wrote in message
oups.com...

chunk wrote:
This is on my friends site... Hopefully someone here can tell
me what it is.

http://www.angelfire.com/oh/muddybog...te/photos.html

Looks like a Nazel Power hot forging hammer.

The Blacksmith guys love these things. The hammers are rated by the
weight of the moving part. The bottom or sow block is typically 16x the
mass of the moving part. This is all from memory. Check out,
http://images.google.com/images?q=na...=Google+Search
Tom Lipton


The thing I thought was a bit strange about these hammers at first, is that
the bottom block is not connect all that rigidly to the hammer. I saw one
being dismantled, and the cast base looked very flimsy, but buried below it
in the ground was a timber structure about six feet square and 6 feet deep.
I guess the hammer didn't need to be that rigidly connected to the bottom
block because it just drops the weight, it doesn't power the weight down or
squeese the forging, just gravity. The buried timber base was there to
spread the weight of the impact on the bottom block, and make sure it didnt
slowly sink into the ground.

regards,

John