Help- Square or hammer eye drift

[Jakejackson]

I need help finding a drift for hammers. I did some research and could only find hawk drifts... Theres a flea market that sales hammer handles cheap for like $1-$5... They are square handles which seem to be very common for older hammers... I need a website to buy one... I dont have the tools to make one as I am relatively new to this...

Thank you for your time and response

-J

[Glenn]

If you are going to make hammers than the square drift is the easy part. You could use an old hammer head as the form and drive hot stock into the hammer head creating the perfect drift.

[NickOHH]

You don't have the tooling to make the drift but you have enough to make something with the drift??

[JRigoni]

Materials to make a drift:

Anvil

Hand hammer

Block of metal to forge a taper

Hand file to shape that taper oval

If you are a blacksmith, you can make anything.  You need a tool not readily available? Forge one.  

[Frosty]

I hate to sound discouraging but if forging a drift is too challenging then you're WAY out of your depth forging hammers. Have you forged a hammer yet or is this something you want to do? It's a good goal to set yourself but there're a number of skills you have to be proficient at before you're going to be very successful.

Frosty The Lucky.

[DSW]

When I wanted to forge some top tools in class ( flatter, and set hammer) first thing my instructor set me to do was to take a piece of 1" round and draw out and taper it to form my drift. Working the 1" steel was certainly a lot easier than working the 2" piece of 4140 for the heads later on.

[NickOHH]

3 hours ago, DSW said:

When I wanted to forge some top tools in class ( flatter, and set hammer) first thing my instructor set me to do was to take a piece of 1" round and draw out and taper it to form my drift. Working the 1" steel was certainly a lot easier than working the 2" piece of 4140 for the heads later on.

Yea that's a good way to warm up, first time with even 1" mild it seems hard... Then you try something actually tough to work. Once you know what to expect it's much easier, ya don't wear your self out in the beggining trying to get it goin.

[Charles R. Stevens]

Making the tools nessisary for a new project is always a good place to start, even something as basic as the tongs to hold the drift blank and hammer blank. Anvil furniture to support the hammer head may be important as well. 

[Jim Coke]

Greetings Charles, 

I never heard the term FURNITURE use for a holding fixture ..  

Forge on and make beautiful things

Jim

[Jakejackson]

Essentially all I have blacksmithed/forged knives mainly... I was told to make a drift u needed a angle grinder belt sand with so many grit, ect... But if I can forge one thats even better especially using a hammer head as a guide. Thank yall very much... Hammers are my next goal to make... Im self taught and using youtube as a guide.. 

[JHCC]

The stuff on YouTube is highly variable in quality and can be terribly unsafe. If you want to learn from videos, check out this page of links suggested/recommended by IFI members.

[Mark Ling]

that would be a lot of grinding depending on what you start with. I would never grind a drift completely, id just forge it close to shape and the clean it up with the grinder.

                                                                                         Littleblacksmith

[Charles R. Stevens]

Howdy, Jim. Well I always heard tell that any tool that didn't go in the hardy hole but sat on the anvil was "furniture", such as an anvil devil, "camel humps" and such.

[Rashelle]

If using you tube as a guide. Watch Brian Brazeal, Alec steele, Mark Aspery, or Brent Bailey forge a hammer. There are others I can't think of at the moment. Slightly different tooling for each. Brent slits and drifts, Brian uses a sharp punch, Mark uses a slot punch. Brian a long handled drift, Mark a short non handled one, etc. Choose your style of work and tooling from one of them and make what you need.

[SJS]

I have heard Clifton Ralph uses the term "furniture" for fixtures, jigs, and V-blocks that sit on, or that gets clamped to the bottom die.  I always liked the term, and would love to "decorate" with lots of new "furniture".  I can't remember what Clifton called the big flat dies, "landscape"??? You can always use tools to make the dies smaller, but its harder to use tooling to expand the coverage of the dies.