[TheForge] Re: But how fast does the Alldays & Onions go?

[Andrew Vida]

ries wrote:
> 
> Most hammer designs go back pretty far.
> 
> The whole mechanical linkage, LG style,  with either a flywheel or a 
> helve, easily dates back to before 1900- helves, more like before 1500.

	1500?  That may be more like BCE.  The Romans used water-powered helves 
to do their heavier forge work, IIRC.

> 
> So while some individual hammers are newer than others, there has been 
> no real updating of design principles for probably 50 to 75 years. The 
> concept of a pressurized gas, be it air or steam, making a piston go up 
> and down, is as old as the hills.

	How much could any of this be changed?

	I suppose the use of very dense EM fields in vacuo would be the next 
logical evolutionary step, which would be way cool if one could profile 
the field's form arbitrarily.  That would be a true universal 
blacksmithing tool.  Fuller, draw, punch, drift, butcher, etc. to any 
dimension and tolerance, to any shape, all in one heat!  Instant 
progressive closed dies of any shape and "number of cavities". Such a 
device would certainly revolutionize this brand of metal forming craft.

	Imagine your shop devoid of hundreds of heavy tools.  Kinda depressing, 
actually... but for industry this would be fabulous from so many 
standpoints.