Air hammer chisel guidance

On 12 Oct 2007 01:57:09 GMT, with neither quill nor qualm, snipped-for-privacy@d-and-d.com (DoN. Nichols) quickly quoth:

OOH, a HF $4.99 special? I bought one for wood carving but I have a good Chicago Pneumatic for real metalwork.

In Chinglish, of course? Try the descriptions on these sites, Don:

Or try auto-body books:

No, put a couple drops in the inlet connector on the chisel. That way it doesn't blow out when you connect the hose. (Those turkeys!)

Leave it on and only loosen it one turn (if you have to) to remove or install chisels.

FIRST, learn to keep your hands off the chisel and out of the spring. DAMHIKT. ;) Then, once you've got that mastered, you can put on a padded glove and gently help guide the chisel while you work.

According to Larry Jaques :

No -- a couple of notches better than that. The brand is AmPro

-- sold by the local auto parts chain "Advance Auto Parts".

Actually, the English was pretty good. They just assumed that I knew what the chisels were for, and focused on the instructions (such as they were) for the air hammer itself.

Hmm ... not enough detail.

That was one of the ones which I hit looking for information, but it is specific to use for rock carving, and had no illustrations to help me identify the chisels which they were listing.

That looks to be what I'm going to need, since nothing really seems to give any detail about the chisels and how to use them.

I had sort of been hoping for one of the Army tool manuals.

Well ... they suggested (strongly) not putting the quick disconnect on the tool (the vibration probably kills it quickly), so I got an 18" pigtail and that part of the hose will remain with the air hammer.

Actually -- I already have an in-line oiler.

Hmm ... I wan't able to get a chisel in or out with that little loosening -- but I'll try again. I notice some quick-change replacements for the spring.

I was thinking more of the danger to the hand which holds the grip of the air hammer -- but your advice about the chisel and spring are good, too.

Thanks, DoN.

On 12 Oct 2007 04:31:43 GMT, with neither quill nor qualm, snipped-for-privacy@d-and-d.com (DoN. Nichols) quickly quoth:

Ah, a reboxed HF gun. Gotcha.

That might be interesting. I wonder if there is one. Now that you've mentioned it, Iggy will probably find one for all of us.

Generally, the chisels are used just like manual chisels, but they're a whole helluva lot faster. Quickest fix: Go talk to a body man at the nearest body shop. He could show you how to use each chisel in your set in ten minutes. If you were to take a pizza down at noon, you might get more help than you imagined. ;)

The MALE portion goes on the air tool, sir. Note that the pigtail has a male fitting on the loose end.

Bueno, bwana.

Stretch that last coil a bit until you get a spring which will hold in a chisel but move enough to let you manhandle one out of the gun without having to twist the sprint each time. You'll get used to it pretty quickly, after maybe a couple dozen uses.

Gloves around sheetmetal are pretty much mandatory if you value fingers. But the air chisels don't do your hand too much damage without. The impact is primarily focused on the chisel end and air- damped through the tool body. The stronger the tool, the softer it is on your hand since you won't have to push very hard to get it to work.

My CP has a long cylinder, the HF a short one. The HF works well on wood (soft) and stone (brittle), the CP on tough balljoints and flexy/movable front-end pieces. If I hold my mouth right, it'll successfully install u-joints.

DoN, Do your self a favor and look for a Quick Disconnect type of retainer to replace the spring. Those springs have a bad habit of breaking and causing some exciting thrills that you really do not need. The Quick Disconnect look like a jumbo QD for an air hose, They have the same ball locking arrangement as an air fitting that holds the chisel in place.

Have fun

Bob

I have used cheap air chisels a few times, and they have gotten me out of jams. Once I had to remove the bed wood from a truck. In those days they drilled down through the wood & bed and ran a nut up onto the screw. The nuts were all rusted on forever tight, so I used an air chisel. Worked great. I recently used it to cut through spot welds, worked great there too.

Biggest thing is to make sure you are wearing leather gloves. I got some nasty cuts and pinches learning that.

I don't know if there is a definitive use for those chisels. That's a tool you tend to pull out when there isn't any other way, and one of the chisels looks like it will work.

The chisels aren't all that hard, or mine weren't. I dressed new edges on them every so often when I was doing that truck bed job.

GWE

[...]

