Yance Posted July 16, 2009 Share Posted July 16, 2009 I'd decided a good while back that a diagonal pein hammer would be really good to have, but with the price of good hammers it'd have to wait a while. One of my "shopping" trips to my favorite scrapyard turned up some offfall from a local machine shop. 55 gallon drum of short pieces of solids in round, hex and one NICE piece of square 1 3/4" X 5" "mystery metal". Last Thursday I punched the eye and rough cut and ground the pein end, today I refined the eye, forged the pein the rest of the way and slightly radiused the face. After lightly grinding to the best finish I could and finishing the face and pein with a file I mixed up a batch of Super Quench and hoped my new hammer would harden. Well, it did, nicely. A file would just slide across the surface removing nothing but a bit of scale. I then used my OA torch with the cutting head to heat the area around the eye until the pein face started to turn straw colored. By the time I got the torch shut off and got the tongs on the head it had reached dark straw beginning to show purple on the far corners. Quenched only the first half or so of the pein end keeping a good bit of heat in the eye area. Repeat process with the face end, again quenching only about 2/3 of the head portion hoping the middle would stay soft enough to not break. So far it looks like it's working. Couple of missed slicks and I got really good bounce, plus no "dings" in either the hammer face of anvil. Except for the weight, (right at 4 lb) I'm pleaded with my first attempt at making a hammer. Maybe next time I'll start with stock a little shorter, hoping for around 2 1/2 lb. Great way to spend one of my days off.:D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bigfootnampa Posted July 16, 2009 Share Posted July 16, 2009 I like your hammer but I agree that it is too heavy. My advice would be to aim for a very short "nose" on the main face. I prefer to keep the mass near the eye as much as possible. A little more projection on the peen end is allowable but even there I keep it tight. Doing so allows you to hammer with the corners of your face without generating excessive torque forces. I would also dress the face corners to soft rounds so that I could fuller with any corner of the hammer. If you do it this way you'd be able to use the peen on a diagonal and the left or right corners of the face as (effectively) straight peens while the top corner of the face serves as a cross peen would... thus you have a single hammer with vast versatility. I have made such hammers and they DO work extremely well. My favorite is slightly under 3" from peen to face weighing less than two pounds and is superior to any of my many other hammers for a high percentage of my work. I do like a fairly hard face on my hammers but I run colors to blue/purple range as I consider that about right for a tool designed for such heavy and repetetive striking in use (straw colors are more appropriate for cutting tools). So IMO you may have quit your tempering heat just a tad early on this one... not likely a big problem but an area for possible improvement. One other suggestion is that I really like my hammer handles to be thick so that I have a lot of control (without gripping hard) when presenting the hammer to the metal on various angles... you might try that and see how you like it. Sorry to run on so long, I hope you get something useful from all this and wish you much joy in your hammering! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yance Posted July 16, 2009 Author Share Posted July 16, 2009 Thanks for the critique, that's pretty much to a "T" what I was planning on changing on my next one. This was a "lesson" hammer, just to see if I could come somewhere close to the idea I had in mind. Since we're supposed to have a very good chance of rain today, and I work outside, thought I might make a "shopping" trip since it's been several weeks since I checked out the scrapyard. Hight get lucky and find a couple more hammer "blanks". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
short swing Posted July 16, 2009 Share Posted July 16, 2009 So are you going to stick that shape beside moveing the mass further back on the hammer? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yance Posted July 16, 2009 Author Share Posted July 16, 2009 Yeah, That's what I intended. Been using it this afternoon, and it actually doesn't swing too bad. I can wind up using it for a flatter since I'm missing that third hand.:D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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