A while back I had the chance to try out a hammer with a hard steel face welded to a soft iron body.  It was an extremely comfortable hammer to use, and I've wanted to make one like it ever since. 

 

I know that hammers in the old days were made this way, because good steel was scarce.  But I'm wondering, wouldn't a soft iron body for a hammer serve as a shock absorber, meaning less fatigue for the user?  Has anyone else used/made a hammer like this?  What do you guys think?  

I have several old ones made that way.  I don't notice a difference.  Your grip is the overriding variable in transmitting shock---though I will admit that steel handles tend to be painful to me.

 

One tradition is to make a welded up jelly roll of wrought iron for the body and weld on the face(s)  The advantage of this is that WI has a very specific direction to it's structure and rolling it up along the length means you are not getting possible shear faults running from the face into the body.  I was cutting some 1" WI rod with a hacksaw Sunday and I would cut about 1/3 the diameter in and then break it off using my large postvise.  You could really see where the bars used to make merchant bar were welded as it would preferentially run down the weld line a bit before breaking off.

 

I strongly encourage you to make your hammers and use them---but then I have a notorious historical bent and have been known to forge with a 200 year old hammer on an anvil made in 1828 (date stamped William Foster) and use a postvise dated to before 1800...

 

It would be interesting to check out the shock transmission; but to do so properly would take quite a bit of set up: one way would be to cnc a steel hammer to the exact shape of the forged one and install some sensors in the handle or around the handle at the grip and use a robot arm to swing them identically against a standard target---anyone need a senior project in school?

I always keep one hammer in the shop [it is the one with the fire engine red handle so I don't grab a different one by mistake] made from dead soft mild steel. This is my striking hammer for hitting other tools and I also use it on my hot cut.

Dave

A hammer made of unalloyed medium carbon or high carbon steel will be shallow hardening when hardening the head. You'll get a case-core effect, a hard case* and a tough core. When tempered, you will retain the tough, resilient core, which is desirable on a tool of direct percussion. Therefore, there may be no need to weld a high carbon face onto a low carbon body.

 

*The term "case" as used here, has nothing to do with case hardening or carburizing.