Trip hammer
A trip hammer, also known as a tilt hammer or helve hammer, is a massive powered hammer. Traditional uses of trip hammers include pounding, decorticating and polishing of grain in agriculture. In mining, trip hammers were used for crushing metal ores into small pieces, although a stamp mill was more usual for this. In finery forges they were used for drawing out blooms made from wrought iron into more workable bar iron. They were also used for fabricating various articles of wrought iron, latten (an early form of brass), steel and other metals.
One or more trip hammers were set up in a
Trip hammers are known to have been used in
Early history
China
In ancient China, the trip hammer evolved out of the use of the
Although Chinese historians assert that its origins may span as far back as the
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.[4]
However, this passage as well as other early references from the Han era may rather refer to a water lever, not a trip hammer.[5][6] Later research, pointing to two contemporary Han era funeral wares depicting hydraulic hammers, proved that vertical waterwheels were used to power batteries of trip hammers during the Han dynasty.[7]
With his description, it is seen that the out-of-date Chinese term for pestle and mortar (dui, tui) would soon be replaced with the Chinese term for the water-powered trip-hammer (Chinese: 水碓; pinyin: shuǐ duì; Wade–Giles: shui tui.
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 Chinese use of the cam remained confined to the horizontal type and was limited to a "small variety of machines" that included only rice hulling and much later mica-pounders, paper mills and saw mills, while fulling stocks, ore stamps or forge hammers were unknown.[6]
Europe
Greco-Roman world
The main components for water-powered trip hammers –
The Roman scholar Pliny (Natural History XVIII, 23.97) indicates that water-driven pestles had become fairly widespread in Italy 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]".
While some scholars have viewed this passage to mean a watermill,
At the Italian site of
The widest application of trip hammers seems to have occurred in Roman mining, where
Medieval Europe
Water-powered and mechanised trip hammers reappeared in medieval Europe by the 12th century. Their use was described in medieval written sources of Styria (in modern-day Austria), written in 1135 and another in 1175 AD.[31] Medieval French sources of the years 1116 and 1249 both record the use of mechanised trip hammers used in the forging of wrought iron.[31] 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).[10] The well-known Renaissance artist and inventor Leonardo da Vinci often sketched trip hammers for use in forges and even file-cutting machinery, those of the vertical pestle stamp-mill type.[12] The oldest depicted European illustration of a forge-hammer is perhaps the A Description of the Northern Peoples of Olaus Magnus, dated to 1565 AD.[12] In this woodcut image, there is the scene of three martinets and a waterwheel working wood and leather bellows of the Osmund Bloomery furnace.[12] The recumbent hammer was first depicted in European artwork in an illustration by Sandrart and Zonca (dated 1621 AD).[12]
Types
A trip hammer has the head mounted at the end of a recumbent helve, hence the alternative name of helve hammer. The choice of which type was used in a particular context may have depended on the strain that its operation imposed on the helve. This was normally of wood, mounted in a cast-iron ring (called the hurst) where it pivoted. However, in the 19th century the heaviest helves were sometimes a single casting, incorporating the hurst.
The tilt hammer or tail helve 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. They were also used in brass 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. In Germany, tilt hammers of up to 300 kg were used in hammer mills to forge iron. Surviving, working hammers, powered by water wheels, may be seen, for example, at the Frohnauer Hammer in the Ore Mountains.
The belly helve hammer was the kind normally found in a finery forge, used for making pig iron into forgeable bar iron. This was lifted by cams striking the helve between the pivot and the head. The head usually weighed 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. Surviving nose helves[32] and those in pictures[33] appear to be of cast iron.
Demise
The steam-powered
See also
- Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet
- Dorfchemnitz Iron Hammer Mill
- Finch Foundry
- Freibergsdorf Hammer Mill
- Frohnauer Hammer Mill
References
- ^ Needham, Volume 4, Part 2, 183.
- ^ a b Needham, Volume 4, Part 2, 390.
- ^ Needham, Volume 4, Part 2, 184.
- ^ a b c d Needham, Volume 4, Part 2, 392.
