Earliest Treadle hammer?

[GNJC]

I'd be grateful for any references for early use / designs of treadle hammers.

I'm yet to find anything from before the 20th Century, which is surprising.

Obviously trip-hammers have been around for a huge period, when was the first treadle?

Thanks in advance for any help.

[r smith]

What about Oliver?

[K. Bryan Morgan]

Doesn't the spring pole hammer predate the Oliver hammer? I dunno just seem to remember that from somewhere.

http://www.iforgeiron.com/topic/22747-spring-pole-hammar/page__hl__hammar__fromsearch__1

[GNJC]

I should have written 'much' before the 20th Century, 1898 is the earliest definite date I've found so far. Olivers are the oldest general design I've found.

Clearly there would have been two common reasons for the need of a treadle hammer, lack of a striker or the cost of one. Perhaps these factors simply did not apply before the Late Victorian period.

That written, general human ingenuity must have looked at the problem of a single smith needing a 'third hand' or a heavier hit. Wouldn't it?

[Dan P.]

Chain makers used olivers, presumably from quite a long time ago.

[781]

what is the early tool drwing encyclopidia called and isnt there one there

[r smith]

what is the early tool drwing encyclopidia called and isnt there one there

You mean Diderot? sp

[Timothy Miller]

I remember reading somewhere that people manufacturing stone tools in the late neolithic used some sort of foot powered hammer to fracture larger stones into workable sized pieces.

[Wayne]

If you want hammers and early machines check out this site,
you can search by object or by author http://dmd.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/home

[GNJC]

Thanks Wayne, interesting site, sadly they are all trip hammers of one type or another.

Timothy, any idea where you heard that?

[Dan P.]

I remember reading somewhere that people manufacturing stone tools in the late neolithic used some sort of foot powered hammer to fracture larger stones into workable sized pieces.

I'd take that with a stone-age sized pinch of salt.

[basher]

if you are refering to oliver hammers ie foot hammers then for certain they go way back .
I think this one is 17th C (from memory) but looking at it now it looks more modern
but

[doc]

GNJC
There is an early 19th/late18th century example at Old Sturbridge Village.You could contact their curatorial dept. and get more info.

[GNJC]

Owen, that does look a lot more recent to me; obviously the fixings could be modern replacements, six sided being pretty rare back then, but the whole appearance just seems later to me.

Thanks Doc, I'll follow that lead. I've just had a quick look at their hammer, some notes to it read 'Made from simple materials available to a village smith of that era' . This could be interpreted in two ways, it being real or a repro'.

[Frosty]

I don't have a cite so take this with a grain of salt or perhaps a departure point for research. The walking beam hammer predates the tilt hammer and I've seen versions in Roman drawings of driving piles and doing heavy hammering.

A walking beam is simply a long heavy timber laid across a fulcrum and weighted so the hammer is up at rest. To operate one or more people walk the beam, walk towards the hammer and it hits, walk back and it returns. This was the direct parent(?) of the tilt hammer. A tilt is a hammer weight balanced beam lifted by a water wheel and has been around a long long time. The first in Europe, as I recall, were used by felters and mine pumps.

As I said, the closest top a cite I can provide is hearsay (viewsay?), the paintings, murals, whatever of the walking beam and spring pole hammers used in Roman times.

Frosty The Lucky.

Frosty The Lucky.

[GNJC]

I contacted the Curator at Old Sturbridge and received a very full reply regarding their treadle hammer.

It has a 'probable date' of early nineteenth century, BUT... it may be later; nobody knows where it came from or if it was made there more recently as a copy of an earlier one, or as a guess as to what one may have been like.

Looking at the photograph I was sent - and reading the detailed description - there is nothing to preclude it from being 200 years old. BUT... there is nothing that proves it, or even makes it seem more likely than not.

My gut feeling is that the Old Sturbridge treadle hammer is a later (early 20th century) production of what someone thought a much earlier treadle hammer should be like. However, I have not made an on-the-spot examination so could be completely wrong.

[ThomasPowers]

Look at the use of the spring on that example---I would definitely say not 17th century in my opinion! Maybe 18th.

As for tilthammers the earliest I had good info on for ironworking was from the 900's, from a discussion on the subject I had at the Medieval Technology Conference held at PennState in the 1990's.

As for use of an oliver---why spend expensive materials and time to make one when you have your apprentices and journeymen just standing around eating your food!

The idea of having a single smith in a shop is pretty much totally a "modern" thing based pretty much on the American frontier where the lack of manpower was a given *and* the many shops that gradually withered as smithing be came less of a money producer and many old smiths gradually slid down the slope of their career until death---also in pretty recent times. Back in "the day" having a single smith in a shop would be about as common as going into a hospital surgical suite and having *only* the surgeon working there nowadays.

Even the stave church door carvings from over 1000 years ago show the smith with a helper and the Greek and Egyptian depictions show a *crowd*!

[Alan Evans]

There are some plank treadle and spring pole hammers and their later developments exhibited in the chain shops at the Black Country Museum in Telford and the Avoncroft Museum of Buildings, I don't know what age the examples they have are, be worth an email to find out.

[Alan Evans]

As for use of an oliver---why spend expensive materials and time to make one when you have your apprentices and journeymen just standing around eating your food!

