PORTABLE STEAM-HAMMERS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1264, 21 May 1896, Page 39

PORTABLE STEAM-HAMMERS.

A most useful tool for shipyards is the portable steam-hammer for welding up stern and rudder frames. It has always been a most difficult and rather imperfect operation to unite these parts properly by hand-hammers, and they aro usually too broad to be accessible to the ordinary fixed steam-hammer. Two large parts of a stern frame havo usually to be heated in situ, while placed together in tho position which they are to occupy when welded. They are heated at the parts of tho junction in open fires. When brought up to a welding heat tho fires have to bo withdrawn quickly, and the piece called a "glut” is brought at a welding beat from another fire, and is hammered into the space where the jointing takes place. This has usually been done by a heavy sledge hammer having three or more shanks, and handled by as many men. But by this mode the welding is very unreliable. Tho hammer is much too light to make a solid weld, and tho work is done at a great disadvantage and with harassing labour. Tho portable steam-hammer has altered all this. It resembles the ordinary smithy steam-hammer, except that,instead of tho cylinder being attached to a fixed column, it is carried by a jib, like a crane, can bo raised or lowered, swung round, or moved to and fro until it is exactly over tho work, and by a few heavy blows tho welding is done most effectually. The workman who manipulates tho hammer and

tho racking gear is stationed at the base of the crane, quite out of the way.—J. Arthur Gray, in Cassier’s Magazine for March.