- ^ Terry Reynolds: Stronger Than a Hundred Men. A History of the Vertical Water Wheel, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983, pp. 26-30
- ^ a b Lewis 1997, p. 118
- ^ Xiaolei 2019, p. 115
- ^ Needham, Volume 4, Part 2, 393.
- ^ Needham, Volume 4, Part 2, 392-393.
- ^ a b Needham, Volume 4, Part 2, 394.
- ^ Needham, Volume 4, Part 2, 391–392.
- ^ a b c d e Needham, Volume 4, Part 2, 395.
- ^ Song, 91–93.
- ^ a b c d e Barry C. Burnham: "Roman Mining at Dolaucothi: The Implications of the 1991-3 Excavations near the Carreg Pumsaint", Britannia, Vol. 28 (1997), pp. 325-336 (333-335)
- ^ Wilson 2002, p. 22
- ^ a b c Wilson 2002, p. 16
- ^ Lewis 1997, pp. 84–88
- ^ Lewis 1997, pp. 86–88
- ^ Terry Reynolds: Stronger Than a Hundred Men. A History of the Vertical Water Wheel, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983, p. 355, fn. 51
- ^ Lewis 1997, pp. 101–105
- ^ Lewis 1997, pp. 94f.
- ^ Wilson 2002, p. 16, fn. 93
- ^ Flohr 2013, p. 102
- ^ Brun & Leguilloux 2014, pp. 160–170, particularly 162
- ^ Wilson 2020, p. 171
- ^ a b c d Wilson 2002, pp. 21f.
- ^ J. Wahl: "Tres Minas: Vorbericht über die archäologischen Ausgrabungen im Bereich des römischen Goldbergwerks 1986/87", in H. Steuer and U. Zimmerman (eds): "Montanarchäologie in Europa", 1993, p.123-152 (141; Fig.19)
- ^ Sánchez-Palencia Ramos, Francisco-Javier (1984/1985): "Los «Morteros» de Fresnedo ( Allande) y Cecos (Ibias) y los lavaderos de oro romanos en el noroeste de la Península Ibérica, "Zephyrus", Vol. 37/38, pp. 349–359 (356f.)
- ^ Wilson 2002, p. 21, fn. 110
- ^ Lewis 1997, pp. 106–1010
- ^ a b Needham, Volume 4, Part 2, 379.
- ^ For example at Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet[dubious ]
- Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery
Bibliography
- Brun, Jean-Pierre; Leguilloux, Martine Leguilloux (2014). "Chapitre 8. Une tannerie et son moulin hydraulique ?". Les installations artisanales romaines de Saepinum. Tannerie et moulin hydraulique. Archéologie de l’artisanat antique 7. Naples: Centre Jean Bérard. pp. 147–170. )
- Sim, David and Ridge, Isable: "Iron for the Eagles" (2002)
- Burnham, Barry C.: "Dolaucothi-Pumsaint: Survey and Excavations at a Roman Gold-mining Complex" (2004)
- Lewis, M. J. T. (1997), Millstone and Hammer. The Origins of Water Power, The University of Hull Press, ISBN 0-85958-657-X
- Needham, Joseph; Wang, Ling. (1986) [1965]. Science and Civilization in China: Volume 4, Physics and Physical Technology, Part 2, Mechanical Engineering. Taipei: Caves Books Ltd (reprint edition of Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press). ISBN 0-521-05803-1.
- The Journal of Roman Studies, vol. 92, pp. 1–32
- ISBN 978-0-19-884184-5
- Song, Yingxing, translated with preface by E-Tu Zen Sun and Shiou-Chuan Sun: T'ien-Kung K'ai-Wu: Chinese Technology in the Seventeenth Century. (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press 1966).
- Xiaolei, Shi (2019), "The Hydraulic Tilt Hammer in Ancient China", in Baichun, Zhang; Marco, Ceccarelli (eds.), Explorations in the History and Heritage of Machines and Mechanisms, Springer Nature Switzerland AG, pp. 113–122, ISBN 978-3-030-03537-2
- Flohr, Miko (2013), The World of the Fullo: Work, Economy and Society in Roman Italy, Oxford University Press, p. 102, ISBN 978-0199659357
External links
- "Diagram of a forge trip hammer". ExplorePAHistory.com. WITF; Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. Retrieved 22 January 2013.