[TheForge] Treadle hammer tune up.

[Bob Ehrenberger]

Last weekend I had one of the springs break on my treadle hammer.  It's an
old style Clay Spencer.  It broke right next to the eye so I just needed to
heat it up and twist out a couple new wraps of the coil to make a new eye. I
just let it air cool so as not get excess hardness at the connections.

While I was working on it I thought I would address a couple other problems
I was having with it.  The main problem I have is that the height adjustment
tends to creap while using it which raises the treadle and shortens the
stroke.  I decided to add a jam nut to the adjustment screw to lock it in
the set position.  This was just a 3/4" nut with a couple pieces of 1/2" sq.
rod welded onto it so I wouldn't need a wrench.

While taking this apart I noticed that the pivot bolt had a significant
amount of ware.  It was a grade 5 so I tried to find a grade 8 for it but my
local farm store only had grade 8s that were too long or to short, so I
replaced it with another grade 5.

Another problem my treadle hammer had was that it was a little sloppy
causing the registration between the head and anvil to be unpredictable.  To
fix this I added washers to the pivot points where the leaf springs connect
to the main column.

My treadle hammer is about 7 years old and gets almost daily use.  It is a
vital tool in my shop and with these repairs and adjustments I'm sure it
will continue to serve me well for many more years.

Robert Ehrenberger
Shelbyville, Mo.