cold starting a Little Giant

J. Neilson

J. Neilson

Joined
Feb 6, 2001
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Scared the hell out of me the other morning. I'm finally done with the x-mas run and was getting back into the shop to make more damascus. I figure running the forge in the new hot shop with winter in full bloom would be fun. I go and start the Little Giant (25lb.) and she's running like she's full of molassas, which I guess she was. After letting it run for about 20 min. she started feeling fine again. This is normal I assume...anything I can do to help this other than putting a heater on the hammer 27/7?
 
anything I can do to help this other than putting a heater on the hammer 27/7?
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I could use those hours too.

Don't have much experience with the little giant, how old is it?

Would cleaning all the old lube out and relubing help?
 
Mine does the same thing, but not for as long. My basement gets down to about 45 deg in winter and that low temp really stiffens up the grease that you squirt in.

I use just plain old multipurpose black grease. Maybe they make stuff that is less viscous at low temps. Maybe some lithium or teflon based stuff:confused: :confused:
 
Any time you have your forging tools in cold areas, I highly recommend you pre-heat them before using. This includes anvils, hand, as well as power hammers, and anything else that will be used as an impact type tool. Before the new shop was built, I would place several pices of cat leaf spring in the forge, let them heat up, and then lay them on the anvil, hammer dies, and the press dies. I even would place a dull red chunk of steel under the press hydraulic tank to get thing going. This usually entailed starting about an hour before I acutally intended to start work.........but it did save me ever breaking an anvil, hammer, or dies. I have seen hammer dies break in several pieces before when they were used without pre-heating in very cold weather.
 
I've never even heard of a magnetic block heater. Cool.

I'm gonna put some hot steel under the motor for now but, I think I'm gonna have to look into that.
 
Heating everything up is REALLY a good idea. But also some grease with low sensibility to temp would be good. Lithium for what I know withstands well high temps, but don know about low temps.
 
I don't have any idea about the workings of a Little Giant hammer,,,

But I do know that at work they have different grease for us to use in the winter. It seems to not get so hard in the grease gun.
That's about all the advice I have for that topic, except for this one other thing...that is connected to your problem.

A true story ...(by DaQo'tah)

It was back in the mid 1980s, and I was working in my job as Hod Carrier. This meant that I mixed stucco for a living and "carried" it to the stucco plasterers.

It was my first winter in that job, and I was learning new things from the old timers all the time. One day as we started working I had a hard time getting the cement mixer to run in the cold. The foremen of the job, a guy in his late 60s, told me about what he used to do on cold mornings when he was a Hod Carrier. He said that to heat up the oil in the motor of the mixer that he would put a bit of used motor oil in a bucket and start it on fire with a empty cement bag. Then place this under the cement mixer and the fire would heat up the oil tank on the mixer.

Well, this morning as I said, the mixer just would not start for me. I knew the whole crew of men was waiting for me to mix the cement so I was in a big hurry to get the mixer started.

Well, for some reason I decided to try that 'Fire in a bucket' idea to heat up the motor.

I got a steel bucket from the trash dumpster, and tossed into it about 3 or 4 rolled up empty cement sacks. Next I dumped into the bucket about 2 oilcans of car oil from my trunk.

I placed the bucket under the motor of the mixer and tried to set the sacks in the bucket on fire. Well, they were so covered with the oil I had dumped on them that there was no way they would catch on fire. So I did what old Boy Scouts like myself do when starting a fire the old fashion way doesn't work...I dumped on some gasoline.

I had poured only about 2 cups of gas onto the sacks in the bucket; I thought at the time that this was the correct amount to add. Then I just struck the match and tossed it into the bucket as it sat under the motor for the cement mixer.

WOMPH!.......

Okay, Right away I understood that this was all a huge mistake all around. the fire drove me back about 15 feet from the mixer. The fire just kept growing and growing...the flames licked their way up the sides of the motor and soon I could not even see the motor at all! I could see that the first thing that burned was all the wiring and plastic parts of the mixer. Then I saw the gas line on the mixer gas tank start on fire. This really kicked my little fire into High Gear! Now I had a fire to be proud of...the flames were HUGE!. in a last ditch effort to not have anyone notice what was going on around my side of the building, I grabbed a stick and banged down the hood of the motor shroud over the motor. The fire was unimpressed with that, and just started flowing out all the vents that were part of the shroud...

It was hopeless...

I walked around the building to talk to my crew that was standing talking to each other as they waited for the cement to finish mixing. The guys saw me and asked where was the first batch of stucco?

I believe I said something to the effect of, "There has been a big, big problem with the mixer this morning, and we might need a new one."

Well that got everyone's attention, and we all ran around the back side of the building to see what was now going on.

What we all saw was that by now the fire was still going on under the motor shroud, But the motor of the mixer was now sitting on the ground under the charred remains of mixer.


Now, yes,,,the guys did ask me, "What happend?"...and I told them something about the "spark plug". and they seemed to believe it..

I didnt get firred, and untill this moment now, I have never told anyone what actually went on...
 
That's pretty funny!:D

I made a heat pad up for under the motor last night. It matches the ones I have for my dies and anvils (4-5 stacked pieces of leaf spring welded together with a handle). I'll be trying it out tonight.
 
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