Leather gloves and ear plugs are what I use. I used to use the ear plugs only if the sound was bothering me, but discovered that some days I'd still wind up deaf even though it didn't seem loud. Same with the gloves--used to only wear them if my hands were hurting, but they always eventually hurt. Leather gloves don't have a lot of padding, but it seems to have been enough. Without them I get that odd kind of bruising in my palms that just leaves them tender for a day or so. My only sheetmetal chisel is a bent-tip chisel with a notch displaced in the center of the blade. Hook the notch under the sheet and hammer away--it'll lift a strip of metal out. Then I have a straight punch, hammer head, and assortment of long chisels that have been ground into various shapes. The handiest is a semicircle notch that isn't sharp. It's meant to grab on and let me push. I use it frequently to push wrenches around on really tight bolts. Also nice is a hammerhead piece I welded a bit of pipe to, making a cup, so I can use the air hammer to drive a regular punch or chisel. And a straight punch I threaded and put a hunk of brass onto. Yeah, lots of passive voice, starting with conjunctions and ending with prepositions.

According to Larry Jaques :

Well ... it is nicely anodized a Burgundy color, and it was nicely polished before anodizing. I've not seen the Harbor Freight ones (no local branch that I know about here in Northern VA). But I would not expect a HF air tool to look as nice.

That would be nice. He is good at that kind of search. I know that my Army manuals which I have in dead-tree form don't cover these, though one does cover a much larger air hammer. :-)

The problem is that the shapes of some of these are not at all like any of the manual chisels which I have.

That sounds like a good choice. Thanks!

Of course. But while the tool is in use, the female has to be connected to it -- and if the male is screwed directly into the handle of the tool, that joint between them is going to be rattled rather thoroughly.

The pigtail which I got has a male 1/4" NPT on each end.

Makes it harder to forget to lube the tools (except the paint guns). :-)

O.K. Thanks!

:-)

O.K. I've been considering getting some of the cushioned shooting gloves for use with my .41 Magnum. The rest of my firearms are gentle enough so there is no problem.

O.K. Thanks, DoN.

According to Bob Miller :

O.K. Thanks for the warning. I had not realized that the springs were that failure prone.

Great! Thanks, DoN.

According to Grant Erwin :

Thanks -- just as I should *not* be (and am not) wearing gloves when using the power tools (lathe, mill, drill press, shaper).

O.K. The ones which have me most puzzled are the ones with a Y-shaped open end -- and especially the one which is not quite symmetrical, and with the outer corners rather rounded and the smaller "wing" thinner than the larger one. The straight chisels are pretty obvious, and the straight with a notch dead center I would guess is for popping spot welds. The long tapered round one I figure is for driving out (and in) taper pins or scroll pins of appropriate size.

I would not expect them to be too hard, or they would be chipping more than the workpiece. :-)

Thanks, DoN.

According to B.B. :

O.K. The sort of thing which I was afraid of. I'll certainly get the gloves -- or I guess that I could get lots of cushioning with the welding gloves. :-)

That sounds quite useful -- and I don't have one of those, so I'll have to watch for one.

Nice trick! Your idea, or did you see others doing it first?

Hmm ... a soft hammer. Another nice idea. (And I'll bet that causes more of the pounding of the hands. :-)

Hey -- good information, no matter what the format. :-)

Thanks, DoN.

I won't comment on how to use it, people have done a reasonable job of that already, but I'll describe a job I did recently that I couldn't have done without an air hammer.

I'm working on rebuilding a 1939 Plymouth roadster, which is a complete rust bucket now but should be quite a beauty when it's all done. I wanted to remove the body from the chassis to work on them separately. They are connected by about 10-12 1/2" bolts, each about

4" long, with a 2" diameter washer under the nut (next to the body) and a large heavy hex nut. Rust has completely consumed the nut, bolt, and washer, effectively making them one piece (trust me, I tried with a 1000 ftlb impact gun, with no success). My procedure was as follows: Use plasma cutter to remove as much of the nut as possible. I used an O/A torch on some of them, but the plasma worked better. In particular, my plasma torch is smaller, and fit better in some tight corners. There shouldn't be anything left keeping the bolt from slipping through (it won't because of all the rust). Take a 5 lb sledge and hammer sharply 3-5 times on the various surfaces to loosen the connection. Use a straight chisel in the air hammer and aim it between the washer and the chassis. A 1-2 second blast should pop it off. Now take the pointed chisel and stick it on the top of the bolt. Hammer the bolt back through the chassis. Repeat for all the bolts, hook up the chain hoist, and lift the body off the chassis. The entire process took about 4 hours. Through experimentation, I found that the air hammer worked much better than just using a chisel and sledge since the vibration had a much better effect on the rust. ww88

On 13 Oct 2007 03:47:24 GMT, with neither quill nor qualm, snipped-for-privacy@d-and-d.com (DoN. Nichols) quickly quoth:

They don't, I assure you.

Yeah, there's that, too.

They use air hammers on a daily basis and have a complete assortment of chisel types for you to see.

