Trip hammer

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Trip hammer

A trip hammer (alt. helve hammer) is a massive powered hammer

Hammer

A hammer is a tool meant to deliver an impact to an object. The most common uses are for driving Nail s, fitting parts, and breaking up objects....
used in agriculture

Agriculture

Agriculture refers to the production of food and goods through farming and forestry. Agriculture was the key development that led to the rise of civilization, with the animal husbandry of domestication animals and plants creating food surpluses that enabled the development of more Population density and Social stratification societies....
to facilitate the labor of pounding, decorticating and polishing of grain; in mining

Mining

Mining is the extraction of value minerals or other geology materials from the earth, usually from an ore body, vein or seam. Materials recovered by mining include base metals, precious metals, iron, uranium, coal, diamonds, limestone, oil shale, Sodium chloride and potash....
, where ore

Ore

An ore is a type of Rock that contains minerals such as gemstones and metals that can be extracted through mining and refined for use. Samples of ore in the form of exceptionally beautiful crystals, exotic layering visible when sectioned or polished or metallic presentations such as large nuggets or crystalline formations of metals suc...
from deep veins was crushed into small pieces; and in finery forge

Finery forge

Iron tapped from the blast furnace is pig iron, and contains significant amounts of carbon and silicon. To produce malleable wrought iron, it needs to undergo a Decarburization....
s, for drawing out blooms made from pig iron

Pig iron

Wrought iron

Wrought iron is commercially pure iron. In contrast to steel, it has a very low carbon content. It is a fibrous material due to the slag Inclusion ....
. Trip hammers were usually raised by a cam

Cam

A cam is a projecting part of a rotating wheel or shaft that strikes a lever at one or more points on its circular path. The cam can be a simple tooth, as is used to deliver pulses of power to a steam hammer, for example, or an Eccentric disc or other shape that produces a smooth reciprocating motion in the follower which is a lever...
and then released to fall under the force of gravity

Gravitation

Gravitation is a natural phenomenon that gives weight to objects. In everyday life, attraction due to gravity is the result of the presence of relatively large bodies, such as the Earth and the Moon....
. Historically, trip hammers were often powered by a water wheel

Water wheel

A water wheel is a machine for converting the energy of flowing or falling water into more useful forms of power, a process otherwise known as hydropower....
, known to be used in China

China

China is a Culture of China, an ancient civilization, and, depending on perspective, a national or multinational entity extending over a large area in East Asia....
as long ago as 20 AD, in Rome

Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome was a civilization that grew out of a small agricultural community founded on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 10th century BC....
by the first century AD and in medieval Europe

Europe

Europe is, conventionally, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural , the Caspian Sea, and by the Caucasus Mountains to the southeast....
by the 12th century.

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Encyclopedia

A trip hammer (alt. helve hammer) is a massive powered hammer

Hammer

A hammer is a tool meant to deliver an impact to an object. The most common uses are for driving Nail s, fitting parts, and breaking up objects....
used in agriculture

Agriculture

Mining

Ore

Finery forge

Pig iron

Wrought iron

Wrought iron is commercially pure iron. In contrast to steel, it has a very low carbon content. It is a fibrous material due to the slag Inclusion ....
. Trip hammers were usually raised by a cam

Cam

Gravitation

Water wheel

A water wheel is a machine for converting the energy of flowing or falling water into more useful forms of power, a process otherwise known as hydropower....
, known to be used in China

China

China is a Culture of China, an ancient civilization, and, depending on perspective, a national or multinational entity extending over a large area in East Asia....
as long ago as 20 AD, in Rome

Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome was a civilization that grew out of a small agricultural community founded on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 10th century BC....
by the first century AD and in medieval Europe

Europe

Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution was a period in the late 18th and early 19th centuries when major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, production, and transportation had a profound effect on the socioeconomics and cultural conditions in United Kingdom....
the trip hammer fell out of favor and was replaced with the power hammer

Power hammer

A power hammer is a type of mechanical forging hammer used by blacksmiths and manufacturers from the late 1800's through the modern day. The power hammer typically consists of a frame, anvil, and a reciprocating ram holding a hammer head....
. Often multiple hammers were powered via a set of line shaft

Line shaft

The line shaft was the power transmission system at the heart of the Industrial Revolution. Prior to the widespread use of electric motors, line shafting was used to distribute power throughout a factory or mill....
s, pulleys and belts from a centrally located power supply.

