Spring Pole Hammar ????

[Harold Oney]

Ok,
Saw this on the Woodwights shop a few seconds ago. A blacksmith here in KY was drawing out a tool using what appeared to be a 12 pound sledge hammar with a piviot through the bottom of the handle and a spring pole above it. It was foot operated. you stepped on the lower trip and used the force of your foot to bring the hammer down full arc and strike the metal mounted on an iron stand.

has anyone ever seen something like this? I would like to see some close up pictures.

Harold

[eric sprado]

HI: If you scroll through this "hammers" section of the forum you will find many articles about "treadle hammers"and other types of foot powered hammers.Lots of pictures,descriptions,etc..

[CurlyGeorge]

Harold, I made one very similar to what you just described. I had pix in my gallery. But I can't seem to get to them, now. It worked OK. But I have since built a tire hammer, and wouldn't go back. :D

[MattBower]

Here's Curly's:

Google "oliver hammer -clothes."

[Bentiron1946]

I saw that one too! Kind of neat wasn't it? Yes, I know that it isn't a treadle hammer, nor is it a tire hammer, nor a Kenyon hammer, nor even a first class Oliver hammer but it is something a lot older than any of those. It was what was used before steel springs were, either flat or coil, and on the frontier of America the best spring came from a well cured sapling that was trimmed of all it branches, peeled of it barks and cured till dry. Spring poles were used to power a lot of different things, wood lathes, drills, looms, anything that could be moved with a the up and down movement of a rope on a spring or used to get a flywheel spinning. Any smith with an ounce of ingenuity could set up a spring to his sledge hammer to help him replace or stand in for a striker is he didn't have one. Is it as good as a power hammer, No!, but it sure beats not having a striker when you need one and it is a heck of a lot cheaper than building a tire or air hammer and you don't need to know how to weld to build one. :blink:

[CurlyGeorge]

Thanks, Matt. I still have problems getting into my gallery. :)

[Francis Trez Cole]

the big advantage with the bigger hammers is a heaver strike. The oliver hammer was used for many function chain making and so on. curly great hammer

[ThomasPowers]

Ahhh no; the spring pole hammer does not predate the other types. Strikers with sledges were used earlier and were gradually replaced by such contrivances in fairly modern times when *labour* became a major cost. Currently the earliest powerhammer I know of dates to before AD 1000, tidal mill powered, (Personal Communication, Penn State Medieval Technology Conference)

[Ferguson]

I have been to a Monastery in France which had a waterwheel driven power hammer dating from 1220 AD, reconstructed now. So power hammers have been around for a while.

http://www.sacred-destinations.com/france/fontenay-abbey

http://www.fr.francethisway.com/abbeyfontenay.php - In French, but claims it was the first hydraulically driven power hammer

I remember when I was there seeing a plaque from a French engineering society, so they regarded it as significant. The reconstructed hammer has a 200 pound head.

I have not seen anything definitive on where the first blacksmith power hammer was built. Wikipedia claims the earliest trip hammers date from ancient Roman times, or ancient china, but this may have been for mining use, breaking up rock, rather than blacksmithing.

Richard

[Ramsberg]

The Chinese were using trip hammers at least as early as 20 AD for pounding grain. I don't know how early they began using it for metal working, but they were no idiots. There are a good deal of people who believe that their trip hammers originated around 1000 BC.

It is funny, or more sad really, Europe was behind the Chinese or Asians in generaly in virtually every catagory of technological development, such as inventing and using the ship rudder 1000 years before Europe, in the 5th or 6th century they were already using paddle wheels on boats, then in the 12th century during an internal arms race their paddle ships grew to 300 feet long, held up to 800 men and were propelled by more then 20 wheels, powered by the sailors of course.

It has always bothered me that regardless of who was actually first the focus is always on Europe, nothing against Europe just want the credit to go where it is due.

Caleb Ramsby

[ThomasPowers]

I'm bothered by the focus on "first" as that is subject to change at any moment due to better dating or new excavation.

I talked with someone from China once who mentioned that they were fist and the west was all copying them. When I mentioned that a new excavation had shown that they were second in something and so they must have copied it. he vehemently denied it and said they had discovered it on their own!

(My wife has a book called "The Genius of China" that is full of "We were first!" Unfortunately I knew several examples where they were easily proven wrong which throws the rest of their contentions into question.)

How about praising folks for doing stuff really really well instead of first! (The Chinese and Indian method of decarbing cast iron to make steel faced objects is a really really neat idea!)

[Ramsberg]

Thomas,

Very good points. Honestly I believe that much more often then not developments were isolated and not a spread of knowledge as is often assumed.

Reall, if we look at the very small percentage of the Earths surface that has been painstakingly excevated then it is a astounding that we have found anything!

Caleb Ramsby