Was wondering... Smoke !

If I happen to have a large hammer, and wanted to turn it into a hardie tool, is I t possible to cut the hammer in half and weld on a stake the needed size ?

Can this be applied to other junk hammers ?

Thanks.

Can't see there would be any problem doing that if you have the hammers to sacrifice. I have done a couple but I find that the weld makes it difficult for the tool to sit squarely in the hardie hole. And if you grind too much off the strength is compromised. A better welder than I am might make it work.

you would have to do a vee prep to make sure you get full penetration on the weld, but even then, you would find that the dissimilar metals of the head and the shank would want to crack apart.

you would also need to make sure you did not harden and temper the repurposed hammer, because a stray blow would be like hitting two hammers together.... very dangerous.

I have done exactly this. Cut cross peen off 3#er just at edge of eye. Heavily beveled a short length of 7/8 square (the size of my hardy holes) and preheated the head a little (Just to warm it up) and welded on the shank. Its now a fuller bottom  tool. Apparently the welding has taken enough temper out of it as even the rare missed blow has not given issue :)

 

Edit: BTW, I did dress the weld enough so as to allow the tool to sit flat on the anvil face; another reason to bevel the shank to just shy of a point. YMMV

 

Scott

Edited August 27, 201411 yr by Dodge

Yep. 

When I make tools this way, I use a plate in between. I forge out a stem, and have it sticking out of the hardy hole. I drop a piece of 3/8" plate 3x3 inches square with a 1" square hole punched in the center. (I made up a bunch of these a while back, I think I only have one left.)

I weld the plate to the stem, then weld whatever I want to the plate. Made lots of tooling from hammer heads, never had any issues. 

Heat treating a hardy anvil I just got done welding, no reason it won't work.  I would suggest pre heating to at least 400 deg.F and deep V the hardy stock and welding with 7018 rod, possibly doing a normalizing heat after and re heat treating if your wanting it hardened.

You might want to look into anvil "devils" which are three sided prisms.  The ones I've seen were an equilateral triangle in profile so there's always an edge facing up.  The devil is set on the anvil face and used like a hardy.  It's not fastened down so it'll move around a bit.

 

It's an option that doesn't take a welder or a lot of work.

It has been a while, I forgot about this Thread !

Thanks to all for posting, good info, I just posted the same question in another thread, me bad... again !

I keep looking for used hammers on eBay and Craig's list, it should happen, just when !

So far I'm up to 3+ 5 gallon buckets of ball peen hammer heads, none costing over US$1 Of course I buy them at yard sales, scrap yards and fleamarkets; Online is too expensive for me!   (what do I do with so many?  Traded 1 bucket for stainless I needed for a project, took two to quad-state and sold them on for $2-3 and still had enough for my students who wanted to forge them into hawks...

I watch for yard sales but haven't had much luck.

Two main reasons, one, I don't know the area well enough yet for it to make sense in going to a yard sale that ends up 50 miles down the road and two, I don't seems to find postings on yard sales as frequently as I did I'm MA.

I keep trying though !