Camp Tripod and Grill. I would like to see yours.

[Donal Harris]

Have begun trying to make the chain to hold up the grills. Not going well. The weld sticks on every third one. I think I will switch from 1/4” round to 1/4” square and just form eyes on the end of each link with twists in the middle. I need to build a bending jig first 

The bottom grill for the pork will be 30” in diameter. The smaller grill above it for the veggies will be smaller,  it I will decide on its dimensions once the bottom one is done. 

[Charles R. Stevens]

I find the chains Walmart caries for tying out dogs to work great for fire chains, plenty strong, light and the longer link looks good, if you have a friend with a dog they have to chain, they need to be replaced yearly, and the dog puts a nice patina on them. Otherwise cut your length and pickle a day or two. 

[Donal Harris]

Not sure I would want to taste dog patina. 

Gerald Franklin is going to show me how to properly spark test steel as well as give me the small, known samples once we are finished this Saturday. While there I will show him a couple examples of the links I have made so far and see if he has any suggestions as to how I might make them a little faster and more reliably. One is basically a normal link made with 1/4” round bar, just longer and twisted in the center. The other is from 1/4” square bar. It is basically a closed S hook with the center longer than normal and twisted. Hard to describe. If I had an example finished I would post a picture. The other loop is forge welded. This one will not be. 

[Charles R. Stevens]

Gerald is good people, you can learn a lot from him. 

[Donal Harris]

He is a retired US Army sergeant major, Field Artillery. Korea as a PVT in 1963 and the RVN as a SSG in 1967. Very good people indeed. 

[Charles R. Stevens]

Yep, he was a much better soldier than I ever was. Tho if I served under a man like him that may have been a different case. 

[Donal Harris]

My NCO’s were all top notch and all my commanding officers decent men except for one. 
 

We didn’t get much spark testing done. He had a hard stopping point due to a luncheon he had to attend. Most of the time was taken up by be going “Ooh!  That looks cool.  What is that and what do you use it for.”  In other words, I would yell, “Rabbit!” and down the trail we would go. I think I could spend a week walking with him around his shop, just asking him questions. 
 

But I did leave with a very good start to a collection of known steels, all the major steels of interest to a blacksmith. He has his stored in a plastic box which is separated into multiple compartments, very similar to how my wife stores her thread. Much more efficient than just a bunch of pieces you have to dump out of a coffee can to find the one you want.

So although we never really got around to the primary purpose of my visit, it was certainly not time wasted. I now know how he made his touch mark and the difference between a Kick Ass and his other pneumatic hammer, and why he prefers using one over the other depending on the work he is doing. I also now know a treadle hammer is capable of doing very fine and detailed work. He uses his primarily for repousse. It can strike very hard or very softly. 

[Frosty]

Some rabbit holes have much more filling meals down them, don't they? 

Thinking about making yourself a treadle hammer? In line or swing arm? 

Frosty The Lucky.

[Donal Harris]

In-line. Primarily because both of the examples I would copy are in-line and it seems it would be easier to copy something I can directly measure than it would be something I can only see photos of. I really like that they can be fitted with both top and bottom dies which appear to be easily swapped out. 

[Frosty]

Being able to mount top and bottom dies is the only real advantage of inline treadle hammers. Swing arms lose less energy to friction and are easier to build. 

Mr. Spencer's inline using roller blade wheels is low friction but you have to get all the wheels rolling in line. There's another inline treadle hammer that uses a Watt Linkage that's low friction and fascinating to watch but requires good shop skills and isn't easy then. 

There are plans available, some for free. 

Frosty The Lucky.

[Donal Harris]

I asked Gerald today about it today. He said his treadle hammer and that of Byron Doner are both swing arm types. The design is that of Mark Gardner of Illinois and were fabricated by Rickey Vardell. Rickey sells them. 
 

I had jus assumed it was inline because of what I had read about interchangeable dies. Gerald says it requires a little tweaking to get them to line up, but that isn’t much of a problem. 
 

How much energy do you think would be lost if the hammer were to be placed on compacted earth instead of a concrete pad?

