Finally forged, hardened and tempered.
This is a long overdue project that originally started in October. This hammer head was a 2 pound hammer by a company called "westward" on amazon. the hammer was pretty decent looking and I didn't buy it to use it as a base hammer. I intended to cut the handle off, shave that thing down to fit a smaller hammer and then forge the head to the shape that you see now in the pictures.
This hammer head is a diagonal cross pein hammer. The pein is not in line with the face at any way, but is instead at a diagonal slant.
The purpose of this shape is to allow the smith to not have the need to contort the hand in order to use the pein itself when forging, since the pein is a very good end of the hammer to spread material out.
The handle is very nicely straight grained hickory.
I mainly used rasps, a spoke shave, a scraper and then a piece of bone to smooth down the wood to give it that beautifully slick shiny surface through a process called "burnishing" which is basically just rubbing the bone (in my case a segment of deer antler) over the entire surface of the piece of wood in a back and forth motion while making sure to apply pressure while carrying out the procedure. Before the burnishing is done, the handle must be oiled with boiled linseed oil or mineral oil.
This is a long overdue project that originally started in October. This hammer head was a 2 pound hammer by a company called "westward" on amazon. the hammer was pretty decent looking and I didn't buy it to use it as a base hammer. I intended to cut the handle off, shave that thing down to fit a smaller hammer and then forge the head to the shape that you see now in the pictures.
This hammer head is a diagonal cross pein hammer. The pein is not in line with the face at any way, but is instead at a diagonal slant.
The purpose of this shape is to allow the smith to not have the need to contort the hand in order to use the pein itself when forging, since the pein is a very good end of the hammer to spread material out.
The handle is very nicely straight grained hickory.
I mainly used rasps, a spoke shave, a scraper and then a piece of bone to smooth down the wood to give it that beautifully slick shiny surface through a process called "burnishing" which is basically just rubbing the bone (in my case a segment of deer antler) over the entire surface of the piece of wood in a back and forth motion while making sure to apply pressure while carrying out the procedure. Before the burnishing is done, the handle must be oiled with boiled linseed oil or mineral oil.
Category Crafting / All
Species Unspecified / Any
Size 1280 x 704px
File Size 207.3 kB
every time I get a new or new-to-me hammer I end up needing to rehandle it within an hour of using it
Always hurts when the guy you're buying it from says they just put the handle on it
of course it's all shitted up with polyurethane so it burns your left hand when you're really swinging it, the head's held on with wood putty like you'd use to hide finish nails in trim, there's either no wedges or it's poorly wedged, and to top it off the damn thing's cut off flush with the head so it's guaranteed to fly off right quick
I don't even enjoy fitting handles to hammer heads...
Always hurts when the guy you're buying it from says they just put the handle on it
of course it's all shitted up with polyurethane so it burns your left hand when you're really swinging it, the head's held on with wood putty like you'd use to hide finish nails in trim, there's either no wedges or it's poorly wedged, and to top it off the damn thing's cut off flush with the head so it's guaranteed to fly off right quick
I don't even enjoy fitting handles to hammer heads...
(replying to the wrong reply to keep the comment string tidy)
Normal wedges just always seem to squirt back out for me, even filing the teeth to be sharp as can be.
Wooden wedges only seem to be able to go so far, unless you've got something denser than the white oak that's the heaviest I've got laying around.
Dunno, the screws go in good and they seem to stay put the absolute best. All I use for fitting the handles is a flapper wheel on the angle grinder, maybe there's some magic to it other than dry wood and as tight a fit as I can manage to hammer the head onto the handle with...
Normal wedges just always seem to squirt back out for me, even filing the teeth to be sharp as can be.
Wooden wedges only seem to be able to go so far, unless you've got something denser than the white oak that's the heaviest I've got laying around.
Dunno, the screws go in good and they seem to stay put the absolute best. All I use for fitting the handles is a flapper wheel on the angle grinder, maybe there's some magic to it other than dry wood and as tight a fit as I can manage to hammer the head onto the handle with...
Wooden wedges have never really squirted out for me. Do you use a punch to drive them an 8th of an inch deeper?
The way I do it is I use a 4 in hand rasp. to shape the handle head. I then put into the eye and hold the thing so that it's upside down. I knock the head on and then take it off.
I then look at the dark spots on the handle where the eye scuffed the wood. That's a high spot. Rasp that down and do it again. When you want to put a wooden wedge in, it's important to have the right thickness, not too thick, not too thin, just right. I put a bit of cyanoacrylate on the sides of the wedge when I ram it in. You want it to be deep enough so that it just feels like it is stopped and can't go any further. T
If you feel you can ram them any further, it means you have too thin of a wedge and that will split the handle asunder.
Then you cut that part off with a coping saw and then jam in the steel wedges diagonally, then you want the ram it deeper with the punch.
Hopefully that's helpful.
The way I do it is I use a 4 in hand rasp. to shape the handle head. I then put into the eye and hold the thing so that it's upside down. I knock the head on and then take it off.
I then look at the dark spots on the handle where the eye scuffed the wood. That's a high spot. Rasp that down and do it again. When you want to put a wooden wedge in, it's important to have the right thickness, not too thick, not too thin, just right. I put a bit of cyanoacrylate on the sides of the wedge when I ram it in. You want it to be deep enough so that it just feels like it is stopped and can't go any further. T
If you feel you can ram them any further, it means you have too thin of a wedge and that will split the handle asunder.
Then you cut that part off with a coping saw and then jam in the steel wedges diagonally, then you want the ram it deeper with the punch.
Hopefully that's helpful.
I pretty much to the same deal with the handle fitting (re: witness marks and material removal) except I just bash the hand end of the handle on the concrete to let the weight of the head install it
pound the wooden wedge in until it disintigrates (I've always tried notching the handle maybe 1/4" at the widest, on down to nothing about halfway through the eye)
then the screw wedges, splinter out the protruding 3/8" or so of handle, and drop it in a bucket of oil to soak
pound the wooden wedge in until it disintigrates (I've always tried notching the handle maybe 1/4" at the widest, on down to nothing about halfway through the eye)
then the screw wedges, splinter out the protruding 3/8" or so of handle, and drop it in a bucket of oil to soak
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