So, Friday I took a rare day off of work to do something fun. I had an invitation from John Larson of Iron Kiss Hammers to come check out a couple of hammers he had ready for delivery. Now, I've run John's 50#, 75#, 100#, and 125# hammers over the years, and loved every minute of it. So, when I heard there was a 150# and a 200# hammer available to try out, you KNOW I jumped at the chance.
John's friend Dave Hammer came up to shoot some video of these hammers in action, so I've finally got some good video to illustrate why I like these hammers so much.
First up was some time on the 150# hammer. First off, the 150# is going to a southpaw and so the dies were set up accordingly. This meant I was riding goofyfoot and it shows in my forging on this hammer. Even so, some pretty impressive work gets done.
First video shows me working down a block of 2 1/4" square bar 5" long to 1 3/4" square by 8" in a single heat. I'm pretty sure I could have gotten to 1 1/2" square pretty easily if the hammer was set up as I'm used to. then you get to see John so something pretty upsetting <img src=' http://www.americanbladesmith.com/ipboard/public/style_emoticons//smile.gi f' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':)' />
Drawing and Upsetting on a 150# Iron Kiss
John also did some other forging on the 150#
John Forging a Calla Lily from a Railroad spike
Then I ran a pretty normal knifemaker's billet of Damascus on the 150# Iron Kiss. I went with a billet of this size since most of you could relate to it easily. On this one I took twice as many heats as I should have, but I was holding things funny and things went trapezoidal on me...I hate that <img src=' http://www.americanbladesmith.com/ipboard/public/style_emoticons//smile.gi f' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':)' /> I purposely made Dave leave all the forging time in though to show exactly how much work it takes to get from welding to ready to cut & fold.
Deker makes crooked Damascus on the 150# Iron Kiss
After that came the real fun. the second hammer I got to play with is really something special. It's a custom ordered 200# Iron Kiss with a 20:1 Anvil:Tup ratio. That's right folks, the anvil and baseplate are 4000# on this one. There is some special valving in this one due to the size of the machine, and it sucks air like you wouldn't believe, but man is it something....This is the biggest hammer John has made to date but it still has all of the manners and delicacy of control that his smaller hammers have.
In the first video here, John forges what we're calling a railroad spike knife blank. Really, this was him showing off the power and delicacy of this hammer in a single heat. Made me giggle to watch him do it.
Then I repeated my Damascus billet forging on the 200# hammer. We continued on through one fold so that the video would be long enough to be worth watching. <img src=' http://www.americanbladesmith.com/ipboard/public/style_emoticons//smile.gi f' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':)' /> Seriously, this floored me. It proved that I could produce Damascus on this hammer faster than with my 35 ton press, which is no slouch for heavy forging. Just watch this and see if you can imagine the grin that was on my face. (Ok, really I'm lucky I didn't burn my tongue with the way my mouth was just gaping open in amazement)
Deker breaks his personal Damascus forging speed record
Then John took it up a notch by forging a 4" cube of steel. Now, a few things to note. the dies on this hammer are 6 1/2" wide. However, the dies being used here are combination flat/drawing dies. Each side is 2 3/4" wide, so forging something 4" wide isn't optimal. Bear that in mind while watching this one. It's important to note that this video shows a SINGLE FORGING HEAT. the edited out bits were some slight forging mishaps that cut this heat short (John accidentally damaged the handle on his billet which caused a premature end to this heat). Had he been able to continue, I'm pretty sure he could have approached reducing this 4" cube down to 2 1/2" square in one heat. I was flatly amazed.
Ok, so a few closing thoughts.
- I need to start robbing liquor stores and snatching old lady purses or something. I need a 200# Iron Kiss!
- I'm posting here because I think you all will enjoy this and I think it all deserves to be seen. There is absolutely NO business relationship between John and myself. I simply believe that he makes the best hammers available today and I like to see good work get recognized. He's a one-man shop and is too busy working to toot his own horn, so I try to help hi in that regard.
- I want to thank John for inviting me to come play in his shop for the day. It's a privilege to be trusted with his hammers, and an honor to call John a friend.
-d
