[TheForge] Re: Quiet Day

[Mike Spencer]

Well, I'm not at Quad State so here's some idle chat for a slow day:
update on my air hammer project.

The Chevy Cavalier is now tethered to the hammer body with a couple of
short pieces of steel belted tire tread.  Makes a slightly flexible
mount so that (my) sloppy engineering won't rip metal.  Bolted an ad
hoc clamp to a tie rod.  So the wheels can't turn and the (front left
corner of the) car can't move more than about an inch.  

Made an external throttle lever, so now the thing can be run single
handed.  Start the car, put it in gear, turn on the head light switch
(wired to the electric fan), get out and rev up until the hammer
begins to turn.  Rev up more until the tup will stay in the UP
position.

No longer quite so hair-raisingly scarey but still ummm.... exciting.

But the load on the car is about like pulling a horse trailer full
of Percherons uphill.  Boils over pretty soon.  Have to build a rad
mount for the old truck radiator I picked up today and re-attach the
fan and tranmission cooler pipes.

Gotta learn how much oil to give the hammer.  I got kinda free with
the oil and it started to rain oil mist from the exhaust bell and emit
smoke.  (Blue smoke, not red or green, so it's probably okay. :-)

Tup hits the top cover occasionally.  Not good.  I know I re-installed
all the parts of the valve that's supposed to prevent that, even used
a new spring.  Tune-up time, I guess.

Lower die is staying in place okay so all that grinding and lapping
was worth it.  The anvil moves a bit but I can't really tell  how much
until the foot treadle is working.

Next step is to make a treadle and counterweight so I don't have to
operate it with the hand lever.  Then I can try it on a piece of
hot iron!  For a first project I'm thinking of drawing an old anvil
out into 1/4" square for little hooks or maybe some fancy blade stock by
forge welding a Buick together. :-)

- Mike

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Michael Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada       .~. 
                                 						   /V\ 
mspencer@tallships.ca            						  /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/						  ^^-^^

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