Homemade diesel hammer???

I was at a construction site with my 4 year old son. It was like a heaven for him, both heavy duty construction and railroad in one place. But I digress.

What I saw there, very amazing to see up close, was a diesel hammer. Type "diesel hammer" in youtube to see what it is like or see this

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I actually took a video of it yesterday, up close, it was a much closer look than what I saw on youtube. If anyone is interested, I can post it.

Anyway, today I thought, what if I make a smaller version of a diesel hammer, to be used for blacksmithing purposes. This may not be neighbor friendly, but if it could be made to work (say 50 lbs hammer), it would be awesome and would not require a heavy duty compressor or electric supply.

i
Reply to
Ignoramus7071
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Iggy,

Before you jump into that project you really should do a bit of engineering design before hand. For example, be aware of the pressure it takes to ignite diesel. You might not be able to do it in a

50# model. Furthermore, consider the old saw, "You can't scale Nature".

What I saw there, very amazing to see up close, was a diesel hammer. Type "diesel hammer" in youtube to see what it is like or see this

formatting link
I actually took a video of it yesterday, up close, it was a much closer look than what I saw on youtube. If anyone is interested, I can post it.

Anyway, today I thought, what if I make a smaller version of a diesel hammer, to be used for blacksmithing purposes. This may not be neighbor friendly, but if it could be made to work (say 50 lbs hammer), it would be awesome and would not require a heavy duty compressor or electric supply.

i
Reply to
Robert Swinney

I am surprised the EPA hasn't required a catalytic converter on the things.

Paul

Reply to
co_farmer

Those are neat - rather crude in function sometimes it takes the crane to pull up and drop several times before the heat is just right and then it is self igniting when a squirt of diesel is placed between the 'head' and piston (weight). Shoots piston up and comes down being trapped by containment bars down on the head and explodes it up.....

In San Jose they used those (taller so it seems) to drive deeper piles I suppose for the freeways. They went on and on for months.

Thinking of a cantilever (or the likes) so the hammer hits and then the other end hits as you want. Maybe a complex design.

Mart> I was at a construction site with my 4 year old son. It was like a

Reply to
Martin H. Eastburn

I've never heard about these things. I guess it's just a free floating piston in an upside down cylinder running a 2 stroke diesel cycle? To scale it down, I would think the trick would be just to get the diameter correct for the weight and height you wanted it to bounce up and down with. To increase the pressure genertated, just make a smaller diamater until it would reach the required compression point to ignite based on whatever height you wanted it to drop from. That might require it to be more like a long rod than a short cylinder if you didn't want it to bounce up 50 ft in the air but it seems from the physics you should be able to scale it down.

I don't know how to take advantage of that for a blacksmith hammer however. Are you thinking maybe to mount that on a spring loaded head so it would all bounce up and down so you could manipulate your steel under the hammer? Setting the pile driver head down on the steel and letting it just hammer doesn't seem like it would be of any value since you can't move the steel between blows.

Certainly, as Bob suggests, some engineering calculations would be called for before you blow something up, or shoot a 50 lb "piston" though your roof! :)

Speaking of a rod creating compression... I was shown a neat blacksmithing trick a while back. It was done with a rod of about 1" diameter and maybe

5 ft long. The end was heated until it was white hot, and then slammed down onto a concrete floor as if you were trying to upset the end. The floor had a puddle of water on it, and the result was a wonderfully loud explosion from the water being super heated and expanding under the compression created by the rod.

By accident, I found the same sort of explosion, though not as loud, can be done on the anvil as well. My anvil was wet the other day (might have had some bees wax on it as well), and when I brought a piece out of the fire, near white hot, and hammered it, the same sort of explosion resulted. It caught me quite off guard! I think it might have been a rail road spike I was hammering on at the time - certainly something around that size (1/2" square).

Reply to
Curt Welch

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One of the old-timey blacksmithing tricks for making a good weld in iron was to have the apprentice swab the anvil prior to smacking the two bits together on it. Supposedly exploded all the scale off and assured a good weld.

As far as a diesel forge hammer, it'd be interesting to try, but you'd have to have some sort of metering system to vary the blow. The point of an air hammer is that you can just crack an egg or flatten a beam with the same unit. Might be easier to look at a Bammer and see how Porter-Cable does it. Uses gas and an ignition system.

Stan

Reply to
stans4

Iggy, I have always enjoyed watching those diesel hammers. If I am not mistaken, some of them 'diesel' on both ends of the cylindrical piston.

Ivan Vegvary

Reply to
Ivan Vegvary

I saw the video of that Tippman Propane Hammer, and I want one.

On the offshore oil rigs, a HUGE drive hammer was used to knock down the first 36" diameter 1.5" wall thickness casing to bedrock. This caisson at times was just jetted down using a very large device placed inside the pipe, like when you put a garden hose into sand, and it just keeps going. The caisson would be lowered by the draw works on its own weight. Then they would hit some harder stuff, and have to put the drive hammer on it. You can imagine what it takes to drive a 36" diameter caisson into Mother Earth. Some times, they would run two or three days STRAIGHT. Boom. Boom. Boom. Night and day. It might stop to weld another piece of caisson on, and that was several hours to pour that much metal into that big a bevel. The heaviest lift I ever made on my offshore cranes were drive hammers that weighed 28,000#. Those diesel motors of the cranes would make a sound unlike any other lift. rowr rowr rowr rowr Sounded like it was going to stall, but it was just running at peak torque.

Steve

visit my blog at

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Reply to
Steve B

It would never get hot enough to light off.

Reply to
Jim Stewart

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Looks like what Iggy needs - Tipmann Propane Hammer.

Mart>> I was at a construction site with my 4 year old son. It was like a

Reply to
Martin H. Eastburn

Does it have to be diesel? How about gasoline powered? Ever see a Hop Rod? Oughta do the same thing, only lighter.

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I have 2 of them here, but am still chicken to try one out.

Pete Stanaitis

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Ignoramus7071 wrote:

Reply to
spaco

spaco wrote in news:g9mdnbfzhbO5jfbRnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@bright.net:

Many years ago, Road & Track magazine did an April issue with a review of the Hop Rod. They tried to apply their standard test format. They couldn't time it through a standing quarter mile because no one on the staff could stay on one that long.

Doug White

Reply to
Doug White

In the UK they held them.

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were also known as Irish pogo sticks and the road drills were Irish motor bikes. Can't think why!!!!

John

Reply to
John

The same reason we call a crescent wrench a Tennessee socket set (:

Reply to
Jim Stewart

For the same reason that in the southern US, it'd be called a Mexican etc. ;-)

But that name is so ripe for some kind of sick joke: "benjo" is the Japanese word for "toilet." =:-O

Cheers! Rich

Reply to
Rich Grise

Same reason we call a Air Carbon Arc torch a Texan TIG torch.

Reply to
TinLizziedl

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