[TheForge] "DROP" Hammer

[Michael Horgan]

Yup, I used to work with Michael Stewart at Quick Silver Minting, 
Tool and Die. We made the crank up drop hammer you saw, and quite a 
few others.  Hammer head is a well casing with a 3 inch plate welded 
to the base, capped and filled with lead shot. about 125 pounds head 
weight for a dead drop to keep from double striking the 
"coins".   The original hammer we used was 6 foot tall,for use on 
silver and gold, but all the later ones were 8 or 9 feet tall to 
allow a harder hit for use on bronze blanks. Developed pressure on 
the one inch dies was 25 to 30 tons. The uprights and frame are made 
of California oak. You can build such a hammer for about $1000.   On 
the other hand each of the hammers on the road has about $40,000.00 
worth of dies.  (That's what has kept down the competition!)
Not with them any more, but spent 8 years on the road with the 
hammer, including a hardware trade show in Chicago with a playboy 
bunny cranking for me. <GRIN>
I never had an accident, but at least one fellow took off his thumb 
at a show in Florida. His wife and son finished out the weeks of the 
show while he got it reattached.
At 07:45 AM 10/4/2005, you wrote:
>On droppers:
>
>There was a guy at the MD Renn Fair(e) who was making coins with a
>manual drop hammer. The hammer itself was roughly 16" tall by 8" round
>with a taper on it, and it ran in a track of sorts between two upright
>posts. It was raised by a rope on a crank like a well bucket, and there
>was a trigger of some sort that released the ram from the rope. The
>lovely assistant did the cranking. The ram fell onto a striker in a
>carrier, under which was the top die. The bottom die naturally sat on
>an anvil of some sort, which was hard to see because it was down below
>floor level. The guy had rigged up a dry-ice machine to blow a puff
>when the hammer fell. He had a bunch of blanks and a bunch of etched
>dies and generally put on a pretty good show.
>
>I've been toying with what to do with these two 750-lb die blocks,
>actually, along this line...If I could drop one onto another dead
>square I might be able to set a 12"x15" damascus billet in one go, nice
>and flat....
>
>Hmmmm....
>
>JRF
>_______

Michael D. Horgan , lughaid at earthlink.net
http://members.aol.com/lughaid/
posting from
  A BRAZEN FORGERY
Blacksmithing and Metalwork
Claremont, Ca.