Free form forging

[clinton]

I recently got this hammer running and made new dies for it and yesterday I made a bbq fork I had a horse head that I made out of 3/4 inch stock I tapered it down and split the end made a pretty nice fork. Then I decided to do some free form forging Hofi style to see what this hammer will do, it is a commonsense no 2 - 75 lb hammer. I took a piece of 5/8'' round stock and went to town on it, the hammer hits pretty hard, I need to redo the keeper for the upper die it keeps coming loose. The dies are combo dies that I made with the help of Fewood

[bigfootnampa]

The dies look nice Clinton! DO get that top die secured though... loose is unsafe. My Anyang has a similar attachment for the dies but has a spring activated gate that secures the wedge so that it cannot back out. The wedge is adjusted to exact length with a shim... I like aluminum as it is just soft enough to compress a tiny bit. I have used brass shims but they do not last as long. Eventually any shim will become too thin as the hammering draws it thinner. When they even seem the slightest bit loose it is time to check and reshim/reseat.

[ironstein]

Nice horsehead fork Clinton. Must be nice to have a powerhammer to play with.

[clinton]

Nice horsehead fork Clinton. Must be nice to have a powerhammer to play with.

Thanks ironstein, I am pleased with the way the fork came out and with the powerhammer I saved myself about 2- 3 hours of forging if I had to do that myself, just flip a switch and whacka, whacka, whacka