Flatter Hammer Idea

[Alan Evans]

​If one does not have some of the necessary equipment, i.e. swage blocks, power hammers, strikers (not equipment, I know), etc........then, one welds what one can.

BTW, I class myself as an amateur, and my welded flatter gets the job done magnificently!!!!  Hasn't broken yet, and if it does, I'll just make another one.

​

My apologies for the patronising tone of earlier my post. It did come out a bit black and white.

 

Take it that it was meant in a fatherly way rather than the condescending aspect of Patronise! Think "a wise man learns by his mistakes a lucky man learns by the mistakes of others".

 

The following longer explanation is part back-track and part philosophy and part personal experience of disaster.

 

There are so many rules and regulations we have to comply with, and I certainly do not wish to add to them for anybody else. So please make your flatter just how is most expedient and appropriate for your circumstance!  

 

Oscar Wilde had it very perceptively…"If a job is worth doing it is worth doing badly" ...Unfortunately for me I have too many hang-ups to be that pragmatic most of the time.

 

To my mind however a forged from one piece flatter has many advantages. More resilient in use, a pleasure to make and a pleasure to use and look at!

 

Although I try to take a fresh look at every thing I do I am sufficiently self-aware of often failing to do this. I have prejudices about form and process and am inhibited by them. Some of these prejudices or likes are acquired through experience (whether positive or negative) of my work and some from the work by others. 

 

As a self employed artist blacksmith one has to become reasonably accomplished in many fields; forging, welding, fabricating, tool making, machine work and etc. But also marketing, designing, estimating, surveying, spraying/finishing, site work and installion.  I can never hope to become as well practised in any one of these disciplines as an employee who has only one of these areas to master over his working life. 

 

So every time I make something I take it as an opportunity to develop and refine my skill and understanding. I try and make every weld a "show" weld; every tool, every jig, as elegantly as I can in the circumstance. Every time I pick up a tool it is an opportunity to practise and get better. 

 

Although my only source of income has been from my work as a blacksmith, I still think of myself as an amateur. Like an amateur I do it for love of the process, nobody could pay me enough to get tired and dirty and risk injury everyday! 

 

Yes I have made welded striking tools of course, often they have been in order to achieve a particular effect and I have conceived and made them mid-heat to get me out of a hole. I have had welded striking tools fail under load. I have also had traditional wooden handled tools break their shafts, but that does not diminish the value of the advice to reduce the chances of tool failure and the concomitant risk of injury to either smith or workpiece.

 

If you are still following this arkie I am afraid I have a few other things to say about your welded flatter. Again I do not know how you use it so my comments may well be irrelevant. 

 

As you have none of the usual things used in conjunction with a flatter, like a striker, a foot or power hammer you are presumably hitting it with your hand hammer holding the workpiece between your legs.  When I have used a flatter like that I found it useful to have a longer handle than yours so I could get a longer swing with my hammer. I have also had the handle come off the flatter at an angle back towards me so that the flatter face was square to the axis of the workpiece but I did not need to lean forward reach it, again affording me a longer hammer swing. Of course you do not want to hold the flatter handle in line with the work piece for obvious finger trapping reasons.

 

The advantage of a longer handle also reduces the shock coming through to your hand especially with a miss hit. Smooth rounded handles are are always kinder to the hand than sharp cornered / square / textured ones. Most of my power hammer tools have flat handles which reduce the transmission of shock by being flexible in that plane and their breadth reduces the psi on the fingers. When I have had square or round section handles I often forge an area close to the tool to a flat section again to allow for flex and shock reduction. The up and down split of your handle shaft does of course reduce the strain on the weld but still relies on the weld completely. If you had split it horizontally and wrapped it around the shaft of the tool it would have a mechanical joint and would still hold together even if the weld should fail.

 

The other thing I suggest is that you give the striking point surface a slight crown as well as a heavier chamfer which will help direct off centre blows more effectively and reduce mushroom removal / dressing frequency.

 

Whilst your flatter and your hand may well survive its use with a hand hammer, when you do get a mate around to strike for you, after the first glancing blow I think you will rapidly make a modification! 

 

Alan

 

[Alan Evans]

I lke repurposing ball pein hammers and welded a piecce of thick leaf spring steel to the face of one for my flatter. The ball pein was forged flat,upset and squared up for stiking, the face also forgd square, because I just wanted to : ) , and it was left to normalize after forging to soften. The hammer was $2 and spring was scrap.

​A friend and fine smith over here, Steven Lunn, always looks out for the forged steel shafted Stanley hammers which he repurposes. Drawing out the pein for punches, drifts, hot sets and butchers. They are great steel he says.  I still would not want to weld a flatter plate to one.

It would be interesting to compare the length of time you took to produce your repurposed flatter with forging one from scratch…and the corresponding working life of such a thing. Not forgetting what you would learn from the process, and what pleasure using an entirely you-forged tool over a fabricated one would give you every time you picked it up or saw it in the rack….

See my response to arkie above in this thread for a fuller waffle around the subject of tool making…

Alan

[arkie]

Alan,

No apology needed.  

We often do not know what other smiths' experiences, equipment, tools, etc. consist of.  Many of us have extensive resources, other use only hand tools; some forged, some welded.  My flatter is only used for hand hammer finishing and flattening of pieces that lend themselves to just that.  There is no heavy hammering such as with a sledge and no strikers.  The handle, though only about 8" long, seems to work fine with no discomfort and the welds were made on preheated steel.  Under normal use, I see the welds holding up fine and as mentioned earlier, if they give way, I'll either reweld or make another.  There is no hammering force on the handles, they are only there, of course, to guide the flatter position,  The hammering force is vertical on the axle and plate.  Your suggestion of slightly crowning the head is good.  I'll probably do that.

[ThomasPowers]

I was going to say that I seldom used a flatter and then remembered that we used on on my stake anvil project just a couple of weeks ago to clean up the steps on the spile that was tapered with flat dies on the powerhammer. Of course it was a flatter designed and built for use with the powerhammer.

In general if I find tools like hammers and tongs inexpensively I will pick them up and store them against the day they get used or modified and used.  One hammer was an oddball and it was over a decade on the rack before it suddenly became a *crucial* tool that made peening a rivet in the narrow and deep top of a spangen helm an easy task.  I do try to not stock up too many duplicates of tools; though that number is relative---I like to have more backups for tools I use frequently as misplacement, theft, damage has happened over the years. Far faster to pick up another hammer and complete a project than to stop and let the piece cool while you re-handle a hammer head.

[arkie]

One can NEVER have too many tools....