Early history

China

In ancient China, the trip hammer evolved out of the use of the pestle and mortar, which in turn gave rise to the treadle-operated tilt-hammer (Pinyin

Pinyin

Pinyin, more formally Hanyu pinyin, is the most commonly used Romanization system for Standard Mandarin. Hanyu is the Chinese Language, and pinyin means "phonetics", or more literally, "spelling sound" or "spelled sound"....
: dui; Wade-Giles

Wade-Giles

Wade-Giles , sometimes abbreviated Wade, is a Romanization system for the Mandarin Chinese language used in Beijing. It developed from a system produced by Thomas Francis Wade in the mid-19th century, and reached settled form with Herbert Giles' Chinese language-English language dictionary of 1892....
: tui). The latter was a simple device employing a lever and fulcrum (operated by pressure applied by the weight of one's foot to one end), which featured a series of catches or lugs on the main revolving shaft as well. This device enabled the labor of pounding, often in the decorticating and polishing of grain, and avoided manual use of pounding with hand and arm. Although historians assert that its origins may span as far back as the Zhou Dynasty

Zhou Dynasty

The Zhou Dynasty was preceded by the Shang Dynasty and followed by the Qin Dynasty in China. The Zhou dynasty lasted longer than any other dynasty in China history?though the actual political and military control of China by the dynasty only lasted during the Western Zhou....
(1050 BC–221 BC), the earliest texts to describe the device are the Ji Jiu Pian ??? dictionary of 40 BC, Yang Xiong's text known as the Fangyan
Fangyan

The Fangy?n , edited by Yang Xiong , was the first Chinese dictionary of dialectal terms. The full title is Y?uxuan shizhe ju?d?i yu sh? bi?gu? fangy?n "Local speeches of other countries in times immemorial explained by the Light-Carriage Messenger," which alludes to a Zhou Dynasty tradition of imperial emissaries who made annual sur...
of 15 BC, as well as the Xin Lun written by Huan Tan

Huan Tan

Huan Tan ?? was a Chinese philosopher of the Han Dynasty and short-lived interregnum of the Xin Dynasty . Huan's mode of philosophical thought belonged to an Old Text realist tradition supported by other contemporaries such as the Philosophical naturalism and Mechanism philosopher Wang Chong , the latter who Rafe de Crespigny states was pr...
about 20 AD (during the usurpation of Wang Mang

Wang Mang

Wang Mang , courtesy name Jujun , was a Han Dynasty official who seized the throne from the Liu family and founded the Xin Dynasty Dynasty , ruling AD 9?23....
). The latter book states that the legendary mythological king known as Fu Xi was the one responsible for the pestle and mortar (which evolved into the tilt-hammer and then trip hammer device). Although the author speaks of the mythological Fu Xi, a passage of his writing gives hint that the waterwheel and trip-hammer were in widespread use by the 1st century AD in China (for Chinese metallurgy

Metallurgy

Metallurgy is a domain of materials science that studies the physical and chemical behavior of metallic Chemical element, their intermetallics, and their mixtures, which are called alloys....
with water-power, see Du Shi

Du Shi

Du Shi was a Chinese governmental Prefect of Nanyang, Henan in 31 AD and a mechanical engineer of the Eastern Han Dynasty in ancient China. Du Shi is credited with being the first to apply hydraulic power to operate bellows in metallurgy....
) (Wade-Giles spelling):

Fu Hsi invented the pestle and mortar, which is so useful, and later on it was cleverly improved in such a way that the whole weight of the body could be used for treading on the tilt-hammer (tui), thus increasing the efficiency ten times. Afterwards the power of animals—donkeys, mules, oxen, and horses—was applied by means of machinery, and water-power too used for pounding, so that the benefit was increased a hundredfold.

With his description, it is seen that the out-of-date Chinese term for pestle and mortar (dui, tui) would soon be replaced with the Chinese term for the water-powered trip-hammer (Pinyin: shui dui; Wade-Giles: shui tui). The Han Dynasty scholar and poet Ma Rong

Ma Rong

Ma Rong , courtesy name Jichang , was a commentaror of the Han Dynasty. He was born in modern Xianyang in former Fufeng county. He was known for his commentaries on the books on the Five Classics, and the first scholar known to have done this....
(79–166 AD) mentioned in one of his poems of hammers 'pounding in the water-echoing caves'. As described in the Hou Han Shu, in 129 AD the official Yu Xu gave a report to Emperor Shun of Han

