oscer Posted October 2, 2014 Share Posted October 2, 2014 Hi fellas, When I have the floor poured I want to form a hole with pressure treated 2x6. Any further segestions regarding the power hammer? (I don't have one yet.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
njanvilman Posted October 5, 2014 Share Posted October 5, 2014 The overall size of the "hole" is totally dependent on the size of the hammer you intend to put on top of it, and the type of soil you have under it. More information is definitely needed to add a proper response. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DSW Posted October 6, 2014 Share Posted October 6, 2014 I'd be cautious using PT 2x6's. If it's just for form work, any lumber will do as a temporary form. If you intend to leave the wood in place permanently, understand not all pressure treated is created equal. Typical pressure treated you buy in the stores today is ACQ treated and is not rated for ground contact. It rots fairly quickly. Not quite as fast as plain lumber, but you don't get all that many more years out of it. That's true even for 4x4 posts that you think would be for use in the ground. Some specialty yards might have ground contact rated treated lumber, but usually that's in large sizes like 4x4's 6x6's etc that are used as posts, not framing lumber. I've had just as good luck with many hard woods like oak, ash etc for use as posts compared to newer PT ones. One other thing about ACQ treated lumber. it's very corrosive. It will eat standard framing nails in as little as 6 months. Aluminum in contact with the stuff is even worse, say flashing over PT sills etc. Most manufacturers recommend stainless, specially coated fasteners designed for ACQ wood, double dipped galvanized or copper fasteners or flashing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan Evans Posted October 6, 2014 Share Posted October 6, 2014 You may be better casting the complete floor and then cutting the slab when you have the hammer and its optimum position finalised. It will be a pain if you decide it would be best a foot further to the right after all! It will also depend on the size of your hammer and ground conditions as njanvilman says...I cast a 12cubic metre (two truck loads) inertia block under my 3cwt Alldays. 3 x 3 x 1.5 metres (10' x 10' x 5') I did that as the first thing after the footings on the building site and all the levels were then taken from that. Long tale of woe, but I would have been better off casting the slab first and then the hammer block. Both my Reiter 50kg and my Alldays and Onions 1cwt are sitting on above ground inertia blocks (a piece of 30mm (1 1/4") plate for the 1cwt) on rubber buffers straight onto the 6' reinforced floor slab which was cast over made up ground, so you do not necessarily need much underneath. To prevent transmission of vibration to the walls and exterior I hired a diamond saw and cut a 50mm (2") gap all round when I had them in their final position, I used a diamond disc in an angle grinder and hand ground a 6mm (1/4") ledge on either side of the gap and dropped pieces of 100 x 6mm (4" x 1/4") as covers. Keeps your options open?... Alan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oscer Posted October 9, 2014 Author Share Posted October 9, 2014 Thanks for the replies fellas, my son has plans to build a hammer similar to the tire hammer by Clay Spencer. The shop will be 12' x 23' inside,which is one room in a 24' x 40' building, the larger room will have lathes and other machine tools so I really need the hammer isolated from the rest of the floor. I was planning on centering it on the 12' wall and leaving 2' behind it for access. It appears to be a compact installation and my son said to allow 30" x 36" opening in the floor. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan Evans Posted October 9, 2014 Share Posted October 9, 2014 Siting in the centre of a 12' wall means your restricted to 6 foot tapers (well-ish you can calculate and work the middle bit last so you could get out to 12' :) ). I have had hammers right up again the wall but beside the door so anything longer than a metre (3') put me outside in the rain… I did construct a flap door in line with the anvil to poke a bit out through the wall... I would again advise you to leave the position unfixed until the hammer, the type of work and the other equipment is in place before you commit. It is so much easier to cast a floor slab in one piece and cut it afterwards... What I found when I first got a power hammer was that I could do so much more in one heat than with my hand hammer. Then realised if I had a longer heating system I could make more use of the hammer. :rolleyes: So the hearth was changed from a side blast to bottom blast but with a plate base with air slots so I could get a 600mm (2') heat...and then I started building gas furnaces until I ran out of