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I Forge Iron

100yr old Trip hammer still working!


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Not a trip hammer a Tilt hammer. And yes, ancient, earlier than Rome in fact. They started out as Walking Beam hammers, saws, water pumps, felting hammers, etc. A walking beam is your basic long log/timber balanced on a fulcrum and people walk back and forth to make it tilt. You put whatever tool you want on one end and counter balance it on the other. Women usually walked the beam.

Sometime past, probably before Rome ruled the world a smart person, probably a blacksmith thought of powering it with a water wheel and that was that. What I've seen in print says the first use of a tilt hammer was to process grain and pump water but it's just the drive for a tool, put what you need on it.

Frosty the Lucky.

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Someone is still going to complain that its not "traditional" because he using that hammer..I read that crap all the time on youtube vids comments..Ive read foolish crap like "A smith who uses a power hammer has lost love for the craft and is only seeing money" ..It just makes me shake my head..

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I've visited several smithies in Germany that were watered powered---using waterwheel driven pneumatic hammers "Luft Hammers" (like a chambersburg!) and at least one that didn't go out of business until the 1970's. They still had the old parts of the swanze hammers (tilt hammers) in the attic though...

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Someone is still going to complain that its not "traditional" because he using that hammer..I read that crap all the time on youtube vids comments..Ive read foolish crap like "A smith who uses a power hammer has lost love for the craft and is only seeing money" ..It just makes me shake my head..


Yeah, if you watch this on Youtube where you can see the comments, someone says, "A bunch of foreigners still living in the stone age." Turns out he does ornamental ironwork by welding prefabricated elements onto whatever he's making because he needs production to make a profit. Apparantly he doesn't recognize the three or four more modern power hammers visible in the shop, and when his idiocy is pointed out, his response is, "So anyone who disagrees with you is an idiot. You must be an open minded tolerant person." :huh:

I bet you money that the people commenting on power hammer use equalling greed wouldn't have the gumption to pick up a hammer and sweat in front of a forge even if they had a fully-equipped shop provided for them.
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