[TheForge] New subject, a little tweeking on my LG help please

[Andrew Vida]

On 6/20/2011 10:30 PM, Jerry Frost wrote:
> I've spent some more time with the crow bar narrowing in on the sloppy point
> and it is in the treadle at the pivot bolt and the pivot bolt is nice and
> snug. The rest of the treadle linkage is pretty snug and right for pushing
> 100 so I'm thinking I need to unwallow the hole in the left treadle arm at
> the pivot. I'm pretty sure the next step is taking it apart a little bit but
> we have an annual event coming up this weekend and I need to do some PW work
> before the show.

About 10 or more years ago Marshall decided to tune up his 25# Murray. 
We did the job by building a new treadle linkage, installing a brake, 
and rebushing the treadle.  I machined two bushings from some very hard 
and tough nylon stock he had laying around.  I machined them to be 
rather tight and precise (did them on an instrument maker's lathe). 
When I installed them, everything took a dead-blow hammer to assemble. 
It was slight-interference all the way.

I adjusted the gibs neatly, another important step in how well the 
hammer strikes.  To this day that hammer hits like a son of a bitch and 
is precisely controllable.  You can give taps almost not even worth 
mentioning, smack the crap out of the work, or give anything in between 
with very little regulatory effort.  The bushings I made are probably 
the primary reason for the gain in control.  Because they are nylon and 
were built "too tight", they are likely to last an age.

I don't know how much effect re-bushing the treadle on a treadle hammer 
will have, as I have never worked on one that was beat like that.  I 
can, however, imagine that since all the power to the ram is transmitted 
through the treadle, good tight bushings are probably central to the 
hammer's efficiency, much as tightening up the gibs will do for a power 
hammer.

It is difficult to over estimate the value of a good tuning where 
solid-link mechanical hammers are concerned.