The idea of having a single smith in a shop is pretty much totally a "modern" thing based pretty much on the American frontier where the lack of manpower was a given *and* the many shops that gradually withered as smithing be came less of a money producer and many old smiths gradually slid down the slope of their career until death---also in pretty recent times. Back in "the day" having a single smith in a shop would be about as common as going into a hospital surgical suite and having *only* the surgeon working there nowadays.

Even the stave church door carvings from over 1000 years ago show the smith with a helper and the Greek and Egyptian depictions show a *crowd*!

I am not sure I agree. Possibly true in the examples you cite, and I guess it hinges on your meaning of "modern". But I would see the reason to invest in the materials and time as being much the same as today. I have never really gone along with the idea that labour was cheap from the point of view of the labourer! Sure if you were the patron funded by a ten percent tax on the population you could afford to hire a lot of labourers and build big churches, but it was still more economic for the master craftsman to employ the least possible number of workers to get the job done.

They used Pole sprung Tommy or Oliver hammers in the Black country chain smithies precisely so that the kids and the wife weren't standing around but they could all be equally productive! Many of the chain shops were set up as one woman or man shops, only made possible by investing in foot operated hammers.

[GNJC]

Thanks for that, I'll follow your lead and see how far back they go.

Aside from that, I've been digging here and there and it really does seem (so far) that there were no treadle hammers before the last quarter of the nineteenth century.

On the subject of labour and costs, hmm... I think it is very hard for us in the modern First World to realise just how little (sometimes nothing but food & lodging) people were paid in the lower rungs of society in the past. Even though Britain was a global military and economic superpower before and throughout the Victorian age, there was still great poverty too.

The only modern analogy is the Third World. I lived for some years in Eastern & Southern Africa and can tell you that the small, rural craftsmen there (be it in wood, metal or stone) wouldn't dream of 'wasting' money on major infrastructure - such as a treadle hammer - when they have any number of young fellows begging to be taken on as an apprentice or just a sweeper-upper. It isn't economic, and that is what it all boils down to.

(I would also note that there is a certain social value in being an 'employer.' Not only the employee, but his family and friends too are beholden to you.)

[GNJC]

Well, to round this thread off... the earliest definite record of what we would recognise as a treadlehammer that I have managed to find has remained in the 1880s.

I followed a couple of supposed 'early' leads here in the UK, both turned out to be trip hammers. Another couple of similar leads over in Europe were also trip hammers; so it seems that the treadle hammer is a pretty new invention.

I'd be happy to have the date pushed back if anyone can supply definite information.

[ThomasPowers]

As for labour over capital expense: How much work does a hammer do when you are not using it? A person can be doing other things making a profit for the shop; large capital tools not being used just sit there.

We are excessively lucky these days that we can afford to have tons of tools sitting around waiting for us to do something that needs them. Look at the property lists of earlier smiths, scrap yes but little in the way of tools beyond what was needed.

[Francis Trez Cole]

I remembered seeing a DaVinci's exhibition a few years back in Chicago that will put you between 1452 and 1519.
http://www.rlt.com/12131 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trip_hammer

[Alan Evans]

I remembered seeing a DaVinci's exhibition a few years back in Chicago that will put you between 1452 and 1519.
http://www.rlt.com/12131 http://en.wikipedia....iki/Trip_hammer

I think that would be closer to a trip hammer than a treadle hammer which is what GNJC is researching.

I am really surprised there is no earlier record of oliver or tommy hammers from the nail and chain making forges of the Black Country. There must have been thousands of them from the basic ash pole return spring and plank treadle on the floor linked together with rope to more mechanically sophisticated ones. There is one with a makers name on it I have seen in the Saint Ives museum but I would have dated it between the wars.

@ GNJC did you contact the avoncroft or blackcountry museum curators?

I am not sure in which guise it still exists but back in the seventies when I used to go to the Jewellery Quarter regularly, the old Birmingham Museum of Science and industry had some superb exhibits; tilt hammers and an amazing bottling machine and loads of bits of industrial equipment from the area. It might be worth trying to contact them in your quest.

Whilst thinking of the BMoSaI, in the gunsmithing section was the finest example of technical blacksmithing/fire welding I have ever seen in the form of a demonstration of how a damascus barrel l was forged. It was one piece, a metre or so long and started at one end with the individual strips of iron and steel fanned out and then proceeded through the process with a couple of inches per stage until it finally reached the machined and etched breach. I must get in touch with them and see if it would be possible to photograph it sometime.

[george m.]

Dear All,

This is my first post to this forum. I'm finding this site facsinating. I've been a smith sincew the late '70s but have generally "toiled in the vineyard" by myself.

A couple of comments on this thread:

For a short history of chainmaking in the blackcountry and examples of tommy hammers see the Shire Publication "Chainmaking." Most of the photos are late 19th to early 20th century.

There is a surviving water powered trip hammer at a monestary in the Pyrenees in Spain which has been dated to Visigothic (7-8th centuries).

The relative value of materials vs. labor may be seen in surviving 18th century smith's account books. Making a horseshoe might be 6 pence but if the customer provided the iron the labor was only 2 pence. This is not an actual example but the actual entries are of about this scale. In the 21st century we have a hard time thinking of labor as being cheap and materials expensive but prior to the industrial revolution that was exactly the economics. Materials were produced on a much smaller scale and entailed much more relative cost. Think of what was involved in mining and smelting 100 pounds of iron before blast furnaces and the other machines of modern steel mills.

Yours,
George M.
Ft. Morgan, CO