Emperor Shun of Han

Emperor Shun of Han, traditional Chinese character ???;, simplified Chinese character ???, Pinyin. h?n sh?n d?, Wade-Giles. Han Shun-ti, was an emperor of China of the Chinese Han Dynasty and the seventh emperor of the Eastern Han period....
that trip hammers were being exported from Han China to the Western Qiang people by way of canals through the Qilian Mountains. In his Rou Xing Lun, the government official Kong Rong

Kong Rong

Kong Rong was a bureaucrat, poet, and minor warlord during the late Eastern Han Dynasty and Three Kingdoms era of China. He was also the 20th generation descendant of Confucius....
(153–208 AD) remarked that the invention of the trip hammer was an excellent example of a product created by intelligent men during his own age (comparing the relative achievements of the sages of old). During the 3rd century AD, the high government official and engineer Du Yu

Du Yu

Du Yu was an officer serving under the Jin Dynasty in the later stages of the Three Kingdoms Period in China. It is said that Du Yu read the Spring and Autumn Annals so often that he even was said to have been addicted to the book....
established the use of combined trip hammer batteries (lian zhi dui), which employed several shafts that were arranged to work off one large waterwheel. In Chinese texts of the 4th century, there are written accounts of men possessing and operating hundreds of trip hammer machines, such as the venerable mathematician Wang Rong (died 306 AD), Deng Yu (died 326 AD), and Shi Chong (died 300 AD), responsible for the operation of hundreds of trip hammers in over thirty governmental districts throughout China. There are numerous references to trip hammers during the Tang Dynasty

Tang Dynasty

The Tang Dynasty was an Dynasties in Chinese history preceded by the Sui Dynasty and followed by the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period. It was founded by the Li family, who seized power during the decline and collapse of the Sui Empire....
(618–907 AD) and Song Dynasty

Song Dynasty

The Song Dynasty was a ruling Chinese dynasty in China between 960–1279 AD; it succeeded the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period, and was followed by the Yuan Dynasty....
(960–1279), and there are Ming Dynasty

Ming Dynasty

The Ming Dynasty , or Empire of the Great Ming , was the ruling Dynasties in Chinese history of China from 1368 to 1644, following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty....
(1368–1644) references that report the use of trip hammers in papermills of Fujian

Fujian

is one of the Province of China on the southeast coast of People's Republic of China. Fujian borders Zhejiang to the north, Jiangxi to the west, and Guangdong to the south....
Province.

Although Chinese trip hammers in China were sometimes powered by the more efficient vertical-set waterwheel, the Chinese often employed the horizontal-set waterwheel in operating trip hammers, along with recumbent hammers. The recumbent hammer was found in Chinese illustrations by 1313 AD, with the publishing of Wang Zhen

Wang Zhen (official)

Wang Zhen was an official of the Yuan Dynasty of China. He is credited with the invention of the first wooden movable type printing in the world, while his predecessor of the Song Dynasty , Bi Sheng , invented the world's first earthenware movable type printing....
's Nong Shu book on ancient and contemporary (medieval) metallurgy in China. There were also illustrations of trip hammers in an encyclopedia

Encyclopedia

An encyclopedia is a comprehensive written compendium that holds information from either all branches of knowledge or a particular branch of knowledge....
of 1637, written by Song Yingxing

Song Yingxing

Song Yingxing was a China scientist and encyclopedist who lived during the late Ming Dynasty . He was the author of an encyclopedia that covered a wide variety of technical subjects, including the use of gunpowder weapons....
(1587–1666).

Greco-Roman world

The main components for water-powered trip hammers - water wheel

Water wheel

A water wheel is a machine for converting the energy of flowing or falling water into more useful forms of power, a process otherwise known as hydropower....
s, cam

Cam

A cam is a projecting part of a rotating wheel or shaft that strikes a lever at one or more points on its circular path. The cam can be a simple tooth, as is used to deliver pulses of power to a steam hammer, for example, or an Eccentric disc or other shape that produces a smooth reciprocating motion in the follower which is a lever...
s, and hammers - were already known in Hellenistic times

Hellenistic civilization

File:Diadochen1.pngHellenistic civilization represents the zenith of Ancient Greece influence in the Classical Antiquity from 323 BC to about 146 BC ....
. Ancient

Antiquity

Antiquity or antiquities may refer to:*"ancient history" generally, and may be used of any historical period before the Middle Ages; such as in Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, or other Ancient Near East....
cams are in evidence in early water-powered automata

Automaton

An automaton is a self-operating machine. The word is sometimes used to describe a robot, more specifically an autonomous robot....
from the third century BC. A passage in the Natural History
Natural history

