[TheForge] treadle hammer anvils

[GHS]

Looking at the grasshopper for a while
now, I have some 1 cent observations.

There are certain advantages to the
design that are real advantages. The 
lessening of wear and tear on the legs
is one. The ability to setup tooling
with repeatable precision is another.

An already fabbed hammer of this type
would be marketable, but its visual
complexity is intimidating at first, to
those contemplating building one.

The advantages in tooling, for most of
us can be dealt with in other fashions. 

I think more than one of us has gone the
power hammer route when out legs began
to hurt. As a power hammer is by nature
IMHO better for drawing out than a
treadle ever will be, it is no contest.
For mass producing things , I would
suspect that most would rather have dies
in a power hammer than a grasshopper.

For most , by the time they can really
appreciate how elegant the grasshopper
is, there already is a Spencer type or
one of its cousins sitting in the shop.
Once one is there It would be difficult
to see sufficient motive to replace it
with a grasshopper rather than
augmenting with a power hammer of some
sort.


So, if someone were astute enough to
appreciate the grasshopper initially,
and did not see the likelihood of a
power hammer in their future, some
enterprising person could probably sell
them a ready made grasshopper over a
ready made Spencer type.

Mike Graf
-- 
my website is
http://www.execpc.com/~ghs/