I honestly thought about it.
 
HOWEVER, I am designing my own power hammer. 

 
As the motor turns, it turns a paddle wheel which drops a 2x2x24" chunk of steel down on the hot metal.  

that's awesome. Excellent work sir.

I saw that a while back, wasn't impressed with the term.."gone mad".  I was hoping to actually see the hammer fly apart or something.  

really nice work there.
almost makes me miss my welding and sheet metal days

Another cool project from the Nateman!!  You are just over flowing with cool ideas and projects. Do most of your projects give you a sense of fulfillment or accomplishment? It would for me ,I know that.

Looks like lots of fun. I'd love to build my own full lite , full flex armor.

Oh on your own power hammer make it foot controlled with a pedal of sort almost like a sowing machine. So you have both hands free. That's awesome your going all in feet first.

Its going to be electronically controlled.  I have a 0.5HP motor, and controller.
The motor driver is a 120V single phase input and 230V 3 phase output.

 
It has a dial on the front, and I am not totally sure how to convert that to foot action other then make a crazy potentiometer controlled foot pedal which does the job of the dial on the front.  (I could try the sewing machine pedal, but the resistances would have to be identical to the range of the dial - or close enough).
 
I dont know how much room I have to work with as far as RPM.  Since its gravity controlled dead fall it falls at a fixed speed.  I have had a mechanical engineer (who is a friend of mine) look over the design and it was deemed "sound", there is quite a bit that can go wrong, and a bit more expenses and parts to make until I can even try it out and see if any of this was even worth the effort.  
 
I have already purchased the motor and driver, I have the linear rail and the steel dead weight, I made a small pulley for the motor, but I still have to make a 12" diameter 5 groove pulley.  I don't have the necessary 45° lathe cutter (by 45 i mean the actual angle of the grind on the tip), but I do have a 60° (for thread cutting).
 
That will leave me with this:
 
The gray extrusion is a cross section of the belt.  The blue is the cutter (and will be what the pulley looks like).  Since its such a low RPM (and the belt is rubber) I don't see it being too much of a problem.  I see the rubber apexes of the belt squashing a bit more along the sides of the pulley.  Still its low speed and i don't exactly have to drive with the belt on my car so its not like I will be breaking down many miles from home.  
 
If it cuts the belt life in half... you know how many millions of RPM's your belts do before they break so I think it still will be just fine, plus belts aren't exactly expensive.
 
You should subscribe to the thread to watch the progress.

Nate, if doing a larger piece, like example 12"x12x 1/16-1/8" with doing the layered metals, using hand tools, power hammer, to do smaller armor pieces with curves. If im making sense?

Example, Jousting, fighting, armor
https://upload.wikimedia....1497-1505%2C_front.jpg

notfordman
Nateman, on your power hammer design is there any kind of spring incorporated to counter the shock of the machine? It seems to be agreed[from reading & viewing] there should be some type of spring. I seen one where the guy used an old leaf spring. I'm no kind of engineer ,not even close just throwing it out there. I'm very interested in your thread. I know you will handle it whatever the case.

Nope.  Its simply a gravity powered "drop hammer".  The spring is used in the other designs because they are rotating masses being used by the motor to lift AND drop, which would stress the linkage, so the spring steel absorbs.  Mine is just using the sheer mass of a 20 lbs chunk of steel being dropped, and held in place by an almost zero friction linear rail. It can only work because of its simple design and it has to be slow vs the other designs can move much faster and hit harder (and also cost THOUSANDS, or home made ones are so much larger).
 
Here is another design of probably the most biblical hammer that even Thor would be proud to wield:
 

I have been seeing this thread for awhile now but never opened it. I just figured, "Forging?....Meh" I am glad I took a look and saw all the awesome! Very cool nateman

Got a main column, and base.  All from the salvage yard.  
 

Hey Nate.   I built a BBQ smoker out of pipe like that.  Hold heat really well.  3/8 inch I think.
 
 

Finally made a quick video to show my press crushing the layers.  
 

 
Trust me... its even cooler in person.  I promise a better video eventually. 

I just wanted to give a special shout out thank you to Nateman doo for a project to add to my computer case that will be shown off he rocks and the best at what he does thank you very much when I saw the pics you sent I was  I think some people will be jealous. I will recommend that if need something built check with nate first.
 
WHO the master Nateman_doo is the master