Natural history is the scientific research of plants or animals, leaning more towards the observational than experimental methods of study, and encompasses more research that is published in magazines than in academic journals....
of the Roman

Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome was a civilization that grew out of a small agricultural community founded on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 10th century BC....
scholar Pliny

Pliny the Elder

Gaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was an ancient author, naturalist or natural philosopher and naval and military commander of some importance who wrote Natural History ....
(NH 18.97) indicates that water-driven pestles had become fairly widespread in Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic , is a country located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia....
by the first century AD: "The greater part of Italy uses an unshod pestle and also wheels which water turns as it flows past, and a trip-hammer [mola]". These trip-hammers were used for the pounding and hulling of grain

GRAIN

GRAIN is an international non-governmental organization based in Barcelona, Spain, which works toward sustainable agriculture. It was formed upon the realization that the genetic diversity of the world's food crops are being drastically eliminated....
. Grain-pounders with pestles, as well as ordinary watermill

Watermill

A watermill is a structure that uses a water wheel or water turbine to drive a mechanical process such as flour, lumber or textile production, or metal shaping ....
s, are also attested as late as the middle of the fifth century in a monastery

Monastery

Monastery , a term derived from the Greek language word ???ast?????, neut. of ???ast????? - monasterios denotes the building, or complex of buildings, that houses a room reserved for prayer as well as the domestic quarters and workplace of Monk, whether monks or nuns, and whether living in Cenobium or alone ....
founded by Romanus of Condat

Romanus of Condat

Saint Romanus of Condat is a saint of the fifth century. At the age of thirty five he decided to live as a hermit in the area of Condat. His younger brother Lupicinus of Lyon followed him there....
in the remote Jura

Jura

Places named Jura include:*Jura, Scotland, Scottish island, in the Inner Hebrides*Jura mountains, on the French-Swiss-German border, the namesake of the Jurassic period of geology and:...
region, indicating that the knowledge of trip hammers continued into the early Middle Ages

Middle Ages

File:Karl 1 mit papst gelasius gregor1 sacramentar v karl d kahlen.jpgThe Middle Ages of European history are a period in history which lasted for roughly a millennium, commonly dated from the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century to the beginning of the Early Modern Period in the 16th century, marked by the division of Western Christi...
. Apart from agricultural processing, archaeological evidence also strongly suggests the existence of trip hammers in Roman metal working. In Ickham

Ickham

Ickham is a village, within the civil parish of Ickham and Well, five miles east of Canterbury in Kent, South East England.The village is centred around a single road with many old and well preserved houses, with the 13th-century Parish Church of John the Evangelist in the midst....
in Kent

Kent

Kent is a Counties of England in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the River Thames estuary....
, a large metal hammer-head with mechanical deformations was excavated in an area where several Roman water-mills and metal waste dumps have also been traced.

The widest application of trip hammers, however, seems to have occurred in Roman mining, where ore

Ore

Anvil

An anvil is a manufacturing tool, made of a hard and massive block of stone or metal used as a support for chiseling and hammering other objects, such as in forging iron and steel items....
s indicate the use of cam-operated ore stamps, much like the devices of later medieval

Middle Ages

File:Karl 1 mit papst gelasius gregor1 sacramentar v karl d kahlen.jpgThe Middle Ages of European history are a period in history which lasted for roughly a millennium, commonly dated from the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century to the beginning of the Early Modern Period in the 16th century, marked by the division of Western Christi...
mining. Such mechanically deformed anvils have been found at numerous Roman silver and gold mining sites in Western Europe

Western Europe

Western Europe refers to the countries in the western most half of Europe. This concept has had different meanings, political and cultural as well as geographical issues have influenced the area....
, including at Dolaucothi (Wales

Wales

native_name = Cymru|conventional_long_name = Wales|common_name = Wales|image_flag = Flag of Wales 2.svg|national_motto = ...
), and on the Iberian peninsula

Iberian Peninsula

The Iberian Peninsula, or Iberia, is located in the extreme southwest of Europe and includes modern-day Spain, Portugal, Andorra and Gibraltar and a very small area of France....
, where the datable examples are from the 1st and 2nd century AD. At Dolaucothi, these trip-hammers were hydraulic-driven and possibly also at other Roman mining sites, where the large scale use of the hushing and ground sluicing technique

Hushing

Hushing is an ancient mining method using a flood or torrent of water to reveal mineral veins. The method was applied in several ways, both in prospecting for ores, and for their exploitation....
meant that large amounts of water were directly available for powering the machines.

