Show me your mechanical hammer

[Glenn]

Show me your mechanical hammer. Doesn't matter if it is store bought or home built. Please include the head weight and some details of construction.

[Glenn]

Ok, it is a little light weight for some blacksmithing shops, but IF your doing small stuff you need a small hammer.

[brucegodlesky]

I like that one, Glenn.

Here's my Fairbanks A 50#. Just got it on line this summer. Sure makes breaking down big stock and damascus billets a heckuva lot easier.

[Mike Turner]

Here is my ol' gal 1917 50# Little Giant.

[skunkriv]

25 lb Little Giant with 2 1/2 X3" flat dies and mechanical brake.

25 lb Mayer with matched radius dies and mechanical brake.

100 lb Moloch. Work in progress (this winter's project)

Also have a 25 lb LG I leave at the Iowa State Fair

[HWooldridge]

100 lb Beaudry - fully functional and tooled. Has been in regular use (by me) for about 15 years. It was not running when I bought it and needed some TLC. I built the jackshaft and motor arrangement. Motor is a 3 hp Century which translates to about 275 bpm. Dies are 4x7 flat-top made from heat treated H13.

[irnsrgn]

Depew Helve, 6 lb head, will work my LG50 to death, hits harder, hits softer, hits faster, amazing control.

[yesteryearforge]

25 lb little giant

[Chris Pook]

100lb little Giant, I bought it 6 years ago in really good shape, I added a brake to it right away. When I brought it to my new shop and had to run it on the phase converter, it ran way to fast due to the 240voltage vs the 208 at my old shop. So i rigged up a jackshaft/pulley setup and converted to V-belts (v belts would be my first swap if I had to do it again for the first time along with the brake)

[Frosty]

Depew Helve, 6 lb head, will work my LG50 to death, hits harder, hits softer, hits faster, amazing control.

Six? (6) lb. head? Out works a 50lb hammer?

Are you including the weight of the helve and attachment hardware?

REALLY curious.

Frosty

[imagedude]

My Blacker Model C. Not for the faint of heart!

[irnsrgn]

yeah, seems impossible doesn't it frosty, but that little helve is amazing, it runs real fast about 300 bpm and it really hits hard, BT and jrmy have tried it, also bill epps and honest bob at possums hammer in. Hard to explain without trying it. 6 lbs is the weight on the end of the helve. may be a tad more, just guessing.

[Frosty]

Not impossible, just amazing.

It looks like the helve is on a solid fulcrum and the spring relief is in the crank linkage. This means all the weight in the helve and solidly attached linkage gets to take part in each blow. Figuring exactly how much the weight translates to for moving metal is far trickier than my math allows. It's why there are standard slug sizes for calculating these things. Place a slug on the die, give it a whack and measure how much it moved to find out how much energy was shed.

Anyway, it's actually more than a 6lb. hammer though it's still light. Fast makes up for mass and 300 bpm is fast.

Still an amazing little hammer. I'd like to give it a try some day.

Frosty

[irnsrgn]

the cam which operates it only moves the back an inch, which opens the dies approx 6 inches.

[imagedude]

Can we see some photos of the crank linkage?

[irnsrgn]

linkage shown

[jeremy k]

Frosty - As someone who has actually used Jr's power hammer.... I will say it does what he says... it does hit hard and has great control. I didn't have time to try out his 50lber but the Depew is a great little hammer. I just wish I had more time to play with it. - JK

[jimbob]

This is my MEchanical Hammer. its one foot power; it has 75 lbs of lead in the head

[Frosty]

That's quite the little hammer. Thanks for the pic of the linkage, saved me from asking.

About the only way to really tell what the total reciprocating weight is would be take the arm off and weigh it. Doing a rough guess I think it looks to be in the 20-25 lb range.

A large part of how hard it hits is the rigidity of the hammer, the upper die is coupled directly to the pivot so there's not much give, just the natural flex in the short length of wood.

The linkage in more common hammers has the weight hanging from a spring so all it's impact is kinetic energy. This little gem is basically a lever with the upper die hard coupled to the frame.

Small wonder it hits so hard. Hmmmm. Think I'd call it the, "Small Wonder," were it mine.

Frosty

[Sam Salvati]

I'd call it "Woody", both for the wooden arm and the no doubt woodpecker like action:D.

[Ten Hammers]

25 lb Kerrihard. I can attest to Junior's Depew working well. Knocked the snot out of a piece of 1 " square and drew it to a nice fine end in one heat. Wish I had one.

[oakwoodforge]

Here is my baby, LG 25 #

[Daryl]

Here is my 25# Jardine, the Canadian Giant. Purchased it from a good friend last Autumn. I have since made a brake for it and mounted a 2hp 115v motor on the top. As the hammer will soon be lineshaft driven, I left the pulley flat and machined a flat drive pulley for the motor.
I used to have a 15# Kerrihard, nice little hammer. At the time I needed other 'stuff' and horse-traded it away.

[irnsrgn]

I can't figure out why everybody is putting a brake on their LG's, my 50 Lg stops when I let up on the clutch.

[skunkriv]

Having a brake on a mechanical hammer is handy when you are using tooling. Butchers, spring fullers, hacks etc. They stop when you want where one more lick might ruin your piece. You can also ease the hammer around and stop it in the right place so you can do just one blow when you need to. It also lets you stop your hammer in the up position so it is easy to place your tooling on the die.

Over at Sid's last weekend Phil Cox made an anvil on a 25 and many of the operations required one hit or very soft controlled blows.

Jr.-Sid had four Depews in the lineup outside. The two big ones were about the same. The two smaller ones were bench models that had been put on frames. One had the wood helve and a coil spring and the other had an iron helve and a leaf spring.