The knifesmithing project has reached the point of needing new tools. Earlier I've recorded the progress with upgrading the forge, I have weldable heat now and am one step closer to that holy grail of making Damascus.
The next important upgrade is power, hammering and forming power that is; I'm one person with limited calories to burn per hour, as much as I can hammer a shape into the other shape I want, the more the steel the harder that is and the more fuel it burns. So my design goals are to build a hammer and press with a non-existant budget. So far I have most of what I need for this upcycled design.
There are some tricky design issues I'm excited to tackle. For resource and reference I'm using; '507 Mechanical Movements Mechanisms and Devices' by Henry T. Brown.
In no specific order these are some of the Mechanisms I hope to include in a drop hammer. The main goal of this project is to make a wooden frame vertical reciprocating drop, to have a treadle powered flywheel powering the lift and drop.
Fig 154 is a drop hammer off a drum
Here is another iteration on the simple drop hammer, closer to our design
Fig 353 is a variation on the Da Vinci cam hammer
Figure 420 is a hammer swing stop,
Fig 416 is a continual motion treadle assistant, the spring helps the right angle turning assisting the momentum of the treadle moving the drum.
Figure 261 is a play on a weight drop pully system where the upstroke is slower than the downstroke