate on the idler bolt.I took it all down after tacking, brought it inside, and MIG'ed finish welds on all around. The plates involved act as angle adapters as well as standoffs to achieve correct distance from idler, and correct alignment with the drive pulley.Mounted back up to have a look...From the off side...Observe the tiny blue sky gap between the wheels... you can see that they are parallel. Actually from the face angle of the belt they are more co-planar yet.The hammer as he sits now.. idler installed, treadle fabbed and installed, brake freed and linkage corrected. Next is to make the adjustable connecting arm from brake pivot to idler arm.

I have a Shaw & justice dead stroke power hammer In need of rebuilding. However I can not find much information on it. I want to know if these were good machines and worth fixing or if it would be a waist of time and money? Any information would be helpful. Thanks.

I was asked to post the pictures of the rebuild of my Fisher Norris anvil. While on a salvage hunt last year, found a poor Fisher Norris in the salvage yard. Bought it for $25.00 and brought it home. I don't have a picture of what it looked like then. Lets just say it was in terrible shape. The table was cracked, both edges were broken, chipped, and cracked. We ground out cracks (see the photos) and broken areas until it looked like a very poor boat anchor. My friends George and Bert grinding and watching to get to good metal. As you can see it was a real mess. I finished removing the tool steel table to avoid cracks in the future due to separation from the cast iron body. From here it was a matter of pre-heating to 450 degrees and laying down a butter layer of Nickel 55 to prepare it for building up to reface. Made sure to get a good NI55 layer on all cast iron surfaces. Spent hours laying down 7018 and Stoody 2110 hardfacing to bring it back to a level where we could mill it back flat. (Note: Stoody 2110 has a great deal of manganese. It is very temperature sensitive and remembers heat. It can / will crack if it gets to 500 deg. more than once or twice.) In the future, if I ever do this again, I will use 7018 for the build up and cover with a hard face without so much manganese. This is the first rough cut on the face. Added some fill beads on the edges after the first cut. I will post the final pictures and text in the near future.

I'm looking for tips or any type of do's & don't's advice I can get on restoring a Peter Wright anvil. The other day I was playing with my brake drum forge. I live on the corner so people are always driving by. I had a man offer to sell me a anvil. He was a older guy real nice. Told me he bought it at a estate sale 5 years ago but can no longer be around coal so had no use for it. Right now I'm in the middle of replacing my vans head gaskets so I couldn't go see it and knew he likely couldn't text me or email pictures. I asked him everything I could about it and he felt it was in good shape and flat. He then told me all he wanted was to see it be used and only wanted me to pay him what he had in it. Said he knows they're going for a good bit now but he said he paid $85 and only wants the $85 he put in it. So I was all over it like xxxx even though I only had $90 to my name and bought it sight unseen! After 15 hours of electrolysis removing tons of paint grease and rust I can see it's been road hard. It's got marks all over the face and someone has welded it before on the edges poorly. Marks from a stick welder tapping on it. Clearly was used to cut on.. What's the best way I can rebuild it? It's a 137lb (1-0-25) Peter Wright. Has (2) 4's on the front feet. I'm not sure what they mean. I'm not sure how the Peter Wright anvil was faced and don't want to hurt it more than it is. The guy who sold it to me never got to use it. I don't think he knew it was poorly welded. It had to much paint and rust to see it. I also feel he was honest because he showed of with the paper from when he bought it and tried to lower the price to $75. I gave him the $85 and he said he was going to give the other $10 to feed homeless kids. I must of had some good karma coming. Even had a nice big hot cut hardie! How can I bring this back to life?

My forge at work has served us well for several years, but it's about time it received some attention. A bit of background. It is situated in a historic village setting so we built it pretty much the way the old miners of the area built their forges to sharpen drill steels etc in the mines. It is basically a square of rock, filled with rubble and a top layer of crushed ant bed (including ants). A pipe passes through the rock edging and connects to a hand crank fan. Charcoal fuel. After several years, the pipe has been gradually eaten away and needs replacement. I am thinking of replacing it by adding one of those heavy iron axle hubs from an old wagon. We have lots of them in different sizes. The one lying in the ash in the picture has about a 1'' opening and the steel is about 3/8" thick. I'm hoping the thicker steel will last longer. I am also going to lift the wall a little with more rock, leaving a channel on the anvil side to allow longer stock to rest at a good depth. Any suggestions would be welcome. I've attached a couple of pics to get an idea of the current set-up.

Hello everyone, I believe this is my first post on I Forge Iron. I am in some need of some help and advice. I purchased a rough Champion 401 rivet forge from a blacksmith in Townsend, DE for about $50. The blower is in pretty much mint condition, minus the wasp's nests and caked on grease and dirt I cleaned out of the fan area. The rusted out legs were basically fused into the mounting brackets, but managed to free them and replace them (took a month of chiseling and filing). I will be replacing the rusted out, paper thin base pan bottom with a new 1/8" thick plate. The only problem I am having is that the end of the blower tube and the front part of the frame is rotted. Is there anyone out there with a 401 frame and a matching blower tube that I can buy. There is a guy who lives four and a half hours from where I live that has what I need but refuses to mail it to me unless I pay double for it. He was asking $50 if I were to go there and take the blower he wants off it, but said last night that if he has take it off himself and ship it to me he is going to charge $100 (not including shipping). I just can't see justifying a final cost of around $150 for 1/5 of a forge that usually goes for $200 to $300. Driving there would cost basically the same. Can one be made? I am always up to a challege and I am not worried about historical preservation of the forge. I have a plan to make multiple style base pans for it and have it to be easliy swappable depending on the project. I will post pictures of what I have as soon as I get them taken and loaded.

I purchased a new style 100lb little giant last week in Spokane and have a question. The hammer I think is in good shape except for one issue. The spider is not on the main shaft completely. The shaft is recessed into the spider about ½”. The key is also sticking out beyond the spider more than ¾”. This machine has been like this for some time. Some type of crude attachment is stuck on the end of the key, in an attempt to drive it in or pull it out. In order to take up the axial play in the main shaft, given the clutch assembly in out of position a large split collar was added to the main shaft just behind the forward main bearing. So the question is how do I go about getting the clutch back on the shaft and where is should be? I think the key is tapered but I’m not sure about that. I talked to Sid at little giant and he was very helpful in telling me what to look for before buying. There was a huge guard covering the whole back end so I didn’t see this and it would not have been a deal breaker anyway. I have a call into Sid to see what he can tell me and to order a DVD set from him on rebuilding.