Sweet Hammers (What do you like?)

[mrnewberry]

I recently went searching for a new hammer. I found that I like hammers and would like more of them. So what I am asking you guys is what hammers do you guys like/use? I would love to see some pictures of your hammers as well as hammer related links.

To start us off here is what my search has brought me so far:


A pair of Hofi's one is the 3 lb. cast model and the other the forged 2.2 lb version.

[tazmig33]

I like the Brian Brazeal fuller hammer.

[mrnewberry]

Yeah, those Brazeal hammers look really nice. Taking one of his hammer classes would have to be fun!

[Frank Turley]

My most used hammer currently is a Channellock 2½ pound cross peen. I used a Channellock 3 pound for years, but then I got a little age (sense) on me. Channellock quit making smiths' hammers maybe 20 years ago, a shame. I just finished forging two hammers made of old 18-wheeler truck axles whose cross-section I squared up on the trip hammer. I patterned them after the Channellocks. They made the 2½ pounder of square stock, 1½" on a side. The 3 pounder is 1 5/8" on a side. These hammers are not too unlike the currently made German cross peens, but in America, the head was often corner chamfered in order to make a round face. In Germany and on the Continent, the square face is preferred with the corners having a very slight chamfer.

I began heating and beating in the 1960's as a farrier, so I started with a Heller Brothers rounding hammer. These had circular faces, one of them a ball face, so I never did transition to a square face after I "let the horses go."

No matter what hammer you buy or make, you will alter it to suit your needs. I liken the hammer face to a pocket watch crystal and the edges are radiused all around. There is no chamfer leaving a "ridge" around the face. I formerly made my cross peen portion almost a full half-round, but I changed after attending a Peter Ross workshop. His peens were crowned side-to-side and somewhat flattened. There were small radii going into the peen flats. They work very well and as Peter told us, "Less cleanup!" "An old dog learns a new trick."

If you look at old hand forged hammers and top tools in the U.S., the eye is usually capsule shaped, like the capsules you take with water. It has straight sides and half round ends. The length of the eye is frequently twice its width, but that is not a hard and fast rule. It is easier to forge a tapered hammer-eye punch with that cross-section than it is an oval section. Same way with a drift. You forge a tapered rectangular cross-section and radius the two "edges." If it's oval, it takes more cold work to get the final result. This is not a contest. An oval eye is OK, and so is a capsule shaped one. Japanese forging hammers have a rectangular eye.

I prefer a smallish eye to a large eye. A quite large eye removes too much metal from the cheeks either side of the eye. The thin cheeks take away metal needed for heft. I like a 15" to 15½" slender, oval haft, American style, with a quite thin neck. The thin neck will take shock. It even "whips" a little in midair on the backswing.

One little addendum. I have learned to fuller with the edge of my round hammer face. When fullering top and botton, I go to the far radiused edge of my anvil and lift the workpiece at a 45º angle. For fullering, I use a regular hammer swing and then pull it towards me to match the anvil edge. I find that easier than if I were to use a square faced hammer.

As time goes on, you will acquire an arsenal of hammers. At my anvil, I have a home made 4½ pound cross peen, Channellock style. I have a rounding hammer, a cat head hammer, a home made similar to a cat head, a Japanese forging hammer, and a rawhide mallet. In the school shop, I have a French cross peen, Heller's cross peen, and a number of smaller sheet metal hammers.

http://www.turleyforge.com Granddaddy of Blacksmith Schools

[mrnewberry]

Frank,
Thanks for all the info! I had to look up a cat's head hammer. It looks like an interesting hammer! Would love to see some pictures of yours.

[Steve Shimanek]

Here are some of mine; i prefer the Champion rounding hammer for most work. It is the one on the left; there are also some Hellers. I like the older hammers; I might even have a hammer fetish :blink:

[mrnewberry]

Nice hammers! I still need to pick up a rounding hammer myself. They seem like they would be pretty handy.

