Doghead hammer

[DanielC]

Been interested in forging Japanese blades lately and figured why not make a Japanese hammer to forge with as well. Not many pics atm. Just the two here, but I am recording the forging process in HD and will be on my YouTube channel in the future. If i remember correctly, the bar of steel is around 4.5"x1.75" 4140.

[DanielC]

I have to get all of my pics from my phone still, and have to set aside time to edit raw footage of the forging, but the drifting was a success. It was then normalized, then hardened in room temp. vegetable oil, and is now in the oven at 350F for the next few hours.

 

Will get more info and pics when I get more time this evening.

[Rich Hale]

In pic it looks like drifted hole has parallel sides?

[DanielC]

Alright. This is my first forged hammer btw.

 

Initially the forging went bad. I have only slit and drifted a few smaller items, but nothing 1.75" thick. I attempted to speed up the process by drilling out a 3/8" hole, and stretching the hole with a quasi-drift. It did not work. I learned A LOT about the way the metal moves by a single drift job. The drift wanted to punch the remaining metal instead of drift since the hole was much smaller than the drift (That and the drift is not a gradual taper, its pretty short and immediate). Even with a friend and a 8lb. sledge, the drift did not want to punch well. That was hours of pounding to no avail Saturday night.

 

Then came researching my problem on IFI.

 

With my questions answered I went out this afternoon, and accomplished what I should have saturday.

 

Using a few small chisels to slice the hole wider, and another tool to stretch it open, I was able to send my drift all the way through, resulting in a pretty clean handle eye.

 

I will edit video this week and have it up asap.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

The first and second photo (Ignore the giant bandsaw blade) is a drift I made from a railroad pandrol clip. It is 1060ish steel and HT for this job. I wanted to keep it rectangular since I read about doghead hammer eyes having a square or rectangular eye. This steel is TOUGH stuff, and took a beating with little wear. Made a great anvil inside the eye to help square it up. It is tapered from midway to tip, and midway to striking end.

 

Third pic is the eye prior to the main drift. It is after I properly stretched it to get ready for main drift.

 

The rest of the pics are post forging and pre-heat treat and clean up.

 

I will post post-heat treat and handled pics hopefully tomorrow.

[DanielC]

In pic it looks like drifted hole has parallel sides?

 

I did it that way because I saw several examples of them like that in Japan. Is there an immediate concern about it being square rather than oval?

[Frank Turley]

The Japanese forging hammers do have rectangular eyes. Yours looks OK. The poll length and hammer head length either side of the eye will proportionately vary from one Japanese hammer to another. The working face is round.

 

Doghead hammers are Western ones used in the saw dressing world. They have oval eyes and are often smoothly octagonal in cross section having a taper from smallish poll to larger face.

 

Sayings and Cornpone

"Neckties strangle clear thinking."

     Lin Yutang

[DanielC]

The Japanese forging hammers do have rectangular eyes. Yours looks OK. The poll length and hammer head length either side of the eye will proportionately vary from one Japanese hammer to another. The working face is round.
 
Doghead hammers are Western ones used in the saw dressing world. They have oval eyes and are often smoothly octagonal in cross section having a taper from smallish poll to larger face.
 
Sayings and Cornpone
"Neckties strangle clear thinking."
     Lin Yutang

Ah I have heard them called doghead hammers so many times didn't think to research the name further. Thanks for clearing it up Frank. Do you by chance know the specific name for the hammer?

[Frank Turley]

No, I just call it a Japanese forging hammer. It has an altogether different shape than their woodworking hammers. There are good photos on www.japanwoodworker.com, and they have "toroku" written next to the photos. The few extremely long heads shown on google 'IMAGES' are probably sledge hammers.

 

Sayings and Cornpone

FYI. The Gregorian calendar was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582 to correct errors in the Julian calendar.

[Rich Hale]

I am not fond of sq corners in a forging,,this should work fine for the hammer head,,My question was about the sides being straight through. A hole that is larger top and bottom holds a handle better. 

[DanielC]

I am not fond of sq corners in a forging,,this should work fine for the hammer head,,My question was about the sides being straight through. A hole that is larger top and bottom holds a handle better.

I think I understand what you are saying. Instead of finalizing with a drift, to open the top and bottom of the hole a little bit more? I will be forging more tooling from the endless supply of 1060 clips I have for oval eyes on some of my future hammers (~5# brazeal style rounding hammer, 3# brazeal rounding hammer, and a few more 2-3# Japanese hammers and a hammer punch to expand my repritoure of hammers) so I can make some changes in the future. Spending most of my time on just knives and light work lately it feels good working on tooling and heavy work again. Even rehandled a 12# sledge that was passed down from my grandfather for my new striker to use. The 8# sledge just wasn't doing it.

[Frank Turley]

The eyes of lots of the old American manufactured forging hammers were taper-drifted from both sides to give a slight hourglass shape to the eye. The idea was to constrict the wood as the hasp reached the eye center and then passing center, the wood relaxed open a bit. When wedged, there is less chance of losing the haft.

 

The Japanese forging hammers that I have seen have had the rectangular eye punched and drifted at a bit of an angle. When the haft is inserted, the direction of the handle portion is very slightly toward the hammer head, not the poll. The haft/head angle would be acute; the haft/poll angle would be obtuse.

[DanielC]

Thank you for that interesting bit of information. I also actually drifted at a very slight angle because that is what I read about the doghead hammer being forged (back when I thought they were named that). Luckily the Japanese do it too!