[TheForge] Ancient treadle hammers etc. Was Help with info (Long)

[Jerry Frost]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Phlip" <phlip@99main.com>
To: <theforge@mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Friday, November 29, 2002 8:00 PM
Subject: Re: [TheForge] Help with info


>
> Weren't treadle hammers invented about then? What about greater
availability
> of consistent steel alloys? And like that....
>
> Phlip
>

Naw, treadle hammers of one sort or another have been around for thousands
of years. Ever hear of a "walking beam"? Several hundred years ago walking
beams were a popular way to do "heavy" work, particularly saw mills, heavy
forging, etc. Basically they were a large tree trunk balanced on a trunion
with the tool mounted to one end. A group from five to maybe thirty people
would walk back and forth on the beam to make it go.

Treadle hammers are way older, probably circa spring lathe. Spring lathes
are really ancient, some claim they're the oldest machine tool after the bow
drill. Actually are modified bow drills, just cock your head sideways to see
the resemblance. Some truly ancient copper, gold and silver was spun and
examples of turned work dates WAY back too.

Saw a PBS special a few years back about a team of archeologists traveling
in the mid-east, maybe north africa, I'm not sure. They were in a small
village when a traveling metal smith appeared on his rounds. He was there to
make or repair whatever metal work was needed.

Fascinated the archeologists planted themselves to document the action. Much
of what he did was smithing on a stake anvil with visegrips and a (goat?)
stomach bellows. This is what caught my interest. <grin> The next thing he
did dropped my jaw almost as far as the archeologist's.

The local (priest?) brings a mangled copper (goblet/chalice/bowl?) to him
and the smith starts digging wood blocks, nails, cordage and other odds and
ends from his sack. Then he hunts up a tree with a large horizontal branch a
little higher than his waist to which he starts nailing his wooden blocks.
Then he bends an overhead branch down attaches an end of the cordage and
ties the other end to a loose branch on the ground. Then he scouts out a
hunk of wood chops and saws it to a suitable size and chucks it up in the
lathe.

After he roughed it out he evidently decided he needed a special chisel. He
dumps his "tool" sack out on the ground and starts rummaging through the few
tools with much grumbling. Evidently there wasn't anything there he could or
was willing to modify. He has a little talk with the (priest?) and soon
there's a modest pile of steel presented to him by the villagers. Out of it
all he gets kind of excited about what looked like a piece of heavy coil
spring, maybe 3/4 of a 8" + dia. coil spring a good 1 1/2" thick. He chooses
the partial coil and a few other pieces. (payment maybe?) He puts everything
but the partial coil in his material sack and starts digging through his
tool sack.

Oh boy I'm thinking, this guy's going to forge a turning chisel out of this
great big hunk of steel. This I want to see, the biggest hammer I've seen so
far is maybe a 2 lb. ball pien. <grin> He digs a sledge hammer head out of
his sack, maybe 8-10 lb. and hunts up another branch on his lathe tree.
Okay, I'm thinking, why pack a sledge hammer handle around if there's plenty
of wood to make one wherever you go? Makes sense to me.

Does he cut the branch? Naw, he removes the cordage and "treadle" stick from
his lathe and hooks it up to the branch, carves the trimmed branch to fit
the hammer head and builds himself a treadle hammer with a big fat boulder
for an anvil. It looked uncomfortable as all getout to use, he had to bend
over pretty far as the "anvil" boulder was probably less than 2" high. He
just used the treadle hammer to rough his tool out and finished it on his
stake anvil though.

What really killed me about the tool making was after forging the thing into
a wide shovel shape, he forged a tang on the end and cut it off. He used
maybe 2" off the end of the spring. He water quenched it and tempered it by
watching pieces of straw begin to smoulder as he heated it. He didn't seem
interested in the temper colors as they ran. I guess it's all in how you're
taught eh?

Well, he finishes his new chisel and makes a few cuts on the die in the
lathe, not many and none I thought he couldn't have made with the chisels he
already had. I think he just wanted to pad his bill. <grin> The tape spent a
few more minutes on him finishing the die for the (bowl?) then moved on to
him preparing a piece of sheet copper. I think it was too heavy looking for
roofing copper but it wasn't the U.S. so maybe it was. He cut the blank with
an ancient pair of tin snips and cleaned the edge with a file. Then he put a
small dent in the center.

I'd been wondering how he was going to hold the blank in the lathe but it
was simplicity itself when he did it. He cut a small piece from a 2" x 4"
size piece of lumber, trimmed it and drove it onto the nail that served as
the tailstock center. Then he carefully pulled the nails holding his
tailstock (block of wood) and with the copper blank in place he used a large
stick to pry tailstock hard against the die and nailed it to the branch.
Viola! Live center.

A bit more about the centers for his lathe. They were large nails/spikes
driven through what looked to be 4" x 10" lumber blocks. The nails had a
large washer (welded?) close to the blocks and another maybe 1/2" from the
point with maybe 1" of nail between the two. They turned freely in the
blocks and he greased them regularly, probably with whatever greasy stuff he
had at hand.

His tool rest was another assembly made from scrap lumber, nailed to the
tree branch with another nail for the rest pin. To adjust it he had to pull
nails and renail it where he wanted it.

When he had the copper blank mounted and everything adjusted to his
satisfaction he wrapped the cordage around the back of the die and using
carved sticks spun a truly beautiful (goblet/chalice/bowl?) He polished it
in the lathe with rags and various grits of sand down to dust.

I think they edited out several annealing steps for some reason as I'd be
mighty surprised if you could move even copper as much as he did without
annealing.

It was a real eye opener as to just how easy it would be to set up some
pretty complex machinery with next to nothing. The guy didn't even trim the
twigs and leaves off the branch for his spring lathe, probably the optional
air conditioning system. <grin>

Anyway, treadle hammers are way older than the 17th or 18th century.

Frosty
------------------------
If it ain't forged
it ain't real.
Wrought iron is.
The FrostWorks

Meadow Lakes, AK.