Mastermyr Hammer creation

[Joe Davidson]

Hi everyone,

 

As the title suggests I'm interested in recreating a 10th century hammer, in particular the mastermyr hammer 67.

Now to start this off I must mention that I am doing this for my senior school research project and that I might need to quote/use information

that maybe be posted. I will be sure to ask for permissionfor the sake of personal integrity.

 

Okay now into the important stuff.

 

I have decided that I would like to try to create it using the tools and techniques that a viking era blacksmith would, this idea may easily be a bit far fetched.

I've done a bit of research into this and have made a stump anvil and dug a hole :D . I've also looked at the other important tools, but have found a stumbling block.

I can't get my head around how they would have 'historically' punched the hole. There is probably an easy answer but I cant think of one. The 'nail making iron' in the mastermyr find could also be a punching plate but I've been unable find evidence of what kind of punches they would have used. So any ideas?

 

Also any advice in undergoing a project like this would be really helpful. anything to do with the mastermyr find or historical replication

 

Thanks

 

Joe 

[MOblacksmith0530]

Well it is hard to say for sure but the hole could either be punched or slit. In either case they may not have had a dedicated bolster block for the hammers since they are not making just hammers. You could simply bend a piece of square stock of at least a half inch in the shape of a "U" with the gap in the center wide enough for the punch or slitter to go through. punch or slit most of the way through from one side on the face of the anvil and then flip it over and onto the bolster you made and complete the operation. Then drift it to size pulling the cheeks as you went.

[bigfootnampa]

Well the mastermyr find included a couple of hot cut slitting chisels and several tools that could be used to drift a hammer's eye.  

[bigfootnampa]

Tools #73 and #104 are almost certainly hammer eye drifts!

[Charles R. Stevens]

I'd think slitting and drifting would be the easy part, ropeing your little sister in to pumping the bellows and getting Mom to swing the sledge so you can forge weld the "money bars" together to get a large enough lump of wraught iron together to forge the hammer from...
Come to think of it, anyone know if they steeled the faces of their hammers?
All kidding aside, most of our hand tools are direct desendants of what they used. Remember, due to the cost of iron and steel, they made their tooling light, or reforged tooling to fit a new task. For example, most of us have a dozen or more sets of tongs, they didn't, the material was just to expensive to have laying around waiting for the one job they where made for, they adjusted one or two pair for the job at hand.

[brian.pierson]

bigfootnampa,

 

    I  agree the shapes definitely scream eye drifts. I wonder what the actual dimensions are for those two. I only found the images without sizing info. They list 73 as an anvil and 104 as unknown. Do you have sizing info?

 

Brian

[Nick]

For what it's worth, this is a hammer I made using the measurements from Arwidsson and Berg's book on the find. It was forged from an axle, not wrought iron with a steel face, and the eye was slit and drifted. It's a good forging hammer, too.

[Joe Davidson]

Woah thanks for all of the replies.

 

I like the idea of using on of the underlay rings as a support for the punching.

Thanks also to all the guys pointing out the hammer drifts, it gives me a good base to talk about when I get to that proccess.

 

@ Charles R. Steven i believe that they may have steeled the peens of some of the bigger hammers but not the main striking face.

 

@Nick, do you have any more images or what not of how you made it? I probably will not be able to get my hand on any wrought or finery iron as it may prove to hard to source. 

So I may be looking at a alternative that I can source.  

 

Thanks for every thing already,

 happy as ever for any advice 

[Richard Furrer]

I have not seen closeups of the tool, but it may be welded from sections in which case the head was designed with a hole from minute one and only a drift was needed to maintain and shape the hole.

Such is the method for axes.

The grain flow of the metal will show you how it was made if you can find good enough photos.

 

Ric

[Charles R. Stevens]

That certainly explaines the flared face on most of the hammers I've seen.

