"Living With a Little Giant" The rebuild and continued maintenance of my 50lb hammer.

This thread does not have enough videos! Here's a quick shaky vid taken tonight, while drawing out some damascus.

 
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Oh I need to call talk to you and I'm sorry to hijack this thread but I'm looking at a 50 pound myself. Can you tell me if this is a problem?

https://vimeo.com/200190370


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
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Well, that's quite little to go on, but if you are ask whether the linkage should be that loose, it's common. My hammer is about like that. There may be some slop in the top pins that hold the toggle arms to the crosshead, so do look up there and make sure that the holes are not worn WAY oversize, but even those can be welded shut and re-bored if they ultimately get too large.

Also I can see that your ram guide has been slotted down a little on the side, typically that is done so that the links don't hit the ram guide, which is often caused by the dies having worn shorter. Also not a dealbreaker, but if you look at that bottom die and it's only like an inch or 1-1/4" above the top of the dovetail, it will need a new bottom die at least and that is a negotiating point. To some extent, as I did earlier in this thread, a worn bottom die can be shimmed up but not far.

I see that it's had a rattlecan rebuild- paint over everything including the spring. Look at the frame to make sure there is no crack anywhere hiding under the paint, not likely, but possible.

Main thing to check is the condition of the babbitt. With a prybar, lifting on the top die, can you get the flywheel to move up at all? If so, that's bearing wear at least. You can kind of see the bearing metal from the end of the rear bearing too, so check that.
 
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Just bumping this for now, as I've edited and fixed a bunch of the pics and the last video.
The hammer is running strong of late, although I did have to re-shim the top die a while ago.
Now that I have the #9 Beaudry the LG doesn't have to run so hard or long, just used as a shaping hammer and for drawing thin stuff.
 
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