Looking for Fairbanks hammer operating manual...

My bushing sticks out the back with the rear mount drive pulleyhaving not much play, if you look at the feeler gage numbers from awhile back.

When I first started e-yapping with Bruce, I flet sorry for him having a mid-mount hammer... having to "screw around" figuring how to mount the motor and align things and... ". Any more, I wish our hammer was mid-mount. The belt would be a lot shorter and there would be more idler-arm movement to deal with the less-stretch.

In the end, if you go with rear drive, make the position as close to the drive pulley as possible and try not to block the pass through hole if there is any way around it... or that is the way I'd approach it if a rear mount was the only choice.

Mike
 
Here are some bushing pictures.
This is the rear bushing. The shiny part on the left end is what sticks out past the yoke.
rearbushinglong2.jpg
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Following is a pic of that shiny end of the rear bushing.
rearbushingendlores.jpg
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Following is pic of rear bushing thickness.
rearbushingthicklores.jpg
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Following is rear bushing diameter.
rearbushingdialores.jpg
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Following is front bushing length.
frontbushinglores3.jpg
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Following is front bushing diameter.
frontbushingdialores.jpg
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Following is both bushings. One on left is rear bushing.
bushingslores1.jpg
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Following is both bushings by the shaft. The drive pulley would mount in the middle.
shaftandbushingslores.jpg
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Here is a picture of the setup I used to pull the bushings. The pipe inside diameter needs to be larger than the bushing to be pulled. The pipe goes on one side of the bushing and the socket goes on the other side. The socket is smaller than the bushing diameter. The nut on the pipe side is tightened to pull the bushing. I needed about 20" of 3/4" all-thread. The piece of blue pipe was necessary as the bushing pulled into the pipe the all-thread came out further and further so an impact socket would no longer reach without the blue pipe as a spacer.
bushingpullerlores.jpg
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I finally got some paint on the frame today. Color inspired by Bruce!
hammerpaintedlores.jpg
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Thanks for the pictures and process, Robert. I don't think I'll ever see our bushings the way you are seeing yours... hope not, at least. Given the bushings are not bronze, I guess grease is probably a better idea than oil.

Man, you kids... just got to have a hot paint job. What was wrong with good ol' Fairbanks black? =]

Mike
 
Mine was already OSHA green when it came home:-)
Robert, don't forget the pinstripes!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
Couldn't go black - needed a little color around to brighten the shop. Hey, the other choices in real colors were bright blue and bright red in tough industrial paint. Bruce, I couldn't possible copy your pinstripes! I may go two-tone and paint the parts that I removed another color. Tough to find something that goes with this green though!

I apologize to you guys for the lengthy descriptions of stuff like the bushing puller. I am really doing that in case some poor helpless guy like me reads this stuff in the future and just needs some help.

Good point on the grease instead of oil on the main bushings, Mike. However, somewhere I read in the old material that these things had bronze bushings. Maybe that was during the United or Barbour Stockwell days only and not on the original design like I have.
 
Robert, use yer imagination on the pinstripes (BOG) silver and red might go with that green. Yelow mebbe??
You are doing a good thing here with all the pictures, procedures, etc. Robert. Mike too!.
When I set mine up, I had no hands on hammer people to talk with. Didn't kniow Sid then either. All I had was a neighbor (May he rest in peacer) who was a brilliant thinker.
He came and bailed me outta all the dumshit stuff I did. And we got it up and running. I had set up the machine in such a position that it was necessary to reverse the treadle and belt damper but didn't reverse the dies. In order to run the machine from the off side, he made a foot pedal affair and we mounted it and dang if it didn't work!
The next guy to comer along with their new Fairbanks is gonna be grateful as hell for your input. Thanks
 
I'd double up on Bruce's feeling the more info the better. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff in this thread that is just yapping but there is more real data here than a person can find anywhere else. It's worth the effort.

Right now Sid is yapping with a belt guy he has dealt with for years about differences in flat belt use and what might be "best choice" for Fairbanks application. I'll post whatever Sid passes on.

I think I said it but "Bear" messed with "V" belts on his Fairbanks and found them to be non-functional. They do work on LG's in either 2 or 3 as a matched set.

Merry Christmas to you two and any other followers...

Mike
 
Like I told ya Mike, I learned new cuss words when I tried leather belts. And that was brand new belting leather. At one time I had a roll of bison leahter but used it for sumpin else. It may have been better(shrug) IIRC it was 3/8" thick. Was used to run natural gas pumps.
There should be just as much good info when Robert starts putting the green beast back together :-)
As far as colors, i get akick outta seeing how a lot of old engines and machinery was painted.
Ever wonder why old machinery was painted that grey colr ya see? After WWI, the guvmint had a sale on surplus paint, since that was the "War to end all wars". m And thats why a lot of old machines were painted battleship grey.
Thus ends my useless trivia for the day :-)
 
I painted all of the extraneous parts a dark gray yesterday. All of the parts that were removed are going to painted that color, except the faceplate. I painted it green to match the frame. I think I will paint the motor bright red, since it is already red, and I just kind of like the thought. Bruce, I almost went with battleship gray on the hammer, but it just seemed too common. Now I know why.

