Sword-hammering machine

Mecha

Mecha

Titanium Bladesmith
Knifemaker / Craftsman / Service Provider
Joined
Dec 27, 2013
Messages
10,018
I know you sword folks will get a rise out of this, the latest incarnation of my home-built trip-hammer for forging billets!

The Hammer&Tongs subforum yielded no response, and I need some happy feedback to counter the taint-kick of depression that arises when I google "titanium sword" and read the ridiculous naysaying results. :D

[video=youtube;KMKQwZ3ls0A]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMKQwZ3ls0A[/video]
 
That is a cool vid; I like the hammer.

I would love to handle one of your swords sometime and try a little test cutting.
 
That is definitely the smallest power hammer I have ever seen... neet design... what kind of forces do you estimate it is exerting?

... and you know how to shut up the nay sayers... video some cutting and torture tests and price them wrong...
 
Ha! Thanks fellers.

Gregorio: Yes, maybe I should do a sword "pass-around," soon, as I love to hear what people think about their handling characteristics and feel.

Atavist: It's hard to say what the forces are like, but this thing can do in 1 hour what my last small trip hammer could do in about 12 hours. Every hit is similar to what a human would do with a careful, strong swing of a 20-lb rounding hammer, but rapid.

To be fair, there is hardly any info about titanium alloy swords out there (they barely even exist), and much of it is several years old, but the bulk of it is from "materials science majors" and the like who make bold, italicized and flat-out-wrong blanket statements, abrupt dead ends that are the equivalent of saying, "Iron will never ever make a good sword, it's just too soft/brittle."

Whine over; there are far worse fates than being a pioneer. I do really appreciate the enthusiasm from the members here, especially a few who have directly been of great help and inspiration. You know who you are! :D
 
Materials science majors ?? When I was one I actively searched for new and better materials . we worked with superplastic Ti stretching it 10X or 20XX ! My thesis was on nickel maraging steels , now found in fencing swords. Metallic thin films now in the computer world .
If they knew Iron swords they would know it's as good as bronze .But those dummies are comparing steel to bronze instead of iron to bronze !!
They don't even know their Ps and Qs [precipitates and quenchs ] SHAME !
Metallurgy is never OT !!

Mecha, I just got a toaster/oven So I can proceed on my scabbard. I'm slow for various reasons but it will happen .

Your hammer looks a bit lightweight -- proper for my miniature gladius but not much more .
 
Mecha- I saw you coming and will watch you arrive.
Did you meet Nick Rossi, yet?
yf,
rolf
 
Cool video! Interesting approach on the helve hammer. Couple of things that come to mind:

1. It seems to me like the coil spring is going to fight your downstroke and rob force from your hits. Is it necessary?
2. All mechanical hammers need a spring in the system to absorb the shock. Yours is the first one I've seen on an unguided helve that puts it at the end of the spring. You see in the video how the head is wobbling around? If you put the spring between the linkage and the helve and had the head solidly mounted to the end of the helve, you would have a consistent motion of the hammer face while still having the shock taken up. It would probably transfer more force into the blows, as well as allowing for your hammer to have a smaller footprint.

Check out Grant Sarver's Original Junkyard Hammer:

[video=youtube;-tPTLwmxsWc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tPTLwmxsWc[/video]

I think that using the engine block the way they did added complexity; seems like using just the crank, turned 90 degrees, would give them the up-and-down motion without having to use the modified piston to change the axis of motion. And I would use a spare tire clutch. But overall, it's a dandy little helve hammer that can do a lot of work for not much money.

For an increase in versatility with only a slight increase in complexity, you might look at making it a guided helve hammer.

And is that They Might Be Giants? Never heard the song, but it sounds like the band. :)
 
Ha! True Mete, I shouldn't say things like that, and get all wimpy-sounding. Looking forward to seeing the scabbard. And trust me, that hammer is hitting harder than it looks.

I haven't met him Lycosa, though I hope to get out to a lot of shows this summer and meet more people and display more work.

