Blacksmithing Tips – What Type of Power Hammer is Right For Your Shop?
Blacksmith Power Hammers or Trip Hammers If you have ever worked with a power hammer you see the blacksmithing world through different eyes. Power hammers really fall into 3 basic categories, Hydraulic Presses, Mechanical Hammers, and Air Hammers. They are all designed to increase the amount of force that you can apply to the steel. This means you can do more work in a given amount of time and you can work bigger bar. Suddenly this opens a whole new creative reality with the steel. Hydraulic Presses I don’t use one in my shop but I have used one years back in another smiths shop. Hydraulics have tons of power (literally) and can force the metal into many different shapes very effectively. They are useful for extreme controlled force applications such as forcing steel into preshaped dies, or cutting at specific lengths or angles etc. This is not an impact machine such as mechanical hammers or air hammers, and is not fast. It can be used for drawing out steel but this is tedious. Althoug
