page_title: Trip hammer
section_title: Medieval Europe
hierarchical_section_title: Trip hammer / Early history / Europe / Medieval Europe
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Atelier de fusion du cuivre selon Georgius AgricolaEnglish: Stamp ore crusher by Georgius Agricola
context_page_description: 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, steel and other metals.
  One or more trip hammers were set up in a forge, also known variously as a hammer mill, hammer forge or hammer works. The hammers were usually raised by a cam and then released to fall under the force of gravity. Historically, trip hammers were often powered hydraulically by a water wheel.
  Trip hammers are known to have been used in Imperial China since the Western Han dynasty. They also existed in the contemporary Greco-Roman world, with more evidence of their use in medieval Europe during the 12th century. During the Industrial Revolution the trip hammer fell out of favor and was replaced with the power hammer.
context_section_description: 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. Medieval French sources of the years 1116 and 1249 both record the use of mechanised trip hammers used in the forging of wrought iron. 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). 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. The oldest depicted European illustration of a martinet forge-hammer is perhaps the Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus of Olaus Magnus, dated to 1565 AD. In this woodcut image, there is the scene of three martinets and a waterwheel working wood and leather bellows of the Osmund Bloomery furnace. The recumbent hammer was first depicted in European artwork in an illustration by Sandrart and Zonca (dated 1621 AD).
caption: Water-powered ore crusher by Georgius Agricola
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