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Restoring a Burned Up Anyang 88 Air Hammer


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I have an opportunity to buy a friend's Anyang 88 that was damaged when his shop burned during the 2018 Camp Fire, in Paradise, Ca. The hammer was basically new when it burned. I have not had a look at it yet, but am wondering if anyone who has restored a fire-damaged air hammer has any advice. I'll post photos if I get a chance to look at it. Thanks!

 

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From a few machines that I repaired after decades of inactivity, they do look worse than they are most of the time. 

In this case the bonus is that you not only have a rep for the brand but also parts available if you need them. Much better than repairing an antique were you must make each part by yourself. 

i would take it on for sure. 

Don't go paying silly prices though, you are in for a long and uncertain adventure. That thing weights in 2 to 3 thousand pounds. It will cost you to move it to begin with. 

And all electrics, rubber, valves will most likely be perished. 

Best of luck and let us know how you go

I believe a new 88 single piece like that one, would be costing close to $10k today. So if you pay $500 you have a bit of a buffer for parts and labour and time and engineering bits and pieces and transport and unknown and panadol etc :)

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 I got the 33lb one and theres not much to them the motor bolts on the frame so theres no internal wiring and the parts are cheap the reason i know that is a guy up here rebuilt the head in his and it wasn't much as far as cost for parts.Since i live in Canada everything cost more so if its doable here for parts you should be ok and annyang isn't the only supplier for those parts. Mine is a different manufacturer but the parts are identical and interchangeable they are good hammers i would at least start pricing parts and tear it down to see whats damaged and whats not .

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Can you lay hands on it? If the building it was in wasn't "wood heavy" meaning lots of fuel then the hammer probably didn't get hot enough to do serious damage. Probably the worst being the motor, internally there isn't much that can be affected by heat, seals, gaskets and such. However if it got hot enough to melt a piston it could require something more extensive than seals and polishing the cylinders. 

You could ask Bob Bergman, he's been rebuilding pneumatic hammers for decades in all conditions, I doubt there isn't much he hasn't run into or knows about them.

Sure be a nice tool to add to the shop. :)

And if anybody hasn't heard, "The Postville Blacksmith Shop" is up for sale, Bob is ready to retire. You can find it on Facebook. It's been a working blacksmith shop since 1853 and is a going business with solid long time clientele now. 

Just saying, if you're up to it you might take a look.

Frosty The Lucky.

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Thanks for the info, everyone. I am going to take a trip up the hill and see it in person. The Camp Fire wiped out so many workshops. A lot of the people who had retired to Paradise in the last fifty years were engineers, mechanics, and other crafty folk who packed millions of pounds of beautiful old machinery up the hill with them. It would be great to be able to keep a few thousand pounds of that iron out of the scrap yard.

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I don't know if the hammer can be restored... Can we get replacement parts, yes.  My concern would be about all of the parts that are heat treated that went through extreme heat then probably cooled slowly.  I also do not know about the heat effects on the frame... At a minimum, you would have to replace the motor, wiring, stuffing box components, gaskets, probably the ram, con-rod bushing, probably the dies and anvil, probably the roller bearings, lower valve supplement air spring... then cross your fingers that everything else is OK.  

 

 

 

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We opened up the machine today. The crankshaft turns really smoothly, and the front and rear cylinders are both clean inside and rust free. The ram appears to be rust-free where it was oiled before the fire. The valve lever moves smoothly thru its range. The brass tag on the front of the machine melted off in the fire, but the side tags did not. Thinking we are going to give it a go. Thanks for the great videos on your YouTube channel, James Johnson!

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  • 4 months later...

We moved the hammer off the hill a couple weeks ago, and I was able to also pick up a burned-over Anyang 33#.

So far we've scraped off some paint, removed all the covers, pulled the valves, and used a wire wheel to remove a lot of melted gasket residue.

The oilers are pretty toast, and the motors are ruined, but the main bearings on both seem undamaged, and the piston movement on both is smooth.

There is some heat patina on the connecting arms, but not on the valves. I've got new motors, we cut new gaskets, and belts are on the way.

I need to heat treat the dies, which were annealed by the fire and really soft. I soaked them in a bucket of vinegar and wire wheeled them, got all of the scale off.

James Johnson says the dies are 5CrMnMo. Planning to send them off to a heat treat shop, but they also hadn't heard of the material.

Has anyone ever heat treated this material?

 

 

zko.design_103583976_1408761915975962_4412013548899695628_n(1).jpg

zko.design_103937095_678876082964348_5965451714942092191_n(1).jpg

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5CrMnMo doesn't appear in the Heat Treat app, so I did a bit of internet research. The chemical composition is C: 0.5-0.6, Si: 0.25-0.6, Mn: 1.2-1.6, S: ≤0.03, P: ≤0.03, Cr: 0.7-1, Ni: ≤0.25, Cu: ≤0.3, Mo: 0.15-0.3. There's some info on heat treatment at http://www[DOT]aoyisteel[DOT]com/productinfo/50762.html

 

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Pulled the piston out today - I had to wire-wheel the old gasket off of the cap, and needed to clean the bore after that. It was really easy to pull it - I moved the piston to TDC, threaded a metric bolt into a bolt hole in the center of the piston, put a piece of unistrut onto the bolt to support the piston, then undid 2 bolts on the connecting rod and turned the crank until it was at the bottom of the stroke, and used the unistrut to pull the piston up and out. It doesn't look like the rings got very hot - not much of a heat patina on them, or on the wipers in the stuffing box, below. There was some burnt-on oil on the lower part of the piston that goes thru the wipers, so I polished it up with a ScotchBrite pad and oiled it.

In other developments, I got the plunger on the oiler freed-up, replaced the little rubber o-ring on the plunger, and put a fresh ball-bearing into the bottom of the plunger. Looking for sight glasses and oil domes for the oiler...

 

Screen Shot 2020-06-23 at 6.49.28 PM.jpg

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5 hours ago, ThomasPowers said:

Generally one of my rules for working on stuff: if you have it out already; replace all wear parts!  As the time to take it apart and the downtime working on things can add up to a lot more than the parts.

I agree. These hammers were brand new before the fire, so not much has worn.

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I'm actually amazed that the main body casting was done as well as that originally.  Most of the cast machine bodies I've dealt with--especially American castings of the 80's I've done restoration work on...are terrible and have a ton of "bondo" on them to make them look better.  The cheaper Chinese castings often have big blow holes that are hidden as well as a surface that looks like the mold sand was 1/2" gravel.  This appears to be darned good like they actually cared. It's nice to see under the cosmetics here--a rare opportunity.

I think Anyang gets another gold star in the ratings chart I store in the back of my mind.

Just as an example, my 1997 vintage US made CNC mill has more than 1/2" of "bondo" in places to hide poor mold alignment as well as fix some rough surfaces.

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Found a place in the Bay Area that'll heat treat the dies - Byington Steel, so I spent some time regrinding/polishing them. I primered and painted the motors to go better with the rust color of the hammers.

Screen Shot 2020-06-26 at 5.44.23 PM.jpg

Screen Shot 2020-06-26 at 5.43.59 PM.jpg

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I'm looking for replacement plastic oiler domes.

The lift pump in the oiler on the 88# just needed some cleanup and new o-rings, and the oiler sight glasses are 1" pipe thread, so finding replacements was easy, but I am striking out so far on the domes.

They look like they are 7/8" or 22mm fine thread. Anyone have any ideas of places that might stock something like this? 

This image isn't an exact match, but I am looking for similar domes.

oiler_STC88airhammer.jpg

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