Give the Guy a Brake!Steve Bloom, IronFlower Forge (click on any figure to see it in more detail) |
| I've had the privilege of having two 50lb Little Giants fresh from the rebuilding by Fred Caylor. These hammers were in tip-top shape but both (at least in my hands), had a problem. If they were adjusted so that they did not continue to hammer after letting up on the foot control, they felt weak. If they were adjusted to strike hard, they ran on. I discovered that a very modest pressure (like the palm of a leather glove, lightly pressed to the flywheel) was sufficient to cure the problem. The solution was to create a brake to automatically apply that pressure when the foot control was re |
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| The first question is just how to provide the frictional force on the flywheel. I chose to dig a leaf spring out of my trash heap, since it already had an eye, was obviously strong enough, and was free. The leaf spring was approximately 20" long (excluding the eye), 2.25" wide and 0.25" thick. The length was determined by just cutting the spring in half. The spring was heated, the eye and 2" of spring were bent at right angles to the rest of the spring, and the remainder |
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| The next problem is figuring out where to mount the brake shoe. On my first hammer, I took the simple route of mounting it on the lower portion of the flywheel. Of course, eventually, the oil from the hammer soaked the leather and the frictional force dropped off. On all subsequent versions, I've mounted the shoe on the top of the flywheel. The problem is now f If you look at a Little Giant (at least all the 50's I've looked at), there are four large bolts holding down the journal cover between the flywheel and the drum. Since I knew that I was going to rig a linkage on the left side of the hammer, I elected to |
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| The next problem is to attach the brake shoe to the brake arm. Since this particular brake was going on a hammer about 150 miles from where I was building the brake, I decided to build a bit of adjustment into the system. If I was building this for a ha drilled directly in line with the centered hole in the bolt plate. A 1" diameter hole was also drilled in a 1.5" x 1.5" x 3/4" block and that block was welded over the hole in the front plate of the mounting box. A 1" diameter pin (4.5" long) was inserted Okay - we now have the shoe resting on the flywheel, the brake arm bolted to the hammer, and the 14" piece of 1"x1" angle (remember?) running above and behind the flywheel. We need to connect that piece to the slotted plate. The easy solution? ... position a 4" piece of angle iron to bridge the gap (see above), hold in in place with vise-grips, then weld it to the arm and slot plate. |
| All that is left is actually making the contraption work. The concept is that a spring will be attached to the lower loop on the non-eye end of the shoe and hooked to one of the ram bolts on the hammer with a small turn-buckle. This will apply the brake The first step in accomplishing this is to weld a control bracket to the 8" piece of angle - the 'Y' shaped assembly to the left in rear view of the arm. It consists of a 6" long piece of 1" x 1/4" bar with a 1/2" hole in the end and a brace bar. We no Take an 8" long piece of 1"x1/4" stock and bend it into a square Z-shape as shown to the right. The lengths of the limbs are 2", 2" and 4". A 3/8" hole is drilled into the forward (2") limb, a 1/2" hole is drilled into the rear (4") limb (near the bend) |
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| The 'stopping' ability of the brake is related to the strength of the spring used to hold the brake down (and the adjustment of the turn-buckle) and the 'release' is controlled by the turn-buckle on the 4" limb. When adjusted correctly, the hammer can give a single strike, the ram can be walked into any position, and the drum control can be adjusted to give maximum striking power. The afternoon needed to assemble the brake is well worth the effort and I personally wouldn't wa |
