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I Forge Iron

Trying to Understand Hammer Expense


AZtrapper

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bit of a wierd question, - my friend made me a lovely hammer which i use all the time now, he wont let me pay him and i want to. what do you think would be a good amount to give him. he will not hear of it or discuss it, but i love the hammer its brilliant and he did a lovely job. i dont even know how long it took. or would take! any ideas? or else i will guess and risk getting it hideously wrong in either direction :)

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The expense of these hammers reflects the time, materials, and skill of the smiths making them. It is entirety possible to make a machine made hammer that is inexpensive and well proportioned and ground correctly. For some reason this does not happen very often. Sometimes, as said above all the manufactured hammer needs is a slight regrind. Some people do some serious stock removal and grind a hammer to shape it is an time consuming way to make a hammer though not that hard in terms of skill. It depends on a lot on personal preference. You may like to smith on a shoe string you may have the cash to spend and the willingness to spend it. I personally use a mix of hammers. Some I bought at yard sales and tailgate sales others I made my self. I have one given to me by Nathan Robertson. I also have some old hand forged hammers form the 19th century. I love them all, But as a professional if I forge a hammer it is an expensive proposition it takes at least an hour to make a good hammer 2 to 3 times that if I get fancy. All that being said I have a employee who works primarily with a 2 lb ball peen that he got for a few bucks. Its more about the skills than the hammer. But a good hammer helps and feels better. I love the fact there is a story behind all of the hammers I use like I said it is a personal thing. The constants are you want a smooth face with no sharp edges to mark up the work. All the rest is a matter of debate.

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years ago while working as a Chef I would listen to what other chefs would tell young students "if you don't have this company's knife you will never be a chef". Its all hog wash. as a blacksmith you are the one who moves the hammer. hitting the metal where you want is the key. When I go to meetings and some one asks me a question and its easier to pick up a hammer an demonstrate I use the hammer available some good and some not so good. looking at the video Carlton learned from Philip and Phillip used a ball peen hammer because that was what he was tough with and Phillip Simmons learned from Peter Simmons there is a photo of peter standing next to an anvil and he is holding a ball peen hammer. So what I am saying its more important to learn how to hit the metal over the tools that you use. now I have learned to make my own hammers

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I get a lot of students who seem to think that what is sold commercially must be the *best* design made from the *best* materials. I try to drill it into them that often it's the *cheapest* design made from the *cheapest* materials the manufacturer thinks they can get away with. So they should be quite willing to modify it to suit themselves; perhaps they will hit on a variation of the design that's tops for what they do and how they do it.

The custom hammer market supports people who don't want to spend the time money and effort to do their own---many also fearing that they will get it wrong and that will be a blight on their soul.

Of course this is all just sour grapes; If Nathan told me that if I'd dye myself purple for Quad-State he's give me my weight in his hammers I'd be buying the local store out of grape koolaid before the day was over! (but I wouldn't be getting rid of my lynch collection hammers or some of the odd antique ones I have and love)

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Ive come to also realize that a full time smith who moves product will often come out cheaper buying tools instead of making them..I never understood that starting out but i do now..
Say for instance a smith can work an hour making a real nice set of tongs that go for $35 new, or he could use that hour making a good piece that will sell for a $100..He's $65 In the hole making the tongs instead of buying them(or more, I know of industrial blacksmiths who get close to $200 an hour shop rate on certain projects)..
Now of course this isnt true of hobby smiths but to someone who makes a living out of their shop and rations their time it certainly can be true..

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A lot of time you can buy "preforms" at the scrapyard or fleamarket that you can then forge into what you need far faster than starting out with bar stock---often they will have originally been sold as "tools"....I tend to buy any $5 tongs that are not broken to use as such preforms...one of the ugliest I have seen turned into one of my handiest ones ever---my set of hot brick tongs sized to hold hot firebricks *securely* when moving them around.

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it takes me a hour to heat, punch, drift and shape a hammer from a piece of 2 1/4 4130 from cold stock. Then it takes over night to cool and about 20 min to grind and clean up them hardening and annealing. I have not timed the last 2 steps I do them while I have other things going. It comes down to the basics and doing them over and over again. go big or go home. I took me a little longer to make the striking hammer out of 4" stock.

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Will an expensive new luxury car make your teenager a better driver, or do they need to learn to parallel park on a used minivan? Do artists who paint landscapes buy custom made paintbrushes, or do they work on their technique with store bought?

When you reach the point where your skills surpass your available tools, you will know what you need to do.

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I get a lot of students who seem to think that what is sold commercially must be the *best* design made from the *best* materials. I try to drill it into them that often it's the *cheapest* design made from the *cheapest* materials the manufacturer thinks they can get away with.

This is a patently false and cynical perspective. If such were the case there would be no difference in quality because all companies are capitalists subject to the above reasoning. Tool makers are keenly aware that they must compete for customers who make immensely personal decisions based on how said tool feels to them. Tool users as a group aren't idiots, nor are they spendthrifts. The root reason for a tool purchase is largely to expand on what you can do, or to repair what you have.

While there are certainly price points in place to attend to the strata of spending potential, the truth is that high quality is more the norm than the exception. Warranties and recalls are expensive. While we all pride ourselves in re-purposing old stock into new things, we rarely invest the time and energy to determine the metal's chemistry and subsequent "perfect heat treatment". An industrial scale manufacturer has the resources to make the most of the material they use while reducing their waste and impact on the environment.

I love handmade things as much as anyone else. The cynical notion that manufactured goods are substandard by virtue of capitalism is framing politics as reason. The truth is quality can come from anywhere.

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