troughs in Brazeal style rounding hammer

[tylerdewitt]

newb question:

 

What's the purpose of forging the troughs (indentations that separate the faces from the cheeks)?  Is it just to control the length of the hammer? why not leave them out?

 

Tyler

 

[toadharbor]

Mostly Cosmetic, as made the hammer ends up being just as long as the starting stock. At least it did on the one I made.

[Charles R. Stevens]

Actually the primary reason is to isolate the parts of the hammer you are working on. Makes forging down the cheeks of the eye much easier, and it reduces the weight slightly for the size of the faces.
Fullering to isolate the faces from eye helps with both round and square stock. If you start with square you need to forge the heads round, if you start with round, you need to forge the center flat. Not to mention if you start with 2" round and want a 2 1/2" face. Lots easier to upset the ends by "mushrooming" them. Form usually fallows function. And isolating, and butchering stock makes life a lot easer. You basically lay out a blank and forge the different parts.
Look at the old books that show forging train parts on power hammers. Forging is forging, but when you start seeing how to efficiently get from the shape and size of the stock you have to the shape and size of finished piece you need, you start thinking in a much less linear fashion.
Lets take a hardy tool for example. A 2", 1 1/2" or 1 square or round will work, just takes different approaches to get their (and frankly 1/2 will work to, lol.) and for that mater depending on the tooling and labor available you may use different processes to forge the same part from the same stock ( one smith might upset the end of a 1" bar to 2" wile another would forge weld a 1"x1/2" bar around the end to make a 3" head. All depends on the smith, skills, tools and labor)
Sorry for getting long winded, and wandering off topic, must be channeling some of that Frosty vibe ;-)

[Chinobi]

From Brian:

...The same concept is applied to forge a hammer. The fullering between the cheeks and the faces isolate material and allows you to work without hammering or gouging into the forging on the other side of the fuller line, and you can just forge the other side of the fullering or in between them in the case of a hammer.

 

source, post #10:

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[Charles R. Stevens]

Never said the man wasn't smart, lol.

[Francis Trez Cole]

Rounding hammer is a style there are many styles, cross peen, straight peen, french style, German style, Japanese style, Swedish style and more. You can dress any hammer face to have a rounding face.

[Charles R. Stevens]

This is true Frances, and as a cheep SOB I do. But like ball peins there are some advantages to doing it that way (the two commercial ones I have are round stock fullered and the eye cheek not drawn
Of corse You know that, lol

[Francis Trez Cole]

Brian explained it as the house for the handle to give more surface contact to the handle. Philip Simmons hammer of choice was the ball peen. All hammers have there place

[Frank Turley]

Heller Brothers formerly manufactured a nice rounding hammer that was octagonal faceted lengthwise and overall, had a slightly barrel shape. It did not have the drawn cheeks or fullering separating the faces from the eye area. I think it weighed about four pounds. One face had a slight rocker and the other was a ball face.

[Charles R. Stevens]

There are advantages and disadvantages to every hammer. I think Brian was trying to make the heads preporsinantly larger for the weight, and provide more serface contact for the head. It fits his style of forging very well. I tend to use a few different hammers, depending as much on the task at hand, anvil I am working on and my mood.
But most smiths have a faverit, that fits their style (or their style fits?)

[Edwin]

the fullered sections on opposite eyes of the FARRIERS rounding hammer was used to guide the forepunch for punching holes in the shoes. The shoe laid on the anvil face and the hammer head along the side and you can place your tool in the fullered recess and guide your punch onto the shoe and hammer away.