[Glenn]

This post was originally made by Tom Clark on July 4, 2008. The delay in posting is due to my contacted Tom by phone to clarify some of the information. He made changes and emailed me the post below.


Hofi hammer, the real story part 2.


I first met Hofi in 1994 at the ABANA conference in St. Louis. The weather was miserably hot and he was filling in one day for Paul Zimmerman. I was really impressed with his ability to move iron. I asked the 1996 conference in New York to have him as a demonstrator. He was there with three of his helpers from Israel and his demo was very good. I was so impressed that I wanted to share his knowledge throughout the U.S. so, I arranged for him to come back to the U.S. in 1997 where I invited blacksmiths from all over the United States to come and take a class with him. In all there were 36 people from 23 states, as I remember. I rented a building and set up 12 forging stations for 4 weeks of classes. I was so impressed with the outcome that I asked him if I built a school would he come two times a year and teach. He said yes so, I built the Ozark School of Blacksmithing.

In the beginning Hofi was really high on Alfred Habbermann. He told me that he had brought him to his school in Israel two or three times and he had learned the Habermann style of forging from Alfred. When he started to make hammers, they would duplicate the process of Habermann and Hofi chose to widen the eye to accommodate a bigger rectangular handle, but he incorporated the Habermann style of forging. So, not only is the hammer important, but also the technique in using the hammer.

I am a firm believer in passing on the credit where credit is due and I learned a lot from Hofi. I learned to make hand hammers from Hofi. I could follow Hofi’s lead and call my hammers the Tom Clark hammer, but I don’t have that type of ego. I prefer to call it the balanced hammer. The difference in our hand hammers is that my hand hammers are truly balanced and the cross peen of his is almost always over forged leaving less weight on the peen side of the hammer for proper balance. Proper balance is when the same amount of weight is on both sides of the centerline on the handle. Consequently the peen has to be longer as there is less metal out there. The low profile of the hammer reduces the tendency of the hammer to twist when hitting on edge or when hitting a piece of stock with the face of the hammer off the edge of the stock.

Doug Merkle and several other people who were having problems with their arms came to the class and learned the system. I was also having trouble with my arms from using a long Swedish style Peddinghaus hammer. Myself and all of the students that were having arm problems no longer have arm pain. I can forge for hours now with no consequence of physical abuse to my arm from the hammer.

Hofi has spread the system pretty much around the world but the system is the Habermann system.

I think when people are referring to the Czech hammer they are referring to the Habermann hammer but not until recently have there been any Habermann hammers available to the public.

Tom Clark, Sr.