[TheForge] Tire hammer planning

[Geoff]

Hello

I am planning to build to tire hammer.

I will be following the basic ideas that can be found on the plethora of 
ideas on the web. Some sites that have wonderful pictures are 
Anvilfire.com and www.forgemagic.com A Google search also showed some 
other ideas that are good.

What I would like from people on this list is to give me and idea of the 
minimum and maximum stroke length and clearance between hammer and anvil.

I am going to include simple stroke length adjustment as per anvilfire. 
3 holes drilled at different distances from the shaft.

The height between hammer and anvil I will make variable similar to the 
the Costa Rico hammer on anvilfire. The whole head will move using the 
idea from Clay Spencer's treadle hammer plans, though the implementation 
will be very different as I will have to beef it up so that it can carry 
the weight of the whole hammer and motor.

The final design will depend on what I can find at the scrap yard, but I 
would like some ideas from people who have tire hammers or hammers in 
general how they have setup their hammers.

It would also be nice if someone who has built a tire hammer would 
comment on or off-list about the strengths and weaknesses of the hammer 
and if they would be willing for me to ask some stupid questions at a 
later date when I get to tuning my hammer.

Regards
Geoff

PS I cannot buy a ready built hammer as the cost of getting it to South 
Africa makes it prohibitively expensive. Getting me to a tire hammer 
workshop is also prohibitively expensive