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What's new

New acquisition/refurb project, a 300 lb. Beaudry power hammer.

Salem Straub

Cast Iron
Joined
May 22, 2012
Location
WA, USA
Well, I had enough of trying to track down hammers, afford them, dicker over price, lose deals from distance and competition... so I contacted my friend Larry Langdon and sure enough, he had a good project hammer to sell me.

It's a #9 Beaudry Champion, the slack belt type, the 300 lb. model. It needs dies and a sow block. Overall it's not too badly worn but has a good surface rust coat from sitting idle in a warehouse in Seattle for decades. Larry threw in a jackshaft setup including 7.5 hp 1100 RPM 3 phase motor, a big flat pulley he fabricated for it, the right 3-groove sheaves to achieve speed range, and shaft and bearings so putting together the drive tower should be relatively simple.

I got a monster sow block from some old steam hammer with it too, which he'd found and been saving as a starter block to shape a smaller sow for the Beaudry from. That's the most daunting part of the whole project, it's a lot of metal removal but I have no doubt it'll get done in the end.

I drove over to southern Idaho Memorial Day weekend to get it, 1200 miles round trip and 48.5 hours total.

Here's some pics...

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You can see the big sow block in the pics, it needs the top and bottom dovetails cut off, and then cut into a round disc 10" thick and 16.5" wide. I have ordered a #7 cutting tip and am reading up on severing heavy sections, I have a very good old oxy-ace book from the 40's that deals with that stuff. Then I'll have to grind it nice and flat on both top and bottom and machine in dovetails that match the hammer.

I've wire brushed a good portion of the frame, and am soaking everything with penetrating oil- the first thing I'll do probably to get into it is fabricate a treadle, that I know I can do easily enough. Then it's the sow block...

I have just managed to source some used dies from a similar hammer, with slight modification they will work. 4" wide by 11" long by 2" outside the dovetails! Oh I can't wait to slap some hot steel between those big glorious flat dies and whale away...

I'll post more when I've made some meaningful progress towards getting it running!
 
That is amazing!!! I guess the "300lb" is a measurement of the capabilities and not the weight... looks like that weighs 10x that at least. This will be a great thread, I eagerly await your next update.
 
Im jealous, I really want a power hammer about that size, 300-500lbs would be about perfect.

Need to set up the forge up before I ever get serious about the power hammer though.
 
Yes, 300 lbs. is the weight of the ram, nominally for a #9 hammer. Looking at a chart from the original literature, this hammer strikes with an estimated 1800 lbs of force max, at 200 blows per minute normal max speed.
The machine with anvil installed, not counting motor or outboard drive components, weighs 5400 lbs or so, and the anvil itself without the sow or lower die, weighs 1200 lbs.

The Beaudry was the best of the mechanical hammers, with Bradley being its only widely recognized peer (some like a Bradley better; apples and oranges).

The inside of the ram, where the elliptical tracks are for the spring arm rollers, is not very worn at all from the rollers, but there is rust pitting that will need grinding. At least an angle grinder will fit in there OK!

I've been moving items around in my shop, getting rid of a few extraneous things, and re-imaging work flow, to make room for this beast. I have to cut a hole in the floor, 6'x3', and dig it 4' deep, to pour the foundation for it... and that with a rebar cage and inset bolt pockets.

I hope to get it indoors on the foundation by winter, so that I can finish up with it inside.
 
Too bad you didn't make a deal with Larry a couple of years ago - would have made for a shorter drive...

The sow block is steel, not cast iron, right? (Cast iron seems a very poor choice....) Wonder if it would be easier to use an abrasive wheel on a demo saw (like a stihl you could rent - not the diamond wheel for cement, the abrasive wheel) - that *might* be an easier/faster way to cut those dovetails off.
 
About 15 years ago I helped one of my kid brothers drag a #9/300lb Beaudry out of a place in Brooklyn, NY and get it back to Bergton, VA.

Not sure if he still has it, he made a lot of new parts for it over the years including a crankpin and some of the power train parts.

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I think he told me he used S7 for the top of the sowblock. Kept watching ebay until the right size drop, dropped.

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But he kept his #7/200 lb Beaudry going beside it all that time, so I guess there was no pressure. :)

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smt
 
Bryan machine, as far as I can tell from a spark test the sow appears to be mild steel. That's a relief! I think it'll cut ok.
If I can get my gear and technique dialed in correctly, oxy-ace should be the fastest method by a long shot, to rough the block down... hopefully I can get a clean enough cut that the snagging afterwards isn't too horribly demanding. I do have big rocks for my big angle grinders.

Abrasive gas saw remains an attractive option B. In fact, if the first cut doesn't go well with the torch, I have three remaining ones to cut off with the saw. We'll see. It would take a whole lot of sawing and a bunch of wheels, but would come out cleaner with less grinding afterwards necessary.

Stephen, I've seen you and Ed post here in the past about that hammer, in fact I was recently looking at pics of that shaper job on the sow block. Very inspiring. I have a friend who has a moldmaker's shop, with a couple seriously large CNC mills- I thought if I could get the disc roughed in, I'd take it up to him to see if a program and cutters can be made to work on the big mill, as far as cutting in the top female and bottom male dovetails.

If not, I might be looking for a shaper. I know where one is that I could buy, but it's likely not big enough. Can't remember.
 
