Manipulating a big hammer, installation

[Jspool]

Well, I ended up purchasing the Iron Kiss 150 that I was asking the weight of earlier.

It’s 4500 lbs and still in my trailer.  While it will fit in my shop, once I got home with it I realized that it will be no easy chore to get it through my garage door. Hammer is 84” Garage door is 76”.

I might figure out how to lay it down on its side, and forklift it in, but then am left with figuring out how to tilt it back up again.  My ceilings are inly 8’ high so no real room or an A frame.

I am thinking about drilling my floor for an anchor pin from which to fasten a come along. Any ideas besides driving it over to your place?

[JustAnotherViking]

Make your shop bigger... just build some walls around the hammer were it's sitting outside 

[RobS]

Before laying it down and dragging into the garage make sure to check the measurements on the arc of the top of the hammer.   Depending on the hammer's base dimensions, the height of the hammer may go higher as you lift it up and over the corner of the base, before settling to a lower height as the base lays flat.  Make sense? 

 

[Jim Coke]

Greetings Pool,

             I would just call a wrecker company one with a extendable boom . You than can lift the unit at its center balance point . Tilt and extend the boom into the garage..  Standing it back up should be easy with part of the weight on the floor.. Worked for me in the past. GOOD LUCK AND HAVE FUN WITH YOUR NEW TOY.. 

Forge on and make beautiful things 

Jim

 

[marcusb]

Can it be partially disassembled? If I recall correctly that was one of the selling points of those hammers. If that's true with the 150 you could take it down to manageable parts, and assemble inside the shop. Or better yet what Jim said ^.

 

 

[beaudry]

 Mock up the profile with some sticks screwed together with drywall screws or a stiff piece of cardboard or plywood cut to size.

Make it the size and shape  of the hammer  in it's biggest dimensions and see if you can get it through the door and standing up.

This will tell you a lot right there and can help you avoid an expensive or dangerous mistake.

It sounds tight. A couple of solid anchors in your slab might be handy .

 

[beaudry]

While it's lifted up or lying on it's side do yourself a favor and trace the footprint and accurate centers of the bolt holes in the base on a piece of plywood.

Mark the location and orientation of the dies on it and you can  lay this on your floor and move it around to find the  best and most useful spot  for the hammer .

A few inches either way or small difference in the angle of approach can make a big difference in how long of stock you can work etc. in the space you have.

[BeaverNZ]

What Robs said is a valid point If I was doing this and had access to a forklift I would try to lift it back up as shown in my scrible this is lifting close to the load centre mass and care would have to be taken when the load tips foward that the pipe doesnt roll forward and you drop the load, Lifting like this also gives you a low lift. Just be carefull  take your time and think about out comes before you get commited and past any possible point of no return Cheers Beaver

[Irondragon Forge ClayWorks]

Got a picture of your garage door & where you want the hammer? Is the ceiling in the garage solid (dry walled) & insulated or open rafters? You could forge a hook to go around one of the rafters & brace with 2X4s to use a chain hoist to stand the hammer up.

A picture may help with a solution.

[Jspool]

Thanks all for so much help.

Rob, I have measured as you suggest to verify that I have the necessary clearance to rotate the hammer to vertical. I’ll have to remove one leg of the garage door track.

Jim, I’m not sure if any of my local tow companies have trucks with extendable booms, but that would work great to get it inside.  Can they lift from underneath like a forklift

or just from above?  Thanks, I’ll be making some calls.

Marcus, I’ll have to take off some of the access panels to determine whether I can seperate the top and bottom of the hammer. Thats a great idea.

Beaudry, I have the plywood that the hammer sat on in its last home and will use that for a template.  While it has a 3’x4’x2” steel plate it sits on, and is not supposed to require a foundation,

I noticed that this puppy hits REAL hard and everything within 20’ was doing a dance. Soooo, looks like I’ll put in an isolated foundation for the beast so I can keep tools off the floor.

As you mention, this will make my initial install that much more critical as my shop is not huge.  I will most likely keep the dies in the same location as the dies on my 50lb hammer its replacing.

Beaver, I didn’t consider lifting the hammer in this manner. Might be the ticket.

Irondragon, typical garage with a rocked lid so no accesscto the rafters.  I’ll get some pictures out once I get home in a few days.

[arftist]

no access to the rafters?

Hammer, etc many easy ways to break or remove sheetrock.

[Salem Straub]

Beaver's drawing looks promising as far as a workable way to get it in and then be able to tilt it up.  What I would say is, don't be afraid to take your building apart some if that would provide access.  My big hammer would not fit through my garage door either, so I unscrewed the skin of the building, took the door header out to get another 6" of clearance, disconnected the door and jacked it all the way up to the top end of the track and clamped it.  The hammer skated in under that with less than an inch of clearance, the forklift about the same.  In the end it was quite preferable to having to try to tilt that 9' tall 5400 lb. chunk of iron up inside the building.  I had already poured the block for it, then used the hammer to drill down through to locate the bolt holes.  
By the way, congrats on the hammer- that's one excellent machine and a serious weight too!

[Jspool]

Thanks for chiming in Salem. Your renovation project probably had something to do with me wanting a larger hammer!

Unfortunately my building is cinderblock and doesn’t lend itself to being easily dismantled and reconstructed. 

I’ll be taking down the garage door for sure and will relook at taking out the door frame and a couple blocks. Like you said getting it in vertically is way more

preferrable!

If not, I might build a basic A frame to get the lift started, and a chainfall from a floor anchor to get it to balance point. Then I guess I’ll require another

chainfall to keep it from going the rest of the way on its own.

[JeepinJoe]

I have seen anchors get ripped out of concrete before and it is scary.  How thick is your concrete floor and what size rebar is in it?  Garage floors are typically 4" -6" thick and usually have wire mesh for reinforcing so it is not meant to take any tension loads.  Concrete is good for compression but not so good in tension.