[ThomasPowers]

note that they were working real wrought iron at a very high heat where is is VERY soft indeed!  Probably didn't need steeling and a lot of the flaring might be from years of use---much like the lovely "mushrooming" of the roman anvil in the museum at Bath.

 

As has been mentioned you often had to build up a chunk of wrought iron to size to start and so leaving a void where a hole needs to be saves a lot of time and effort.

 

As for real wrought iron; if you are near the coast you can sometimes find real wrought iron that was used for anchor chains that can be reprocessed.

[Joe Davidson]

Hmmm, thanks again guys

 

It sounds like there is a few ways that you can go about this.

I might try a couple different ways and see what works and what doesn't work for me.

The forge welding might be a little beyond my grasp at the moment so I will probably start with a larger bar, close to the aproxiamte size, and punch using a slit punch.

 

With the weld and wrap just for the sack of just pure research, would this have been conducted in a similiar manner to the axe wrap and weld? Just without inserting the higher carbon steel?

 

I will attempt to locate real wrought iron, but if i can't. Is there any type of steel that is similiar? There probably isnt but my knoledge of steel types is very very limited

 

That you again for the help,

 

Joe

[Francis Trez Cole]

there is an other thing to think about this find was a traveling chest not in a home or shop. Once the person would have set up their place to stay they would have the basics to start with and build there home. To stop and make iron you need several things .Just to start the list ore, charcoal, and clay. One thing in the find was a length of chain, Chains were used as rulers. With what was in that kit and a little time I could go and set up an house and all I need to live.   

[Kim Aarhus]

My blacksmithing guild ( Regin ) here in Denmark have made the hole mestermyr find. We made it for an museum show ( dont know the word ) here is pictures of it http://www.mestermyr.dk/index.php/udstilling

Its all original size

[ThomasPowers]

Early bloomery process wrought iron is most characterized by the wide range of non-homogeneity.  Wrought iron is basically a composite material comprised of iron and ferrous silicates stringers. As such; any homogeneous steel will not be like it at all.

 

The later puddled or even byers process wrought iron is known for being very low in carbon and so some alloys designed for deep drawing with extremely low carbon contents have been used to mimic their working characteristics.

 

My take is that if you can't use wrought iron there's not anything close enough to make a difference.  Here in the states wagon wooden wheel tyres were often low grade wrought iron and can be sourced fairly easily---I have a dozen leaning up against the shop, many of them were free, (The low grade being closer to earlier Wrought Irons than the high grade stuff)

[Joe Davidson]

thanks kim Aarhus, that site that your guild set up is very nice.

 

Hmmm, okay thanks Thomas (if you don't mind me calling you that). Ill keep my eyes out for both the anchors and wagon wheels, however in Australia, we do not have many old valuable materials lying around. But thanks for the tips. Might stumble start into one in a couple weeks so i could easily be proved wrong, which would be very nice.

 

So with that being the fact I may substitute 1045 or something similar to make something that I can use when I complete it is it ends up being nice.

 

thank you all for the help, as normal I'm definitely happy for any advise 

 

thanks again

Joe 

[Daniel.85]

pbs show with the recreated tool box and tools

 

http://www.pbs.org/woodwrightsshop/video/2800/2812.html

[Joe Davidson]

cheers for that video, very handy.

 

thankyou

 

joe

[BorisTheSpider]

Regarding wrought iron - hightemptools.com sells sections of chain either as-is or straightened-out for stock. They're out-of-office for now, and I think a lot of their stock is sold out, so you may want to be on-the-ball about catching them when they come back if you want it.

[Quarry Dog]

WOW. I'm glad I looked further into this.  I found a whole bunch of ideas at that netlab site.  I found the drawings at http://netlabs.net/~osan/Mastermyr/ImageLib.html to be especially enlightening.  I would think that # 105 would be a punch (especially as hammered out as it looks on the top), # 104 the drift (how it's narrow on the front and broad on the back), and # 77/78 to be something like a pritchel hole.