Medieval Near East

Both hydropower

Hydropower

Hydropower, hydraulic power or water power is power that is derived from the force or energy of moving water, which may be harnessed for useful purposes....
ed and wind power

Wind power

Wind power is the conversion of wind energy into a useful form, such as electricity, using wind turbines. At the end of 2008, worldwide nameplate capacity of wind-powered generators was 120.8 gigawatts....
ed trip hammers were used in the medieval Near East

Near East

Near East today is an ambiguous term that covers different countries for archeologists and historians, on one hand, and for political scientists, economists, and journalists, on the other....
. In order to adapt water wheel

Water wheel

A water wheel is a machine for converting the energy of flowing or falling water into more useful forms of power, a process otherwise known as hydropower....
s and windmill

Windmill

A windmill is a machine that is powered by the energy of the wind. It is designed to convert the energy of the wind into more useful forms using rotating blades or sails....
s for gristmill

Gristmill

A gristmill or grist mill is a building where grain is ground into flour, or the grinding mechanism itself. In many countries these are referred to as corn mills or flour mills....
ing purposes, cam

Cam

A cam is a projecting part of a rotating wheel or shaft that strikes a lever at one or more points on its circular path. The cam can be a simple tooth, as is used to deliver pulses of power to a steam hammer, for example, or an Eccentric disc or other shape that produces a smooth reciprocating motion in the follower which is a lever...
s were used for raising and releasing trip hammers to fall on a material. Watermill

Watermill

A watermill is a structure that uses a water wheel or water turbine to drive a mechanical process such as flour, lumber or textile production, or metal shaping ....
s and windmills with trip hammers were used for grinding corn

Corn

Corn may refer to:...
and other seeds

Mill (grinding)

A grinding mill is a unit operation designed to break a solid material into smaller pieces. There are many different types of grinding mills and many types of materials processed in them....
to produce meal

Meal

A meal is an instance of eating, specifically one that takes place at a specific time and includes specific, prepared food.Meals occur primarily at homes, restaurants, and cafeterias, but may occur anywhere....
s, and many other industrial

Industry

An industry is the manufacturing of a Good or Service within a category. Although industry is a broad term for any kind of economic production, in economics and urban planning industry is a synonym for the secondary sector, which is a type of economic activity involved in the manufacturing of raw materials into goods and products....
uses such as fulling

Fulling

Fulling or tucking or walking is a step in woollen Textile manufacturing which involves the cleansing of cloth to eliminate oils, dirt, and other impurities, and making it thicker....
cloth, husking rice

Huller

A huller is an agricultural machinery used to automate the process of removing the chaff and the outer husks of rice grain. Throughout history, there have been numerous techniques to hull rice, but in modern times a huller, or rice huller is the most widely used method, particularly in Asia....
, papermaking

Papermaking

Papermaking is the process of making paper, a substance which is used ubiquitously today for writing and packaging.In papermaking a dilute suspension of fibers in water is drained through a screen, so that a mat of randomly interwoven fibers is laid down....
in paper mill

Paper mill

A paper mill is a factory devoted to making paper from Wood_pulp and other ingredients using a Fourdrinier Machine or similar apparatus. It is a common misconception that paper mills are sources of odors....
s, pulping sugarcane

Sugar refinery

A sugar refinery or sugar mill is a factory which refines sugar from various organic sources like sugar cane or beets into a form that can be used for various cooking needs....
, and crushing metallic ores

Stamp mill

A stamp mill is a type of mill that crushes material by pounding rather than grinding, either for further processing or for extraction of metallic ores....
before extraction.

Medieval Europe

Water-powered and mechanised trip hammers reappeared in medieval Europe

Middle Ages

File:Karl 1 mit papst gelasius gregor1 sacramentar v karl d kahlen.jpgThe Middle Ages of European history are a period in history which lasted for roughly a millennium, commonly dated from the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century to the beginning of the Early Modern Period in the 16th century, marked by the division of Western Christi...
by the 12th century. Their use was described in medieval written sources of Styria (in modern-day Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It borders both Germany and the Czech Republic to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the west....
), written in 1135 and another in 1175 AD. Both texts mentioned the use of vertical stamp mill

Stamp mill

A stamp mill is a type of mill that crushes material by pounding rather than grinding, either for further processing or for extraction of metallic ores....
s for ore-crushing. Medieval French