The belt is going to be an issue. Right now I have a really old leather belt. It is definitely broken in. I may try to re-size it and give it a shot and then switch to something else if I need to.

Mike, you keep saying not to block the pass-through hole in the frame. Bruce and Mike, do you guys ever use the pass-through hole?????? I have holes already tapped in the frame just below the hole on a flat spot that I could use to mount the motor, and that would block it, unless I made a bracket that arched up somehow. My treadle is only set up to operate from the left side, so I can't even use the hammer from the front, unless I make a wrap-around treadle.

Mike, can you do me a huge favor and email me a couple of pictures looking down from the top and in from the side at the very back of your hammer where the drive pulley meets the back yoke? I need to see with my own eyes what that looks like so I can decide what to do.
 
Robert, you have alligator clips for the belt? If not , let me know. On the other hand, you are going to all this work to rebuild, go with a new canvas belt.

As soon as you block off that thru hole, you'll be needing that :-)

Sounds like black/silver pistripes to me.
 
farmer12888 said:
Mike, can you do me a huge favor and email me a couple of pictures looking down from the top and in from the side at the very back of your hammer where the drive pulley meets the back yoke? I need to see with my own eyes what that looks like so I can decide what to do.
Click to expand...

The only pics I have are already up on the thread and the camera is 14,000 + miles from here... sorry.

Unless I misunderstand, it's a simple thing. The dirve pulley has a little clearance on the end of the rear bushing protrusion... the approximate numbers are in the post with the rest of the feeler gage stuff. The front end is the alignment concern and the sleeve (or center-mount drive pulley) seem to position that with a little +/-.

I'm wondering if the little gaps (some more little than others) is simply a grease/oil holding concern... like if gaps too large the grease/oil comes out easier... ???

Holler if your want of pics is for thinking other than what I supposed.

Mike
 
Mike, let me get this straight. You definitely have the bushing protruding out past the back of the rear yoke? I have no idea why they would do that on a rear-mount pulley, since all of the other surfaces on both yokes are what the crank and the drive pulley ride directly, almost, against on my hammer, and they are all machined flat, as you can see from my pictures. No other bushing sticks out for a surface for anything to ride against. They are all flat with the yoke, except the very rear one, but I assumed that was so because nothing was back there - it just ended. I wanted the picture to definitely answer that issue - what the drive pulley is riding against. I suppose it would give a little more space to allow the brake pin to be inserted when the drive pulley is turned around the other way like yours. I will go back and try to find your measurements about the clearances. I was considering cutting the new bushing off flush with the back of the rear yoke and somehow grinding the back of the rear yoke down flat - like the other faces of the yokes.

Bruce, alright I will reconsider blocking the hole.
 
I've not had the drive shaft out of our hammer. There is a protrusion out the back of the rear yoke... I described it as a step-in, I think. My assumption is, it's "the donut"/the bushing, but I don't know that as fact.

The only thing coming to mind about the protrusion on a rear drive is it moves the drive pulley further from the frame. Yep, not very much but things like brake mechanism need clearance and flat belt pulleys need to be longer than the belt is wide, so maybe the approx. 1/2" is necessary for one, or both, or some other reasons... just guessing, really.

Mike
 
I made the decision today to convert the hammer to a motor-driven arrangement similar to the factory hammers that were motor driven. I took the shaft, crank, drive pulley and both bushings to a machine shop to have it done. They will make a new main shaft extended the width of the drive pulley (basically 4 inches), a sleeve to fit between the yokes over the shaft the same width as the drive pulley and two new bushings. I will find out tomorrow what the cost will be. He told me that the bushings were cast iron and that good-quality cast iron is difficult or impossible to find now, so they may have to make them from bronze. He is going to ask some people he knows what would be best to use.

I spent the last couple of days trying to make the decision by mocking up various ways to mount things on the hammer with the existing parts. No matter what I did, I could not come up with an effective way to mount the idler pulley to apply pressure properly in toward the belt rather than spreading the belt, with the motor and/or jack shaft mounted on the side. The most effective way seems to be to mount the motor on the back of the hammer and move the angled arm with the idler pulley onto the back of the hammer above the motor. It would be similar to Mike's hammer, except I intend to mount the motor up higher, in order to shorten the belt. Mike believes a shorter belt would be better, and I already have two tapped holes just below the pass-through hole in the frame. I will mount the idler pulley arm in between the pass-through hole and the shaft. Yes, I will obstruct the pass-through hole with the motor and jack shaft, but something has to give.

