Friday afternoon, Nov 8th, a friend came over to
help me get this hammer standing up after at least 15 years on the ground.
We got the trailer backed into the shop with little to no
room to spare. I couldn’t see a thing once
the trailer was partially in the shop, but Chase directed me in. Hooked it to the 2 ton chain hoist and as it
was raised it started to pull itself off the trailer.
As soon as the base came off the back of the trailer, we
attached the wooden platform/base. After
that it was easy to move.
Here it is still hooked up to the hoist, in the air, waiting
to be moved around into position. I
decided to set the whole thing on a few 6x6’s so I could work on the base
first.
It has been a long time since she has stood on her own
legs. This is a happy me after touch
down.
Took apart the whole front section of the hammer and
disassembled everything. I laid it all
out on a table with cardboard so I could make notes about how each piece was
configured. I stamped a few parts with
an “X” to mark position.
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Saturday 11/9/13
Muzzle loader hunting started this morning. Before getting to my stand, a deer busted me
by snorting and running off. Only saw
the ghost of a deer a little later.
Lots of stuff to do before working on the hammer. Finally, I got to work on taking the bearing
tops off. This lead to the shaft- John
Shaft. For some strange reason this
thing did not want to come off. I hooked
it to the hoist because it is heavy and too high to manipulate safely. Hoisting it up it would raise one end off
then the whole machine with me on it would raise off the blocks. I tried and tried and tried again until it
released its grip and raised up. At that
point I lowered it to waist height and unhooked it.
Now it is almost completely disassembled. She looks kinda naked.
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Sunday 11/10/13
Today I put the LGPH onto my pallet jack to move over to the
shop door. My plan is to clean all the
parts off with a wire wheel. Big issue
is lead paint used back in the day. I
started cleaning up all the moving parts- toggle arms, clutch fork, clutch
collar, clutch pulley, crosshead, pitman, ram guide and ram. Getting years of rust and crud off was very
satisfying but took a couple hours of work.
Everything looked so different by the time I was done you wouldn’t have
thought it was the same parts.
Next thing to clean was the frame. For safety I wore a respirator mask and had a
strong fan blowing to take all the lead dust out of the shop. So I’m thinking they used lead based paint…but
it was actually LEAD painted on! Hate to
be the guy who had to do that painting, talk about a deadly job. It took a good while to get all the crud off
the main frame. After that I had to
clean the lead paint off the flywheel.
The spider is also on the shaft with the flywheel and it needed to be
cleaned more carefully.
When I was finished I was covered with all kinds of soot and
crud. Time for a long hot shower.
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