Stormcrow: The song is Compadres in the old Sierra Madres, by Riders in the Sky! :D As for the mechanism, the spring balances out the action and hammer weight to make it sooth and easy to turn, so it's easy on the pushrod system when it lifts. It's very easy to spin the wheels fast this way. The hammer gains a bit of extra force when the solid part of the arm contacts a rubber pad on the down-stroke, which whips the head down a bit just as the crank goes under and loses downward momentum. It's pretty wobbly, but not much side-to-side. I was going to put a clutch on it, but built the way it's built, there is really only one effective speed so it just has an "on" button foot switch! :D It's a super simple machine with only one job: steadily spread out a bar of titanium alloy, which seems to resist being moved more than a little bit per hammer-hit without problems.

The next version will probably have a guided hammer head, a you suggest. Clutch system, dies, it all adds expense and weight, but in return it boosts capability and power.
 
Mecha said:
Atavist: It's hard to say what the forces are like, but this thing can do in 1 hour what my last small trip hammer could do in about 12 hours. Every hit is similar to what a human would do with a careful, strong swing of a 20-lb rounding hammer, but rapid.

To be fair, there is hardly any info about titanium alloy swords out there (they barely even exist), and much of it is several years old, but the bulk of it is from "materials science majors" and the like who make bold, italicized and flat-out-wrong blanket statements, abrupt dead ends that are the equivalent of saying, "Iron will never ever make a good sword, it's just too soft/brittle."
Click to expand...

Sounds like a pretty power full hammer in a small package... I keep toying with the idea of building a power hammer bit then I lose the "hand forged" tag that iI've built a business around...

And for the record I am definitely not a nay-sayer in the area of titanium alloys... vanadium is tough stuff... as a primary component of titanium I am very interested in its potential...
As soon as my current forge expansion is done I plan to start in a cupola to start making my own steel... the common modern steels were all developed for industrial use... not for blades... one of my first alloys will be a high vanadium, high nickel, no chrome high carbon alloy that I think has good potential...
So you have my full support in creating and working with new metals for blades.
 
Thanks Atavist. New and strange alloys can have great properties, but it takes a bunch of research and experimentation to figure out how to bring out those properties. Grade 5 titanium alloy is about 4% vanadium and 6% aluminum, which makes it way different than pure titanium, just like alloying elements dramatically change the properties of pure iron. The beta stuff I'm using right now is alloyed with 10% niobium, which is very heavy and makes the alloy beta metastable and highly heat-treatable, not to mention it's small amount of iron alloyed within, that has as strong of an effect on titanium as small amounts of carbon has on iron!

The one thing that seems to have the most dramatic and positive effect on titanium alloys, though, is simply the long process of hammering out the titanium billet. Without being hammered out, the metal really does seem to be a bit soft to hold up to hard, abusive strikes when it's ground thin!
 
One thing about the power hammer, is that my hands (and everything else) definitely get quite sore after running the thing for a few hours! After that comes hand-hammering to refine the billet, but without the machine to do the bulk work of drawing out the bar stock, it takes way too long to get a billet shaped and ready for the grinder gulag. If you don't have a robot standing at your trip hammer forging it out for you, and running the billet on the grinder, I still consider it pretty damn handmade! :D
 
One last addition, the machine in slow-motion, showing the hammer-whip. If I can get a good 6 months and a pile of billets out of this thing, it will have served me well! :D

[video=youtube;Wmm2YsXbaMU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wmm2YsXbaMU[/video]
 
Mecha said:
If you don't have a robot standing at your trip hammer forging it out for you, and running the billet on the grinder, I still consider it pretty damn handmade! :D
Click to expand...

Now that's a debate for a whole other thread (which i'm sure has been had).. I have a slew of classifications for how blades are made... unfortunately "handmade" is hugely over used in my opinion... but let's nit open that bag of worms.
 
atavist said:
Now that's a debate for a whole other thread (which i'm sure has been had).. I have a slew of classifications for how blades are made... unfortunately "handmade" is hugely over used in my opinion... but let's nit open that bag of worms.
Click to expand...

For sure! A subject that could disintegrate even quicker than a discussion about fullers!
 
Blood grooves ? only when the maker is careless in handling the sword !!
 
cha. ^
My friend, Janice, calls them air-grooves. To let the air out of the wound.
:D
 
Those are jiggle-ditches, they keep the sword from jigglin'.
 
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