I've never seen any problems with any of my tools at that junction. Well, except the one I dropped directly on the connector from 6' up on a 4-wheel alignent rack. It bent the connector and cracked the Rodac tailcap, but a new connector installed with Gorilla Snot fixed it right up. That's held for 25 years now so I don't think it's going anywhere.

Note that the pigtail has

I've seen them both ways, with 1 threaded end and 1 male QD fitting end.

Right, do not use that line for painting. It looks funny. Do you use different colored hoses for paint, I hope?

Um, I meant "spring", not "sprint".

Wuss! ;) I take bandaids for shooting my KelTec 9mm. It eats my thumb knuckle for lunch every time if I don't have one on there.

Jewelcome. -- Remember: Every silver lining has a cloud. ----

On 13 Oct 2007 03:49:50 GMT, with neither quill nor qualm, snipped-for-privacy@d-and-d.com (DoN. Nichols) quickly quoth:

If you control your gun, they're not (Bob.) ;)

I'd seen those QD kits on maybe two guns in my automotive career, and I worked wrenching at a body shop for 5 years and used air tools daily for 20. Perhaps they've improved in the last decade or two. I've not used my air tools nearly as much since '86, but they're sure handy when I need them. -- Remember: Every silver lining has a cloud. ----

On 13 Oct 2007 04:00:13 GMT, with neither quill nor qualm, snipped-for-privacy@d-and-d.com (DoN. Nichols) quickly quoth:

I prefer this linked type, as did the bodymen I worked with. They last longer than the split-tip type.

They can cut deeper, too, which isn't always good. I used one to cut out the access hole in my truck bed so the HF crane could mount to the frame.

A rubber mallet is much easier on the wrenches, I'd think.

Cool. -- Remember: Every silver lining has a cloud. ----

Thanks for the example -- giving me an idea what I can use it for as the need arises.

Thanks again, DoN.

According to Larry Jaques :

[ ... ]

I somehow did not expect them to. Whether the works of mine are as good as the exterior appearance remains to be seen. :-)

[ ... ]

Great!

[ ... ]

That sounds good enough. How often is the female on the hose replaced? That is the part which I would expect to suffer more from the vibration.

O.K.

I will once I start painting. Right now, I'm using the air primarily for driving various tools. One interesting one which I got from a hamfest along with a nice screwdriver one is something called a "Screw-Stick". It has a hex drive at the bottom and a tube to just clear the points of the hex all the way through the body. What goes in it is a series of short screws with a hex head, beveled just enough so it will force the hex drive up when it reaches bottom. There is a section about half the diameter of the screw thread connecting the head of one to the screw of the next. When the screw bottoms, it drives only through the narrow section, which wrings off as it torques the screw into place, leaving you ready for putting the next screw in the next hole. I wish that I could find a few more sticks. I'm reluctant to use these up until I can get replacements. (I've been watching eBay for a few years and not seen them.)

I read it as "spring", given the context.

Hmm ... that sounds like a bit of poor design there. The .41 Magnum did not used to bother me, but with 66 years on these old joints, things are a bit more sensitive now. :-) Sort of encourages me to load up light loads. :-)

Thanks again, DoN.

According to Larry Jaques :

Arrrggghhhh! Another thread twists to gun control. :-)

O.K. Maybe the quality of the springs has gone downhill? Following one of your links, I saw packs of two springs being sold together, which does suggest a higher failure rate than your experience suggests.

Thanks again, DoN.

According to Larry Jaques :

[ ... ]

O.K. This one gives a large enough image to see what it really looks like. And I certainly don't have one of those with the set.

Yes -- but there may be times when it is worth letting an old wrench take the damage just so you can get the bolt out.

Thanks, DoN.

On 13 Oct 2007 22:52:13 GMT, with neither quill nor qualm, snipped-for-privacy@d-and-d.com (DoN. Nichols) quickly quoth:

Indubitably.

I've never seen one replaced from that, per se. Most stop sealing (the o-ring goes out) or they wear out from years of daily use. I won't be buying any more HF QD fittings. They're just too cheaply made and the female's doohickey gets cocked sideways in them far too often, letting the air escape after the male fitting has been removed. It's a PITA.

Sounds handy for production work.

I think the curve is too tight at the back of the frame where it goes from the grip to the base of the slide. Or maybe my thumb knuckles are larger from auto work for all those years. Who knows? A bandaid saves the blister from forming, though. Cheap fix.

And don't worry, Don. You'll find dozens of other uses for the air chisel once you get using it for a while. There are plenty of different planishing hammer heads for them if you're into that. -- Remember: Every silver lining has a cloud. ----