David Gaddis Posted March 20, 2012 Share Posted March 20, 2012 Recently at a trip to Huber Freight I saw these ball pein hammers for a decent price. Now perhaps they are not of the greatest quality but I need some fullers. Seems to me at the cheap prices of about 4.50 USD for the largest and down to about 2.79 USD for the lightest why not get a few. Bought all of them that day! Having had a little training by Brian and Lyle I started my go at it. Sawed the heads off and threw them into the fire whaere they soon had no handle parts and glowed nicely without magnatism. So after I let them air cool / anneal as best as possible. The next day I picked up one of them and gave it a good bang with a new hammer. Sure thing they were softer than before. I do not possess many BS tools as of yet so having the right tool was not a possibility. Into the hot coal one went and up with the blast. I kept the heat separated as much as possible to the ball end and proceeded to bang on the ball to flatten out somewhat. Soon, without a flatter they were going into my form and as best as possible I held into place until I got a semi-form similar to the swage. It is radiused at the ends slightly.. Another set of hands and a striker could have made short work of this hand operation. The first fuller required about a ton of coal and the 4th one only took a teaspoon, although much larger...32 oz. I cleaned them up a bit but there are many mis-hits to see. They were not hardened yet and only partially ground to fit. Here you can see a before and after situation. Now I am looking forward to use my more economically-based tools to work on a new project. David Gaddis Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iron woodrow Posted March 20, 2012 Share Posted March 20, 2012 good on you mate, thats what its all about. :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brianbrazealblacksmith Posted March 20, 2012 Share Posted March 20, 2012 David, why did you mention hardening them? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rthibeau Posted March 20, 2012 Share Posted March 20, 2012 david...thanks for the post.......i have been thinking about making some fullers and such, but had not gotten around to deciding how to start. now I will use some of the old hammers I have to do so. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frosty Posted March 20, 2012 Share Posted March 20, 2012 Good job Dave. Ballpein hammers is on my buy list when garage/yard sale season rolls around, I buy any reasonably priced and have altered a number. This is one of my favorite, I turned it into a straight pein. It was going to be an angle pein but I got it backwards and didn't want to turn it 180* for fear of de-peining it. Frosty The Lucky Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThomasPowers Posted March 20, 2012 Share Posted March 20, 2012 Yup hammers are handy for a lot of tooling---but you are only being semi economical: last QuadState I sold 23 ballpeen hammers for US$2 apiece that I had bought for US$1 or less at the fleamarkets---and that's after saving the "best ones" for myself. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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