A trip hammer, also known as a helve hammer, is a massive powered hammer used in:
- agriculture to facilitate the labor of pounding, decorticating and polishing of grain;
- mining, where ore from deep veins was crushed into small pieces (though a stamp mill was more usual for this); and
- finery forges, for drawing out blooms made from wrought iron into more workable bar iron
- in fabricating various articles of wrought iron, latten (an early form of brass), steel and other metals.
Trip hammers were usually raised by a cam and then released to fall under the force of gravity. Historically, trip hammers were often powered by a water wheel, and are known to have been used in China as long ago as 20 AD, in Rome by the 1st century AD and in medieval Europe by the 12th century. During the Industrial Revolution the trip hammer fell out of favor and was replaced with the power hammer. Often multiple hammers were powered via a set of line shafts, pulleys and belts from a centrally located power supply.
Read more about Trip Hammer: Types
Famous quotes containing the words trip and/or hammer:
“When the red-cheeked, dancing girls, April and May, trip home to the wintry, misanthropic woods; even the barest, ruggedest, most thunder-cloven old oak will at least send forth some few green sprouts, to welcome such glad-hearted visitants.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“You may chisel a boy into shape, as you would a rock, or hammer him into it, if he be of a better kind, as you would a piece of bronze. But you cannot hammer a girl into anything. She grows as a flower does.”
—John Ruskin (1819–1900)