Motorcycle Chain Hold Down

[41flathead]

Well I finally got to pound on red hot steal for the first time....... It was AWESOME!!! Anyway I realized fairly I could use another hand or 2 so I made a hold down. Just thought I'd share.

[Jim Coke]

Greetings 41,

Great to see you are enjoying our addicting craft... Just an ol boys suggestion.... Make a hook, and acquire a coffee can,, put the hook in the can and fill it with cement.. This will weight your hold down so you can move about the anvil better...
Forge in and make beautiful things
Jim

[41flathead]

Thanks Jim. I guess I should have included a picture of the other side. 3 hooks on anvil stand for some location options.

[Charles R. Stevens]

41, you might modify your stand to allow you to very the way you mount your anvil. With rail anvils, heavy forging is best done with rail oriented the other way, wile light work, especially needing a larger surface to flatten pieces work well the way you have. Also consider cutting away some of the flange to form a small double horned bick.

[Frosty]

That'll work a treat as a hold down. I believe Jim was suggesting a weight to hold the chain and stock down so you can move around the anvil. Don't shorten the chain, hook the weight just high enough it's off the floor but hangs mostly under the stand. By leaving the chain long you can use your foot for things that need a firmer hold.

 

Take a look at "hold fasts" there are a number of varieties. I like the ones that slid into the pritchel or hardy hole and hold the stock when struck with a hammer. I know that description doesn't explain much useful so search the site for pics and explanations. Good explanations. <grin>

 

Frosty The Lucky.

[Glenn]

To better understand the hold down, use the chain and the coffee can full of concrete as a thing you throw from one side of the stand, over the work, and let it hand down on the other side. The weight of the coffee can will be all that is needed to hold things in place.

 

Nothing wrong with making a hook and a foot petal to give things a bit more leverage and pull. 

[Alan Evans]

Well done if you invented that for yourself, I went through a number of variations to get to motor cycle chain…

 

The best version I have seen was by Jan Dudesek, a Czech artist working in Switzerland. He had a broad foot stirrup on the end and had all the adjustment extra on the far side of the anvil. The foot stirrup was broad to provide a stand-off to hold it away from the anvil stump so you could get the ball of your foot onto it rather than just your toes. Your tripod stand would enable you to get there without the stand-off at least in the centre position.

 

The other version I have seen has a plank as a foot pedal which gives you an easy target to hit in the heat of the moment and is stable and you are arguably better grounded. The plank also offers more flexibility for you to stand in the most comfortable / optimum position to address the work piece. Its disadvantage is that you have a potential trip hazard on the floor.

 

Alan

[otto]

Nice. I am a few miles away from changing my chain may have to try that set up out

[Frosty]

Sure, that'll work. There are a lot of ways to make hold fasts that hold well. The big trick is making one that's fast to engage solid and doesn't get in the way. It's the out of the way part that can be a trick.

 

I've come to prefer the basic steel one you slip in the pritchel hole and set with a hammer blow. I believe it was when Gordon Williams held a couple clinics here I saw his design and adopted it. He uses the basic steel holdfast but has a piece of strap stock welded across the end in a T as the foot. It's great for holding odd shapes and better still you can use hold long stock without it running afoul of the hardy where it's inserted in the pritchel hole.

 

Oh darn, I'm coming dangerously close to describing every hold fast I have and how it works. dodged a rably bullet there. <grin>

 

Frosty The Lucky.

[Alan Evans]

I like the idea of the chain and the hooks to attach it.
Also like the foot holding the chain idea.
What about a treadle with a hook to attach tothe chain ?

Just thinking out loud.

 

One of my iterations had the adjustment on the front side, a hook on the treadle. Although you don't need an awful lot of adjustment there was still enough chain hanging into the stirrup to get in the way on occasion.

 

If you can arrange the hook high enough above the stirrup to avoid that problem it is arguably easier to adjust length for optimum stirrup height…drape chain over work piece and hook on treadle…otherwise you have to hold treadle at required height, lay chain over anvil and workpiece and then hook appropriate link on far side of anvil, then check that the treadle didn't slip lower while you were fiddling with the hook...

 

A nail in the stump on the far side is very simple to get you going though, and with a long enough bit of chain you can just stand on the bit on the floor.

 

A child hood friend had this saying that "anything'll do, nuthing wun't!"

 

Oscar Wilde's more elegant version was "If a job's worth doing, it's worth doing badly".

 

Alan

[arkie]

Coincidence....I just finished putting on my new chain hold down today.

I found a 10 ft. length of heavy chain used on heavy logging equipment and used about 4 ft. of it. I then found a piece of steel in my scrap (resource) pile about 3/4" thick x 4" wide x 6" long. I guess it weighs about 5#. It had been broken at a hole, so I cleaned up the break, shaped a hook from 1/4" square rod, welded it into the half-hole. I screwed a hook on the back side of the anvil block so it wouldn't slip off as easily as a nail. The weight and hook will hang on any link and I made it so as to lie as close to the block as possible, no shin bumps.