France

France , officially the French Republic , is a country whose Metropolitan France is located in Western Europe and that also comprises various Overseas departments and territories of France....
sources of the years 1116 and 1249 both record the use of mechanised trip hammers used in the forging of wrought iron

Wrought iron

Wrought iron is commercially pure iron. In contrast to steel, it has a very low carbon content. It is a fibrous material due to the slag Inclusion ....
. Medieval European trip hammers by the 15th century were most often in the shape of the vertical pestle stamp-mill, although they employed more frequent use of the vertical waterwheel than earlier Chinese versions (which often used the horizontal waterwheel). The well-known Renaissance

Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe....
artist and inventor Leonardo de Vinci often sketched trip hammers for use in forges and even file-cutting machinery, those of the vertical pestle stamp-mill type. The oldest depicted European illustration of a martinet

Martinet

The martinet is a punitive device traditionally used in France and other parts of Europe. The word also has other usages . It is also a term for a type of hammer in French language, a dimunitive of marteau , "hammer"....
forge-hammer is perhaps the Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus of Olaus Magnus

Olaus Magnus

Olaus Magnus was a Sweden ecclesiastic and writer, who did pioneering work for the interest of Nordic countries people. He was reported as born in October 1490 in ?sterg?tland, and died on August 1, 1557....
, dated to 1565 AD. In this woodcut image, there is the scene of three martinets and a waterwheel working wood and leather bellows of the Osmund

Osmund

Saint Osmund/Saint Osmond, Count of S?es was an early Normans nobleman and member of the English clergy; he eventually served as Lord Chancellor and Bishop of Salisbury....
bloomery

Bloomery

A bloomery is a type of furnace once widely used for smelting iron from its iron oxides. The bloomery was the earliest form of smelter capable of smelting iron....
furnace. The recumbrent hammer was first depicted in European artwork in an illustration by Sandrart and Zonca (dated 1621 AD).

Types

Three types of trip hammers were used, all requiring artificial power to lift them. The tail helve hammer or 'tilt hammer' has a pivot at the centre of the helve on which it is mounted, and is lifted by pushing the opposite end to the head downwards. In practice the head on such hammers seems to have been limited to one hundredweight (about 50 kg), but a very rapid stroke rate was possible. This made it suitable for drawing iron down to small sizes suitable for the cutlery trades. There were therefore many such forges known as 'tilts' around Sheffield

Sheffield

Sheffield is a city status in the United Kingdom and metropolitan borough in South Yorkshire, England. It is so named because of its origins in a field on the River Sheaf that runs through the city....
. They were also used in brass

Brass

Brass is any alloy of copper and zinc; the proportions of zinc and copper can be varied to create a range of brasses with varying properties. In comparison, bronze is principally an alloy of copper and tin....
battery works for making brass (or copper) pots and pans. In battery works (at least) it was possible for one power source to operate several hammers. The belly helve hammer was the kind normally found in a finery forge

Finery forge

Pig iron

Pig iron is the intermediate product of smelting iron ore with coke , usually with limestone as a flux. Pig iron has a very high carbon content, typically 3.5?4.5%, which makes it very brittle and not useful directly as a material except for limited applications....
into forgeable bar iron. This was lifted by cams striking the helve between the pivot and the head. The head usually weighted quarter of a ton. This was probably the case because the strain on a wooden helve would have been too great if the head were heavier. The nose helve hammer seems to have been unusual until the late 18th or early 19th century. This was lifted beyond the head.

The choice of which kind should be used in a particular context may depend on the strain that its operation imposed on the helve. This was normally of wood until the 19th century. Surviving nosehelves and those in pictures appear to be of cast iron. This was replaced by James Nasmyth's steam-powered drop hammer (invented in 1839 and patent

Patent

A patent is a set of exclusive rights granted by a state to an inventor or his assignee for a term of patent in exchange for a disclosure of an invention....
ed in 1842. However the forge had become less important following the improvements to the rolling mill

Rolling mill

A rolling mill is a machine or factory for shaping metal by passing it between a pair of work rolls.Rolling mills are often incorporated into integrated steelworks, but also exist as separate plants and can be used for other metals, and other materials....
that went along with the adoption of puddling

Puddling (metallurgy)

Puddling was an Industrial Revolution means of making puddle iron and steel. In the original puddling technique, molten iron in a reverberatory furnace was stirred with rods, which were consumed in the process....
from the end of the 18th century.

Trip hammer

Early history

China

Greco-Roman world

Medieval Near East

Medieval Europe

Types

Further reading

External links