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I Forge Iron

Finding hammers


Glenn

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  • 5 months later...

Went to a yard sale last weekend spent $25 got about 12 lbs of different files, rasps, and chisels, a 2lb sledge, a 40oz. ball peen and a hammer with the head is appx. 1" thick about 6"long and one end looks like a mushroom and the other is round. Looks like something used to make bowl's? any ideas?

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Went to a yard sale last weekend spent $25 got about 12 lbs of different files, rasps, and chisels, a 2lb sledge, a 40oz. ball peen and a hammer with the head is appx. 1" thick about 6"long and one end looks like a mushroom and the other is round. Looks like something used to make bowl's? any ideas?

Yeah, it's an armorer's hammer or a bowl makers, depending upon who you are.  Good score. 

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Went to a yard sale last weekend spent $25 got about 12 lbs of different files, rasps, and chisels, a 2lb sledge, a 40oz. ball peen and a hammer with the head is appx. 1" thick about 6"long and one end looks like a mushroom and the other is round. Looks like something used to make bowl's? any ideas?


Pictures would help. ;)
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Actually is sounds like a boilermaker's hammer used to work on the fire tube ends.  I have 2 of slightly different weights and one end has a "mushroom" larger than the shaft of the hammer and the other has the shaft of the hammer domed.

 

I pick up ballpeens whenever I can get them for US$1 or less, I'm on my third bucket of hammers now so it hasn't been that hard to find them cheap.  We use them for students wanting to make tooling or hawks from them.  I started picking them up after the first time a student went out and *bought* a new hammer just to forge---arghhhhh!

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I try to keep my eyes open for unusual hammers.  The ones on ebay always go for ridiculous money, but I never see anything like them around these parts.

 

Hand-forged hammers with a bit of panache.... and I'm all over it.  Another regular old ball-peen?  I can pass those up without regret.

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 Another regular old ball-peen?  I can pass those up without regret.

 

 

The ball on that hammer can be reforged into any number of punches, slitters, set tools, etc.  Even at $5 each (I imagine Thomas convulsively grasping at his wallet here, grin) that is still cheaper than I can buy a piece of mid range steel and punch a handle hole in it...

 

Even if I end up with up a pile of old ball peens that I don't have time to re-forge, they can go into the "sell as a kit to beginners" stack of stuff.

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Ahhhhhhhhgh, I feel a spasm coming on!  $5 he must be *made* of money!

 

Actually I took a bucket of ballpeens to quad-state last time I went and dumped them on a bit of canvas with a $3 choice sign and a can for the money---sold 23 of them  paid for quite a bit of messed up top tools for conversion to bottom tooling for my larger anvils.  Got another bucket full of US$1 ball peens...every once and a while I will go to $2 if they are handmade, very large or *special*

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Didn't say I bought them at that price, just that I can't buy good steel and put a handle hole in it for less than $5.  $1 or $2 each at the yard sales and flea markets round here seems standard.  The VALUE of them is more thou.  And yes, I generally am happy when I have a hammer in my hand, any hammer!  Just wish I could remember where I put that money bag (grin).

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