[Charles R. Stevens]

Remember, a36 is not 1014, know telling what scrap it was made for as long as it meets the engineering spec. Some times it has enough from in it to make it a bear to weld with out special flux. 
a neat chain can be made buy punching and drawing or forge welding and drawing, forming a tear drop shape you then link the tail into the eye of the next, another form is to form rods with eyes, either interlinked or linked with separate link. Viking era cooking chains often mixed and matched. 
 

as to hammers, a Tommy hammer and hand tooling can do a lot of work and they are simple to build. They can be as simple as a BFH a spring, chain and foot lever. 

[Frosty]

If you make the plate on the hammer large you can lay the bottom die on the anvil and hold the top die in one hand while you hold the work in the other. Your leg makes it go. It's pretty easy to make a couple alignment pins so the dies line up or just use spring dies.

If the soil is compacted you're good to go. Don't make the really common mistake of thinking a treadle hammer is a FORGING hammer. Sure it does forging operations but you aren't going to be drawing down large stock. Unless you sink into it when you walk compact dirt or concrete floor isn't going to make much if any difference to a treadle hamer.

Think of it like a helper who just stands there with 25lb. sledge, waiting quietly to hit what you want exactly the same way every single time. Harder or softer as YOU wish.

Frosty The Lucky.

[ThomasPowers]

Turns out there is a difference if the base of you treadle hammer is 4" steel vs 1/8" steel; was that covered in your question?

[Donal Harris]

Gerald sent me the parts list and the contact info for the SCABA member, Rickey Vardell, who made his. Gerald said he bought the steel to make two hammers, which was how he paid Rickey to build them. Rickey made two and kept one. 
 

To compact the dirt, I will rent one of those machines that do that. 
 

More so than a hammer, what I need most at the moment is a grinder. I paid for the plans to build one, but have yet to begin.

[ThomasPowers]

I recently was asked "What's the power tool you are looking forward to using most when the smithy gets electrified?"---It was my Bader belt grinder by a mile!

[JHCC]

On 5/31/2021 at 3:47 PM, Frosty said:

Don't make the really common mistake of thinking a treadle hammer is a FORGING hammer. Sure it does forging operations but you aren't going to be drawing down large stock.

I have to disagree with this, Frosty, at least as here presented so unqualifiedly. If your hammer packs enough wallop, you can do some very effective drawing out with the appropriate fullers. The question is, what's enough wallop? The nodding donkey in my shop has a head that's about 60 lbs, so that's got a lot more oomph than an in-line with a 25 lb head.

Now, I'm not saying it's the most efficient way to draw out large stock, but it's much faster and easier than doing it with a hand hammer.

[Frosty]

Granted, nothing's always true. 

Frosty The Lucky.

[JHCC]

That's always true.

[ThomasPowers]

Each blacksmith "toy" has areas where they excel and areas that can do sort of well and areas they are pretty much useless.  The problem is when folks expect one machine to "do it all".  A loose example: don't get a treadle hammer when your main need is drawing out stuff; get a power hammer with drawing dies. Don't get a power hammer if your main need is doing repousse, get a treadle hammer, etc, usw and so on.

A well tuned powerhammer is probably the most versatile "toy" and still can be found at reasonable prices if you look hard enough---my last one was US$0 after I sold all the rest of the smithing stuff that came with it---including two more powerhammers!

[Donal Harris]

The hammer is filled with 60 lbs of lead. I assume it would pack quite a wallop. I don’t really want one for drawing out stock. I need it because I don’t have a striker and it is often hard to hold a top tool, the item being forged, and the hammer all at the same time. I can work around that with a spring swage or a Smithing Magician, but not in every case. 

[JHCC]

Not having to juggle stock, tool, and hammer certainly made a big difference for me!

[ThomasPowers]

Holding tongs between my thighs I was always aware of the piece getting too cold for further work....tong rings helped that method a lot too.

[Frosty]

A treadle hammer is a superior solution to the 3rd hand problem than wearing a heavy steel hat. 

Frosty The Lucky.

[ThomasPowers]

I remember soldering holding the solder with my mouth and finding that there was some stray voltage in the electric soldering iron...