The new main shaft is going to be all one size, which will be the thicker diameter. The rear bushing will be made with a larger inside diameter to fit the larger shaft. That will reduce the wall thickness of the rear bushing, but I believe it will still be thick enough, and I want and need the thicker shaft for the drive pulley to ride on. I will let the rear bushing stick out from the rear of the rear yoke, just like it has, so the drive pulley can ride against it. The machinist believes that the end of the shaft should be threaded, so a nut can be used to lock the drive pulley onto the shaft, instead of a gib key. I told him that I also want the pulley to be held on like it was before, with 4 set screws with 2 of them bearing on a key. I am not sure how to mount the sleeve between the yokes-whether to use a key and two set screws or just two set screws right on the shaft. What do you guys think? I sort of like the idea of a key just like the one that was there, so the hammer could be converted back to a line-driven type, just by moving the pulley in between the yokes, and the shaft would be made to accept the pulley.

I know I will need to do brake pin and treadle modifications, but that is all doable. It is just time to pull the trigger.
 
That's a really good idea, Robert... setting up the center part of the shaft to acommodate setting up as original. Down the road a ways, some one is going to think you for that.

The sleeve on our machine has two set scews... 1/2", if I'm remembering right. There is no key under the set screws. When released, the sleeve turns. I've never rotated the sleeve completely around the shaft to look for a key groove... I'm just assuming there isn't one.

What is nice about a gib key is it allows simple adjustment of the drive pulley position. A nut-lock is going to have to be locked and the shoulder (assuming there will be one) will have to be right for the drive pulley to "donut" spacing or be negative and shim-able... but maybe I'm not understanding what your machinist is thinking about.

Mike

Edit: In the long ago pictures of our machine, there is a rear view and it shows both the gib key and the two set screws that come in at an angle. It is similar in lock-up effect to the system on your drive pulley, Robert... hard held key and set screws to shaft. I would wager they didn't do all that for effect... I think it's what it takes to keep the drive pulley from coming free.
 
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I was digging around on the internet tonight about our hammers. I came across Sid's Little Giant site and a specific piece called "Virtual Museum." He has a few pages of pictures of DuPont hammers from an advertising brochure, apparently. On one of the pages, it is United Hammer Company advertising DuPont hammers. That perplexes me, since I assumed that United Hammer sold the hammers under Fairbanks and Fairbanks/United names only. Apparently, they also sold them as DuPont hammers. There was no date on the material. I have emailed Sid to try to find out what all information he has.

There was also a picture of a "Bradley Compact Hammer" under the Bradley section that interested me. It has a motor mounted in a very similar way that I am going to do. The motor is up higher on the back with a pretty short belt, and the idler pulley is positioned just below the drive pulley. The most interesting feature is the bent rod that attaches to the side of the hammer that the idler pulley is mounted on. The treadle appears to rotate that rod to engage the idler pulley with the belt. It sort of appears that there is a clutch or brake linkage attached to it as well that appears to go to the crank pulley on the front. Take a look.
 
Tried to get to Sid and Keri's site last night but ran out of awakeness... I'm interested in the Bradley set you described.

I was thinking about your motor mounting choice while looking at the pics of our motor mount and thinking about what we are going to have to do if there is no way around getting a 5" flat belt pulley and running a jackshaft mounted where our motor is now. In our senario, that either puts the motor on the floor facing away from the hammer or it puts it on some sort of mount/stand off to one side or the other.

Along those lines on your hammer, if a person built a mount that used the existing holes in the hammer (below the pass-through hole), maybe the floor, maybe the rear hammer hold down bolts, maybe other holes drilled/tapped in hammer frame, it should be relatively easy to form up a dropped motor/jackshaft platform and have it be out of the way of the pass-through...

Mike
 
Mike, I have a platform already made for the motor and the jackshaft where they are sitting close to each other like they used to up on the side of the hammer. It was made when I was going to mount the motor up there. To move both of them and the platform out of the way of the pass-through would mean really offsetting them from the center of the hammer, and I am trying to keep things as in line with the center as I can for balance and vibration. I also get into the problem of a suitable mounting place on the frame. The frame dips in above the pass-through hole and is not flat. I will look at it some more, because I would rather not block the hole. If I could mount it above the pass-through, that would be ideal, but the weight is getting pretty high on the hammer, and the belt would be really short.

On your motor mount, I don't see why you couldn't just place the jackshaft right down there beside your motor like mine is. It would be pretty simple, really. Take a look at the pictures of my motor and jackshaft. The table they sit on has been redone for adjustability and strength, but the setup is the same.

About the gib key, how is that adjustable? Doesn't it just hammer in until tight? The machinist was going to use a nut on the end of the shaft as more of a safety catch, in case the pulley came loose. The pulley would be held in place like it used to be with 4 set screws and a flat key on the shaft. Do you think the gib key would be better and why?
 
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