Re: Homemade diesel hammer???

As Snag pointed out, discussion, if any, occurred 15 years ago.

Probably not. I've never used a steam hammer but I've used a modern air hammer and restored a ca. 100 y.o. 300# air hammer.

Check out "Delmag" this is a diesel powered pile driver.

Yes, that was a mistake in sort order. I had neglected to set the defaults sort order of new posts to ascending, subscribed to the group because someone cross posted, and started reading at the bottom of my screen, so to speak.

I'm fairly certain Iggy doesn't mind.

As a way of self introduction, consider myself an armchair blacksmith. I've read a few books, but it'll be a few years before I start on my own smithy.

Thank you for the video. Rather than argue about what is, or isn't, in a book from the 19th century, I'll just reply with pictures next time I read it. It'll hopefully be less than fifteen years from now.

Happy blacksmithing!

If you're really going to investigate this you could also look at how a Paslode nail gun works, that's a spark ignited gas charge. The patents aren't hard to find.

I've had some fun with a hand-held air hammer. Bigger than the pistol-sized ones you see in the muffler shop, smaller than pavement-breaker jackhammers. About the size of a Thompson machine gun, :-) With custom-made bits, you can move a lot of hot metal around in a workpiece awkward to manage on the anvil.

BTW, I failed to mention that big steam hammers were typically operated by the "hammer driver", not the smith manipulating the workpiece. There's a yarn about the kind of control the hammer driver could exhibit.

Some loudmouth bigwig comes into the railroad workshop, demands a tour. They take him to the big 1000# steam hammer for a show and tell. The shop foreman puts his pocket watch on the anvil, a drop of oil on the tup. The driver begins to run the hammer, bringing each stroke of the massive tup a little closer to the anvil and the watch until he pulls it back completely. There's a drop of oil on the watch crystal.

Then the foreman says to the VIP, "Try it yourself. Give me your watch." With the VIP's watch on the anvil, the driver brings the tup down with maximum force just once, converting the VIP's watch to the size of a saucer, about 1/16" thick.

Doing that trick with a 75 KG Kuhn air hammer is one thing. Accurately managing the momentum of a massive tup in a big steam hammer boggles the imagination.