I got the #7 Victor tip in today, and wow the center jet for the cutting oxy is BIG! on that thing.
I perused some reference material for a rough idea of the amount of oxygen I might consume... it appears that running that tip at about 50 psi oxygen will burn through one of my large full tanks in about 1/2 hour or less. Cutting speed might be 3-4 ipm, and I have roughly 14 inches of cut length per side of the two dovetails. So, if it goes well I might be able to cut the dovetails off before going to refill and then cutting the main puck down to a smaller diameter circle.
It is recommended to use 3/8" hose or better and no flashback arrestors to inhibit the oxygen supply, so I dug out the heavy hose I had stashed, took the arrestors off, leak tested it all and ran the torch for a minute, and it all checks out- so I believe I'm ready to try tomorrow.
I think I'll grind a path clean of surface rust; I've found my best cutting occurs when the preheat flames are not hitting a rusted surface.
One factor of which I'm uncertain, is that the dovetail sections have a maximum width of 7" to cut, but the lead-in and tail-out portions of the cuts taper in from and out to nothing. I'll have to slant the oxy jet a bit so as to not blow through those parts too quick and rough, I suppose.
I type all of this, to reveal my thought process in case anyone has advice to add- to hear from folks skilled in heavy manual flame cutting would be very helpful. Also, it will now be here as a record of my attempt and the results, for better or worse, should anyone else face a similar task!
 
Another option may be a what we used to call a gouger. Carbon rods in a stick welder with compressed air to blow the molten steel away. Vary noisy but fast and controllable. I never used one on a chunk of steel that size though.
 
That's the Cadillac of mechanical hammers. Pay special attention to the smoothness of the roller tracks inside the ram, and replace the rollers now, while you are getting it apart. As for the sow block, go to your local welding store and get oxy-lances, and ask them to borrow the holder. Few tanks of oxygen and you are done, bonus is that it keeps you farther away from the action than a torch. So after the warehouse fire Larry moved back to Seattle?
 
In possibly the most serious lapse in judgement of my professional career, I failed to bid on such a hammer in an auction some years ago. There were no bids on the machine, and the owner scrapped it the week after the auction. I still can't believe I let it go! Regards, Clark
 
Johansen, in this case I have that too-big sow block that was thrown in with the hammer as starting material. In other scenarios, I would be looking at possibly building one up... the route I'm taking now should be more cost effective for me than buying heavy steel new, and even with heavily v-ed out welds and running my MIG in spray arc with .060 wire I think I'd prefer a monolithic block for mechanical strength under all that impact over time.

I thought about carbon-arc gouging, but I've never tried it and don't have the equipment. There's a local machine shop that does it on stuff, and I talked to them but the process didn't come up. They liked the gas powered chopsaw idea.

I had a big fat old acetylene tank, but traded it off a couple years back- it cost so much to fill and was so heavy to haul that I never used it. Figures... I'll have to look into the fuel gas consumption rate of that tip. I doubt it uses more than my big rosebud tip though.

I'll be digging into the rollers for sure. The inside of the ram does not have bad tracks worn into it, but I may well be turning new rollers anyway. Yay for the big Hendey!

Sealark37, now that's the stuff nightmares are made of. A tale of crushing regret to be sure.

Thanks for the input everyone!
 
Yes, 300 lbs. is the weight of the ram, nominally for a #9 hammer. Looking at a chart from the original literature, this hammer strikes with an estimated 1800 lbs of force max, at 200 blows per minute normal max speed.
That is just amazing! I've seen a few power hammers before but there were not that big and I was pretty much unaware of the forces even those smaller hammers are capable of. The 4' deep foundation with rebar cage just adds to the level of awesomeness. I guess you've got a smile on you face that's going to be around for quiet some time.
 
The standard for heavy cutting is propane (due to the cost of acetylene) with oxygen fed from a liquid carboy. I've also seen a Petrogen torch used (it uses gasoline fumes in place of a fuel gas) - the US Navy uses Petrogen, and I've seen scrappers with a setup as well.
 
I am dangerously out of my depth here, but I'll put a foot in. IF the sow block goes under the anvil, fits in or through the hole in the bottom of the frame, I would propose making a recess in your foundation to allow using more of the chunk you have. All I know form manual blacksmithing is that the anvil is never too large, Small anvil wastes energy from the hammer. A bigger mass backing up the work is always better.

Save work cutting it up, get better performance?

Ignore the suggestion if it makes no sense in context.
 
I do have compressed air and 400 amps plus of DC stick welder, but I don't think a very clean cut can be gotten in a thick piece with those gouging rods- perhaps I'm wrong. The posted gouging attachment is not badly priced, though!

As for the anvil being lowered, I still have to cut the sow block dovetails off as they are both too big to fit the hammer and dies that I have... so it will end up being 4" shorter after that, anyway. Then 2" have to come off most of the bottom to create the lower male dovetail, and so the block will be 8" tall effectively at the shoulders of the bottom die, which is 1" higher than stock as far as I have been able to find. The hammer can be adjusted to compensate for that, or I may mill the surface of the block down to 7" high before cutting in the upper dovetail.
It is a good thought though, that the hammer can always be more effective with more mass in the anvil. Certainly that's a great reason not to skimp on a foundation!
I'm just back from a road trip over the weekend, perhaps I'll get to try a cut tomorrow...
 
That's the Cadillac of mechanical hammers. Pay special attention to the smoothness of the roller tracks inside the ram, and replace the rollers now, while you are getting it apart. As for the sow block, go to your local welding store and get oxy-lances, and ask them to borrow the holder. Few tanks of oxygen and you are done, bonus is that it keeps you farther away from the action than a torch. So after the warehouse fire Larry moved back to Seattle?

Larry had that fire at Quick and Dirty Tools... after that he moved back to Buhl, Idaho, where he grew up. Bought most of his dad's welding/machine business there and is building it back up again. He has a nicely rebuilt, ready-to-go #9 Beaudry same as this one, sitting inside and waiting to be hooked to a motor! As well as a 750 lb. self contained Chambersburg air hammer, an awe-inspiring beast to be sure.
 








 
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