Brian,
Thank you for listing your dimensions! I do hope that I can fit taking a class from you into my schedule sometime in the next year. I really appreciate all your videos on YouTube and the posts you make here.
David,
I couldn't agree more. After lurking here for a few months I know how highly regarded Brian is and my glimpse into his teaching style through his YouTube videos makes me excited to take a class from him. Which I do intend to do. I was actually trying to schedule something over the holiday season because my in-laws live about 3 1/2 hours from his place. Unfortunately my plans fell apart and I will have to wait until the next time we are down there to schedule something. That may not be until late summer and fall, so until then I will have to try and glean as much information and advice from these forums and YouTube.
FireyFurnace,
I live in Boise, Idaho. I just finally got my account accepted for the NorthWest Blacksmith Association forums so I will hopefully be able to link up with some people around here. As I mentioned earlier in this reply, my wife is from the south and I look forward to our next trip down there to visit her family, hopefully I will be able to schedule a class then. Unfortunately that may be more than six months away.
I've been trying to build a mental inventory of the tools that I will need to make before I can attempt to make a hammer so thank you for including specific names for some of those tools. I know I will gain valuable experience in creating these tools for this process so I look forward to that.
I will take a closer look at car axles. I had written them off when a friend of mine may have falsely suggested that they were not solid but had a grease channel, though he may have been referring to tractor axles.
This online metal calculator is fantastic! Thanks for linking this, I probably could have avoided posting this question had I known about this because I would have found that a 3" diameter 5" length hammer would be almost 10 lbs!
bigfootnampa
I was making a bad assumption of the size of stock Brian and others used based off the pictures. Unfortunately there was no scale on them so I made my best guess. I appreciate you correcting me as it's going to save me a lot of hardship trying to forge a piece of stock that big.
Everyone else,
I really appreciate your input, especially for my first post. While I know that making a hammer is something I am not capable of right now. I am setting that as my goal. I look forward to learning and exploring through creating all of the different tools I will need to forge a hammer. And until I can take a class from Brian I will have to "Learn by doing" for now.