hammer on heavy stuff at 1200mm (4') furnace. I would not have thought one of those tyre hammers would hit so hard that it needed an excessive inertia block. If it has a good lump for the anvil, a heavy plate base and some layers of conveyor belt under it you should be okay just cutting around it isolating the vibration if you have a reasonable floor slab. I am not that well up on their characteristics I have to admit, advice from those that have them would confirm their requirements. You could always be generous in the cutting and make a larger isolation slab rather than your 30" x 36" in preparation for the next hammer :) my 50kg and 1cwt hammers are on about 1.5 x 2 metre (5' x 6') islands…. Alan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oscer Posted October 10, 2014 Author Share Posted October 10, 2014 I think I will take your advise Alan, I have drawn this out many ways and stood in measured spaces trying to determine if there was enough room to work and I'm not convinced that the center of the 12' wall is the optimal place for a hammer. I'm also not sure 12' x 23' is a large enough space but it will have to do for now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan Evans Posted October 16, 2014 Share Posted October 16, 2014 12' by 23'? Luxury! Especially as you have a machine shop next door. My first forge building was 12' x 9' and I ended up with a foot hammer striking on a 3cwt anvil, Blacker C power hammer, 5cwt anvil and a pillar drill plus a 3' x 3' hearth…very compact and bijou! I did not have much option but to strike while the iron was hot, I was only a step away from any of the tools. :) Alan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Charles R. Stevens Posted October 16, 2014 Share Posted October 16, 2014 That tire hammer will surprise you, the tire is mearly the clutch for the drive, think about how much hammer a 5 HP motor can move with a 12 to one multiplication. A foot long slug of 4x4" is 30# or so. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan Evans Posted October 17, 2014 Share Posted October 17, 2014 (edited) Sorry Charles (and all tyre hammer owners), on re-reading post #6 I realise I may have come across as slightly condescending about the tyre hammer, it was not intentional…I was meaning light in relation to other bigger hammers. I have only seen one tyre hammer, it was running as a demonstration on the back of a trailer at a BABA conference, and it certainly seemed a useful tool. Nonetheless I still would not swap my Reiter or Alldays pneumatic hammers for one, they are much heavier duty. I would certainly swap my Blacker for one though. I thought it looked in much the same league as a 50lb Goliath (Little-Giant type). My memory has it that it had a much smaller motor than 5hp…maybe a 2hp at most, but it may not have even been a Clay Spencer pattern hammer. All efficiencies being equal, motor size seems to be a reasonably good way to gauge both the likely effectiveness of, and required footing/inertia block of a hammer…with a 5hp motor I would have thought that the vibration generated would be less than that of my 10hp 50kg Reiter or the 1cwt Alldays (which I think has a 7.5hp and a heavy flywheel). Unless the frame and anvil of the tyre hammer were very light /ill designed and did not direct most of that power to the workpiece the isolated 6" reinforced floor slab and an above ground inertia block should be okay…the tyre hammer I saw looked efficient and was certainly not knocking the trailer about too much. That reminds me, I have used my Reiter (complete with inertia block and rubber buffers) on the back of my 2.5 tonne trailer at a public demonstration, fortunately blacksmith, trailer and hammer survived the experience… :) When I first had my Alldays in the old shop it was sitting on a couple of scaffold planks which had been levelled on sand sprinkled in the bottom of two scrapes where I had removed the protruding stones from the soil. It was a packed earth floor. I drove two anti-walking pins down through the frame holes and it sat there working away for two or three years quite happily. Do you know what foundations / inertia block provision others have put under their tyre hammers? Or indeed what is recommended by Clay Spencer? Alan Edited October 17, 2014 by Alan Evans Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