[ThomasPowers]

I just taught a beginner's intro class and brought a wide selection of hammers along so everyone could "find" one that worked for them. During that class I pretty much used *every* hammer there as I would grab the one handy when I was cleaning up their workpiece. A $100 hammer doesn't make you any better a smith than a $5 one---it's the skills you have to gain!

Now as to favorites: my first hammer a double jack about 2.5# used it so much there is appreciable wear on the face. I have a couple of lynch collection hammers, round faces and a dropped crosspeen---not french style, a swedish style 3.5# crosspeen for when my arm is in good shape, oh shoot almost all my hammers are my favorite at some time or other!

[Frosty]

My favorites are a store bought rounding hammer and the lighter squared one a friend helped me make a couple years ago, there're two straight peins, one commercial and one I made from a ball pein garage sale find, then there is the Sears Craftsman drilling hammer, a couple ball peins and two big honkin single jack sledges, both in the 5lb range though one has a wide radii straight pein.

What makes a good hammer for me is clean faces, proper weight and good handles. I can make do though and there's a certain satisfaction there, that the "Right" tool lacks. Still, there is little that beats having the right tool for the job, especially if you made it yourself.

Frosty the Lucky.

[Francis Trez Cole]

My favorite hammer is a I have four a Sears cross peen 32 oz, a Vaughan rounding hammer and 2 Ball peen one from my grandfather and the other from a Friend who passed away. I personaly like a hammer with a long handle.

[maddog]

A couple of years after I started swinging a hammer, I developed tendinitis. I switched to a hofi hammer hammer and trained myself to use his hammering technique. The tendinitis never came back and my hammering became much more effective.

Mostly I use a Hofi style hammer with a rounding face instead of the cross pein. I have four Hofi style hammers made by Tom Clark which are beautifuly made. One forged Hofi hammer from Big Blu which is good but the finish is disappointing considering the price. The cast version is much nicer. I also have a 1.75lb "czech" hammer which I bought from one of the blacksmith supply houses. I recieved it in terrible shape. It was out of square in every axis and I spent several hours reforging and regrinding it. Now its a great little hammer, though quite a bit lighter than it was originaly.

When I took Frank Turley's class, he expressed some skepticism about square faced hammers. I think because they limit the way one addresses the anvil. It wasn't easy for me to ignore advice from Frank but the Hofi was working well for me and I didn't want to take risks with my arm so I stuck with it.

[knots]

I recently went searching for a new hammer. I found that I like hammers and would like more of them. So what I am asking you guys is what hammers do you guys like/use? I would love to see some pictures of your hammers as well as hammer related links.

To start us off here is what my search has brought me so far:


A pair of Hofi's one is the 3 lb. cast model and the other the forged 2.2 lb version.




The hammers that I use for forging are blunt straight preen hammers. I draw my forging over the butt end of the horn. Drawing goes really fast when working this was because you are moving the metal more or less uniformly from both top and bottom.

It just never did feel comfortable to forge both sides of the work piece over the horn with a straight peen hammer. The Blunt straight peen hammer solved that problem.

Here is one of four that I have.

[JDB]

Check out the hammers on Brent Bailey's website. I have one of his Compact Cross Peins and absolutely love it. It weighs in at about 2 3/4# and balances beautifully. Plus it really moves some metal. He shows a variety of styles on his website and is quite reasonable for the quality of the work he does. He will make any style and weight you want.

[Bentiron1946]

I've lots of different hammers over the years, you're always interested in what they feel like and is it going to be better than the last one I guess. I started with a ball peen, got a Craftsman 32 oz. cross peen, didn't like it much, got a Diamond rounding hammer,liked it a lot, got a six pound sledge, kind of shaped like the last one on the far right in Steve Shimaneck's photo, really liked that hammer, but I then found a just a 21/2# made in japan cross peen hammer head at a swap meet for fifty cents and that was my favorite hammer until I had to quit smithing. I am a hammer freak, if I haven't got one like it or it is wee bit different I'll buy or just buy cause the said if I didn't it was going in the trash. No use putting a good hammer in the trash you know.

