[TheForge] Striker air hammers

[RIES NIEMI]

I have never worked on a 50lb little giant, but I have a friend who has one,
and he leads me to believe my 40kg (88lb) striker is significantly more
powerful.
I have been working quite a bit of 5/8" to 1" round stainless on the 88lber,
works quite well. It does start to show its limits on bigger pieces of
stainless- 2" rectangles take a lot of hits. Mild steel is no problem up to
1 1/2" or so- maybe 2"- it depends what you want to do with it. It has
enough fine control to work 3/16" naval bronze, 1/2" square is no problem. I
can hit lightly enough to just mark a spot, hard enough to really squish
pretty big stuff. 245 BPM, but you can easily put just one hit, or maybe 2
at the most, on something.

The anvil to ram weight ratio is about that same old 10:1- 40kg ram, 480kg
anvil. 88lbs to 1056lbs.

The hammer itself weighs a little over a ton, the anvil another half ton.
Altogether, its too much for my forklift, so we have to take it apart to
move it. I wanted the flexibility of being able to move it, so I built a
1/2" plate box it sits on, with the anvil at floor level, the base of the
hammer elevated about 18" up. I put down a piece of thick rubber horse stall
matting, about 3/4" thick, then bolted right thru the rubber into the slab
with some 3/4" concrete anchors. As I said, no cracks after a year, and if I
want to move it, I can just pull the bolts and either drag the whole thing
around, or take it apart and move it with a forklift.



> what size iron do you work w/ an 88# hammer, do you have enough contol for
> 1/2" square?  I've owned a 50# little giant for 5-6 mo., only power hammer
> I've ever used.  How would they compare?
> Randy Mundt