In this case, a makeshift power hammer of sorts.
I really like hammering chisels out of round rod. I can’t, however, do more than two a day a couple of days in a row, and just judging based on feel, I think trying to push past that in the long term would lead to disability. I’ve seen blacksmiths talk about spending full work days at the anvil, but I doubt they are rough forging steel by hand, and rather are doing decorative work. Moving a 5/8-7/8 bar of high carbon steel takes a heavy hammer and a lot of heat. it’s a safe way to forge because you’re not tempted to hammer into a situation where cracks will occur – it’s too much physical effort to move steel as it’s cooling and your arm will be burning suggesting that holding the steel in the induction forge is a nice break.
So, at this point, I’m using hammer that’s a little over 4 pounds, and the hickory handle gave up on it a while ago, so the handle is gombeira, perhaps the stiffest wood in the world, and very much a bundle of straws rather than cracking hard brittle kind of wood. it took a wedge made of Macassar ebony to even get the handle wedged in. Anything like hickory hardness was literally shaved by the saw cut in the handle top. Unreal stuff, and I’ll find something else next time.
Anyway, you would think you could be an average person and swing a 4 pound cross pein hammer, but the position is good and you will get a stiff shoulder, but it’s nothing like having a hammer above your head.
So, what’s the solution? I can forge two chisels a day and call it good, but what if I have the financial means to get out of the rat race early? A power hammer of traditional type isn’t out of the question, but it’s not practical in a garage with the pad connected to the house. They are also unbelievably loud and I’d be outed to the township in a hurry as this is the burbs and nobody is that far away. 
what you see in the foreground is not immediately apparent. It’s my older anvil, the one really not large enough for a 4 or 5 pound hammer, and it’s on a contraption that lifts the hammer. The clamp and wood on the anvil are just waiting.
I’ve seen this type of hammer called davinci, but don’t know for sure that’s what it’s called. they have a reputation for lifting a hammer and dropping it a short distance and being good for planishing but not rough forging. I have seen these sprung before to increase the speed of the hammer dropping, which means the wheel can increase and strike more often.
I post this thing as it is so far as encouragement. it is just cobbled together yellow pine. There’s no reason to make it out of anything better without confirming it’s useful. Instead of springs for now, the tension is put on the hammer with a hefty exercise band. the drive shaft is just maple and the top pulley is apparently for a swamp cooler. 3 strikes a second. If I can get it to work well, I will probably actually build another one in the future, both to reduce the noise level and to avoid some of the quirks of the mock up.
It’s spontaneous junk, like Terry Cross (sawyer) on YT said about his enormous mill made partially out of junk tractor trailer parts.
The sledge will be hard on the anvil, but I won’t care about that if it moves metal at least as fast as I can hammer – it’ll be a rough work machine so that I can finish hammering blanks to near final dimension on the anvil. Well, it turns out if I can solve its issues, it moves metal far faster than I can hand hammer without resorting to things that are unsavory for chisels, like drawing steel out on the the corner of an anvil – we want the steel grain to be very consistent. If it’s not generally the same shape as the chisel and not smooth on the surface and even, the grain of the forged piece is like runout in wood.
The has two problems to solve yet – a 5 amp split phase motor is not enough power for it. The exercise band on it is the right match for the speed – and it’s surprisingly difficult to get the speed to match so that the hammer falls back to the low diameter part of the wheel fast enough. No tension, and the machine will throw the hammer out of time and it will land hitting all kinds of things and go almost vertical. with the bands, it only lifts about 10 inches. So, I’ve ordered a 10 amp TEFC motor that could potentially give it a dangerous level of power (split phase seems to equate to poor power and no torque – these blower motors, I guess, are designed for a constant load and nothing high torque).
The other issue is as yet, the hammer comes down in a lateral range of about 3 inches. You can’t hit what you can’t see, but you can’t hit what you can see if the hammer comes down somewhere other than where it landed last time. How fast it can move metal compared to hand hammer, though, makes it worth figuring everything out.
And later if I actually prove that I’ll use it to make things, I can get more substantial raw timber and make a more stout version.
Oh, and there’s always a rumor that you can’t make anything by hand entirely and get it done. The bulk of the sawing and sizing up, including the snail shell style wheel, of course done by hand, and between that and fastening and gluing things, took about 3-4 hours. I never generally use screws, but this thing has a lot of them in it!!
Of Making by Hand with Wood and Steel 