July 4, 200718 yr I'm making a few hatchets for birthday presents, and I'm having trouble with squishing my eye drift when I pull the cheeks down from the eye, I've been slot punching the eye, pounding the drift in almost to size, leaving the drift in whilst taking a quick refresher heat, and fullering the cheeks on the power hammer. The drift always gets compressed and deformed in this process. There's got to be a way to do this without making a new drift each time. APman is going to try to put in a picture for me .. Thanks, Mike
July 4, 200718 yr Very nice hatchet. I have done a lot of this work, but not with a power hammer. It would help if you keep the drift cool (this will cool the work faster, but since you are working with a power hammer, it does not matter as much), have the hatchet very hot (just below or at welding heat), and as always, strike the piece as few times as possible to get the job done.
July 4, 200718 yr Make your drift out of H-13. I put pretty good cheeks on the few hammers I make and don't have any problem with my drift. H-13 is tough stuff.
July 4, 200718 yr some where there is a blueprint i sent in making a hammer ,and i sent glenn a short film making hammers , all our hammers have deep cheeks ,the trick is is in the tools you use to draw the cheeks ,draw not batter out ,i will forge 100 pluss heads out on the same drift ,i make all the hammer drifts in die blocks and if they flattern i jump them up and put them back in the die blocks to pull them back to shape, i use hot die steel .
July 5, 200718 yr some where there is a blueprint i sent in making a hammer ,and i sent glenn a short film making hammers , all our hammers have deep cheeks ,the trick is is in the tools you use to draw the cheeks ,draw not batter out ,i will forge 100 pluss heads out on the same drift ,i make all the hammer drifts in die blocks and if they flattern i jump them up and put them back in the die blocks to pull them back to shape, i use hot die steel . I'd love to see that video. Can you find it? if Glenn can't get it running on the site could you put it on youtube?
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