Salem Straub

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About Salem Straub

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    Advanced Member

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  • Location
    Tonasket, Washington
  • Interests
    Bladesmithing, music, sword forms, being a good dad.

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  1. Since Daniel seems to be checking in rarely, I'll respond- he never set it up for use, but sold it. Now he's got a Nazel 4B sitting in storage, awaiting installation after a space is built for it...
  2. Wow... man I was trying to remember your name and get back to you a while ago, I know you'd reached out to me vis a vis doing some groundwork for this end of the move, my apologies for not following up further. I'm glad to see you made it happen! I'd been watching that machine on the local CL here for several months, it's a good looking machine especially if you can find some real dies for it. Congrats!
  3. Wow, the motor tower you built for that one looks a LOT like the one I built for my #9 Beaudry. Nice hammer! Make sure you do'n't have too much flex in that beam when stepping on the treadle... I had to brace mine quite a bit and there's still flex. A bigger drive pulley would make a big difference, Beaudry stated specifically that the drive pulley had to be as large or larger than the driven?hammer pulley, plus the flywheel effect of the bigger pulley would help a lot. The pulley I got with my hammer was fabricated by the previous owner, Larry Langdon (RIP) and he did a very nice job of it too. A local place with a plate roller could make you one easily enough I'd think, or you could find a short scrap section of 20" pipe (well drillers near you, scrap yards?) and weld a hub plate into that for a pulley...
  4. Having rescued a 300 lb. hammer myself, modified dies from another disparate hammer and machined a large sow block to fit it, that's a LOT of work and anything over scrap price is probably optimistic for this beast. That said, I'd probably be over there looking at it if it was within my home state here.
  5. Leaving the factory brake installed on a Beaudry would be my preferred option, when converting to VFD. It would be fairly easy to actually rig the stock Beaudry treadle to actuate a potentiometer control for the VFD... at any rate the 200# he just put into service over there has pretty good control. I could set the ram at the top of the stroke pretty easy. The VFD could be set for a faster slowdown rate, I.E. electronic braking, but one would have to pay heed to motor?VFD rating requirements to handle braking that much mass quickly. I still think that direct mechanical braking of the flywheel is likely better. A little Giant, now... they don't have a factory brake anyway!
  6. Here's a video, hopefully, of Gary Eagle running his 100 lb Howe at his shop in Chesaw, WA.... I ran that hammer a fair amount myself, it's a nice machine.
  7. This hammer probably has a normal top speed of 220-250 blows per minute... which can certainly come in handy, particularly when drawing out. The 10 hp motor it has now I certainly think is much more motor than it needs... I bet it came with a 5 hp motor if motor-drive options existed. Beaudry and DuPont Fairbanks literature both list 5 hp motors on their 150 lb. hammers. A 5 hp motor is not that hard to find or expensive, unless you need a real slow one. It's not worth the loss of performance to downgrade the motor to 3 hp, and I don't think lowering the RPM would much make up for an undersized motor anyway... These hammers are capable of very good control and finesse indeed regardless of HP or motor speed (granted it's not driven above manufacturer rated RPM.)
  8. That's a fact. That's Steve Howell in that video... I was just at his shop the other weekend, he got a 200 lb Beaudry and just gotten it working great using a 10 hp VFD and motor, TIG pedal for speed control, no mechanical clutch at all. Worked great! For a LG 50# I think a 3 hp VFD and 3 hp 3 phase motor would work well. Also it would be cost effective... you're gonna need a motor anyway, 3 phase ones tend to be cheaper, offset the cost off the VFD with that, get the VFD as a TECOFM50 203 from Factorymation for like $200, get a compatible tig pedal, and BOOM you're good to go, no clutch needed and all the control you could want. You'd still need to make a DuPont linkage to hang the ram from but that's a separate issue anyway. Probably easier though without having to work around a tire.
  9. That's a great hammer! I did a fair amount of work under a friend's 100# Howe... good control and brake system. For a 150# mechanical a 7.5 hp single phase motor should work just fine... I have a 7.5 hp 3 phase motor on my 300# Beaudry and that works fine too. I bet you could get away with a 5 hp single phase motor on that, with a starter.
  10. Looks good both before and after the new paint... it sucks that they scrapped the dies and treadle. That's so random, why the heck do folks do stuff like that? I know that feeling of having "hammer fever" for sure. The absolute knowledge that the machine you've been hunting for and now have found, is gonna be sniped out from under you by some %$&#head before you can get there to pay and pick it up... happened to me more than once.
  11. Great video, big looking ram for a 1cwt hammer... looks to run great, and plenty of control for that mosaic welding and shape forging. You appear to be in need of a treadle extension though... that's a lot of balancing with one leg way up! That's a sweet machine.
  12. Did you get that hammer up in the Seattle area? There was one for sale on CL there a few times over the past 3 years.... I've spent a decent amount of time running a friend's 100 lb. Howe, a very nice solid and controllable beast to be sure.
  13. God that's beautiful. Congratulations! I think this is a stroke of luck for both you and that Massey...
  14. Just been busy, Lou! Danged if the work don't just pile up if you rest a minute.