[Jymm Hoffman]

I prefer the 18th. century style hammers I make, with my longer rounded handles. I normally use 2 to 2 1/2 pound hammers.
I hate flat handles, never feel right.
Ran out of handle stock, supposed to have more 2 days ago.
This batch is forged out of 4140 and heat treated, 2 hammers tested showed them to be 50 Rockwell C scale.
Anvils are H13 54 Rockwell C scale.

[junker]

i actually have a 3ibs harbor freight cross pien, i also have an old "rock hammer" (for lack of a better description, never really use it). my mentor actually trained me for the use of a hofi hammer, and to use the square faces to help with drawing, so the found faced hammer can be a bit annoying at times. but hey, ya work with what ya got :P

[mrnewberry]

Thanks for sharing your hammer preferences everyone! And Jymm those are some fun hammers and anvils. I recognize the anvils from some window shopping I was doing online.

[Golden_eagle]

I do most of my heavy forging with a 3.5 lbs crosspein, the light duty forging with a 24 oz. ballpein and general forging with a 36 oz ballpein. I thought long and hard on getting a 36 oz hofi to replace my ballpein and a 48 oz ballpein to replace my crosspein, but I couldent dig up the cash then, I'll probably get them for Christmas.

[all my hammers currently have fiberglass handles, I'm phasing out all my plastic handles to wood.]

[lordcaradoc]

I currently have three hammers for the forge. One is a 4lb beast of a cross peen with a fiberglass handle. I usually use that for driving wedges into stubborn wood to split it.

The second is a good 2.5 cross peen from Sears and was my normal hammer for a long time.

Last year, I bought a video by Tim Lively, Knifemaking Unplugged, and he used to use a 4lb sledge hammer with one face domed, (I now know that it makes it a rounding hammer) and I liked that. So I went to Harbor freight and bought a 3lb version. It took some time to shape the flat face to be usable and then I rounded off the other face. All the work was done with a flap-disk in the grinder and I took it really slow to avoid any issues with the questionable hardness of the face. In the end, it is now my favorite hammer and I grab that before any other when working at the anvil.

Regards,
Tim

[Dodge]

My most used hammer is a Harbor Freight 2 # sledge that I radiused one face on to a nice rounding face. The other I left flatish except the edges where I rounded them to reduce the chance of leaving marks. I then I re handled with a decent hickory "engineer's" handle. Fairly slim and about 16". I like long handles; I can get a good swing from the end or choke up as much as needed for finer hammering. I had a a really nice hammer Jr Stassil helped me make, but someone evidently needed it more than me I have probably 30 or so hammers ranging from a few ounce body hammer I used in repouse type work up to a 4, 6, and 10 pound sledge. Most are just different sized ball peens; a few I have re shaped as needed and plan to re shape more as the need arise. For now they just look impressive in my hammer rack LOL. The only real "blacksmith" hammer I have since the disappearance of Jr's hammer is a flatter that I helped make at trying-it's hammerin this year. It is a flatter with a 3" x 3" face and weights about 3 # (?) One of my next micro-projects is to make a hammer from the 4340 piece I brought home form the same hammerin Perhaps a Brazealesque rounding hammer of about 2.5 #s with a 16" engineers handle

The flatter was one of 12 made at the hammerin:

[ThomasPowers]

A flatter is not a hammer---it's a set tool

Which is why when I describe my tool rack I refer to handled tools rather than hammers.

[Dodge]

A flatter is not a hammer---it's a set tool

Which is why when I describe my tool rack I refer to handled tools rather than hammers.

Thank you for the correction, Tom. I see now that I didn't word that very well, and I know of course, one doesn't hammer with a flatter :)

[mrnewberry]

I just picked up a new rounding hammer made by Bob Patrick. He is a talented blacksmith and my go to guy for tongs. A nice hammer for one of the cheapest prices I have found for a hammer not made in a factory.

[backyard smith]

My fav is a 3 1/2 pound straight peen I bought for a dollar at a yard sale. It needed a new handle and the only marks on it are USA on the side. I love that hammer!

[rthibeau]

My link
I solved the problem of what hammer to have in the shop...I have them all !!! :P