[TheForge] Coordinated Hammers (was: Light weight forging equipment)

[Peter Fels & Phoebe Palmer]

There are circumstances where it’s impractical to bring the work to the anvil and i’ve ended up heating with a rosebud and swinging opposed hammers with both hands simultaneously to shape the work…It’s difficult. 
With mechanical opposed hammers, one either has to use closed dies or forget accurately placed tooling…which reduces their versatility. I can imagine some exceptions.

On Dec 28, 2014, at 11:36 AM, Bruce . <freemab222 at gmail.com> wrote:

The safety fix could be to have two parallel striking surfaces.  Either the
hammers strike the workpiece, or, if somebody goofs and doesn't insert the
workpiece, the secondary striking surfaces hit each other.  These latter
would be made of unhardened steel, so might deform but wouldn't shatter.

The secondary surfaces could be remote from the primary hammers so as not
to be in the way.  The gap between the primary hammers could be made
adjustable by adjusting the secondary ones  -- which could be a neat
feature if you're trying to forge to a set thickness.

Of course, if you build a mechanical hammer like this, somebody is gonna
complain that they can't swing the hammer by hand!  (Voice of experience
speaking here.)

Which brings on the next thought.  Suppose you took two hand hammers (or
thing that were nearly so) and connected them through some guidance
mechanism vaguely resembling a lazy tongs or pantograph such that the faces
come together at the workpiece.  Use a tool balancer (to take the weight
and to allow some motion of the mechanism) and you could suspend this
mechanism on the far side of your work support (the mental equivalent of
the place where your anvil is now).

So you grab one hammer in your left hand and one in your right.  These
could be BIG hammers because the mechanism would support the weight.  You
then swing the two hammers together against the workpiece, one from the
left, one from the right.  The mechanism would ensure that they'd strike
from opposite sides at the same moment.

I can just see perfecting this only to hear somebody complain, "But, I can
do the same thing with ONE hammer and an anvil!"

Bruce
NJ

On Sun, Dec 28, 2014 at 10:28 AM, Andy Gladish <anjgladish at gmail.com> wrote:

> Maybe it's old hat, but I just realized, sitting here looking out the
> window at lake Michigan at our vacation cottage, that the physics of
> forging might not require a heavy anvil if you simply had two coordinated
> hammers hitting above and below.
> Lots of safety considerations, don't try this @home, kids.
> 
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