littlemilligan Posted October 25, 2014 Share Posted October 25, 2014 Hi oscer, I had a problem with close neighbours and could not have any vibe getting away and so had to isolate the hammer totally. I talked to an anti vibration engineer and came up with this, which works well and no shock at all is felt outside of the floating concrete inertia block. It's a pit in the floor of the workshop with an 8" thick floor all reenforced with steel. Then build a big box to fit in it with a gap all around and 6" shorter than the depth of the pit. the stacks of anti vibe rubber shock absorbers (in my case 20 of ) placed around underneath. Fill the box full of concrete ( 9 tons ) and hey pesto. All of the variables were fed to the engineer- how heavy- how hard it hits- how fast it hits- and so on. with this he worked out what density of rubber - how many thicknesses - how many pads and so on. Don't know if this is useful but here it is. P.S. to get the floor level with the box of concrete was another equation on how much the rubber shocks would take up when the box was filled. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan Evans Posted October 25, 2014 Share Posted October 25, 2014 Interesting. That box looks wide and low as opposed to narrow and deep. I am not surprised you have no vibration transmission with that block under your 1cwt! What are the overall dimensions? What size were the rubber stacks and how many? Or was the whole block supported on a continuous rubber layer? Were they conveyor belting or proper tico stuff from Walker engineering? How did you deal with the sides of the pit. The bit between the underside of the floor slab and the 8" base slab? I wondered about bits filling the gap and then transmitting vibration across. Did you have to prop the box sides to prevent them spreading when you poured? Have you sealed the top gap at all? What is the site drainage/ water level like? I had to seal around the 3cwt Alldays anvil base with a pourable silicone to ensure no water got under the hi-tech anvil pad, evidently it can crack the concrete. My inertia block is just cast in situ with a gap between it and the floor slab. Luckily the foundation was sited on an outcrop/seam of Fullers' Earth rather than the common local Cotswold Brash which would have transmitted vibration. The only free floating inertia block I have seen was in Manfred Bredohl's forge in Aachen. He cast a complete "cup" which was isolated from the floor slab. The inertia block was mounted on coil springs with a sufficiently large gap all around so that you could climb down a ladder and look underneath the block. Complete with sump pump and lighting! Looks a tidy hammer. Is it an Alldays or Pilkington? There are a few differences to my 1cwt Alldays. Was it a flat belt drive? Mine has a gear driven flywheel and there is a cast motor plate bolted to the hammer frame. The valve stem looks slightly more gracefully formed on yours, mine is a trifle utilitarian. Have you dropped the treadle? Mine is up about the same height above the floor and I cut and dropped the treadle so I could rest my heel on the floor. I know some people put their toe on the hammer and operate it with their heel. Is this the hammer you were using to forge your stainless torch tapers? Apologies for the twenty questions! Alan Images have uploaded rotated for some reason, maybe a kind moderator can spin them round. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
littlemilligan Posted October 26, 2014 Share Posted October 26, 2014 Alan, here we go -- 600mm deep 2400mm wide 2600mm broad. Rubber matting 6xhigh with 2mm gal sheet in-between each sheet of rubber.x 20 of. Separate stacks. the whole pit is concrete with sides 4"thick and floor 8" thick. the gaps stay open. I cover the workshop floor with mats near to the hammer to stop stuff falling down. I proped the insides of the box to stop it bulging when I poured the concrete ( and left the props and boxing in the conc ). As the whole pit is concrete I don't get water problems. I am very happy with the design and it works well :-) Alldays hammer--long story-- used to hammer stainless, yes. and yes I've now dropped the treadle. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oscer Posted October 28, 2014 Author Share Posted October 28, 2014 Hi Littlemilligan, impressive installation. I really hope I don't have to spend that much time and money though. Thanks for posting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
littlemilligan Posted October 30, 2014 Share Posted October 30, 2014 my pleasure Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Charles R. Stevens Posted October 30, 2014 Share Posted October 30, 2014 Well now, Allen. There are hammers and there are HAMMERS, lol. I guess we could try a 22.5 for a clutch, lol. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GMoore Posted November 12, 2014 Share Posted November 12, 2014 I've got a 25# Little Gaint, so it's not the largest around. Just to be safe, I poured 6" of rebar concrete below where the hammer was to sit (with about a 4" margin on all sides). I then built an oak base of 4" x 4" planks (bolted together) surrounded by a 3" frame of angle iron - bolted on to the boards. Lastly, I bolted the hammer to the platform. It is critical that the entire assembly be very level. Works for me! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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