[Frosty]

I'd be looking at removing the garage door if that's let me slide it in standing. I stood my LG by myself pretty painlessly by sliding it off the back of my trailer. I used a come along to the front of the trailer to ease the hammer tipping up, It wasn't going to drag my truck and trailer. Another come along to tip it up. Once I was sure it wanted to stand I replaced the come along to the trailer with a rope wrapped once around a piece of 3" pipe and used friction to ease it up. You can work a come along and control the friction of a rope over a cat head easily. Just running the rope on the ground under my foot worked a treat.

All that said I'd go a long way to be able to move it in upright. If the floor is smooth a bunch of 1/2" bar for rollers and a pinch bar works a treat. Sweep the floor first! Even dust will stop small rollers and tall rollers can be hard to start under the leading edge of the base.

Frosty The Lucky.

[Irondragon Forge ClayWorks]

4 hours ago, Frosty said:

If the floor is smooth a bunch of 1/2" bar for rollers and a pinch bar works a treat.

That's how I moved my Star Hammer standing up. I used 1/2 inch galvanized water pipe cut into 3 foot sections. Used 8 pieces under the base, moved it about six inches, took the pieces that ran out the back and moved them to the front always having 6 pieces under the base. Took about five minutes to move it 30 feet.

[marcusb]

Since everything else has been tossed in the mix, here is a method for big hammers, peel back the roof and drop it in with a crane  Problems solved....

 

[Jspool]

Ok. Back home now. Here’s a few pics of the garage and where the hammer will go.  After a good look after Salem and Frosty’s comments, I am going to remove the whole garage door and its jamb, then take out a few overhead blocks to provide clearance for the hammer. The rectangle conduit above the door houses lines from a heat pump. Once disconnected from the wall I’ll just push them up and out of the way.

The hammer

Looking from outside.  The hammer will go where the orange and yellow Kinyon now sits

Another look at where the hammer will go

Here you can see the proximity of the forge (which gets moved in front of the garage door when I’m working), the press, the hammer, and the anvil which gets rolled out from under the layout table.

I’ll probably put the hammer in place using pipe and give it a trial run to see how much it shakes the slab before committing to an isolated foundation.  I’m 95% sure I’ll  need it but gotta be sure.

 

[JeepinJoe]

You have a nice shop and some real nice equipment.  That hammer will be a nice add.  Is that a curtain you can pull down at your garage door?  Cool idea.

[Jspool]

Thanks Joe,

I have a Costco curtain on the garage door to keep nosey folks from seeing everything when they drive by, and another in the shop between my grinding and machining areas as an attempt to keep crap off of the lathe and mill and every other surface in the shop.

A couple of years ago I invested in a good dust collection system for my wood shop. Now I can work in there with minimal cleanup. Can’t believe I waited so long to do that.  Now I have to figure out how to accomplish the same thing in the forge.

[Jspool]

Slid the hammer off of the dump trailer today using multiple chainfalls and pipe. Not something I want to do again even though controlling it with a couple chainfalls down the traier was quite controlled, the trasition to the ramp was hairy. Once the edge was on the plywood, we could slowly drive out from under it.

Heres some pics. It should be inside tomorrow.

Going to drill in an angled pin into the concrete and pull it in tomorrow, after removing the top of the door framing, and the lifting eye. Looks like I’ll actually have a good 1/4”clearance!

 

[beaudry]

 Nice looking hammer and a good size.

 

It seems that another one of the unspoken benefits of a seperate foundation for a larger hammer is to physically isolate the operator from the constant vibration and impact transmitted through the floor.   This cumulative effect of the constant impact transmitted up through your feet into your whole body can't be good for you in the long run and can really be wearing.

I think the noise level in the whole shop must really go up with everything rattling with the transmitted vibration.

My hammers are set on massive concrete foundation blocks below grade in my dirt floored forge shop so I'm protected from that transmitted impact, so I'm wondering if anyone that runs a hammer for any length of time on a monolithic concrete floor has noticed this effect ?

 

[Jspool]

I’m trying not to be lazy but it’s hard.  The isolated foundation was not something I was planning on doing as IK hammers advertise that they do not require one. However once I experienced what its like when it hammers at full stroke, I fully comprehend what you are talking about beaudry. A few hours of that would be hard on the old vertibrae. Just standing on concrete all day  is difficult enough.  So, I’ll locate the hammer in a temporary position while the foundation is constructed and is curing, and do the job once and right.

 

[Frosty]

Does it really hammer the floor that hard? I've only limited experience with self contained hammers but none shook the shop. I got to try Bob Bergman's 3B Nazel and his 300lb. guided helve I can't recall the name of. Deb could tell they were running in the next room but they weren't putting rings in her coffee. At that time anyway, the slab in Bob's shop was 4" on a good base. Another power hammer I got time on was a Kuhn 40 IIRC. and it was the same story, you could tell it was running but it didn't shake or rattle anything on a 4" slab.

My 50lb. LG is noticeable, Pat's 50lb. running at the recommended speed is noticeable. Pat's wants to go walk about but it's not anchored, mine's just got a piece of 2" sq. pipe stuck into a gozinta so it wiggles but stays put. Neither shake anything.

I've got to wonder if IK has enough anvil under it or is properly balanced. If you think about it the exact same force less friction is pulling up on the whole hammer as is driving the ram down. The anvil should be moving upwards with the same energy, they should cancel out. Is the frame flexing or what? If it's rigid it should be a zero sum solution.

Frosty The Lucky.

[BeaverNZ]

Are those wire rope handles on the bench for tooling I had wondered about doing some thing like that myself as it would be a good way of lessening any shock from miss hits