Just got my new touchmark and it’s fully hardened. I’d like to regularly use a softer face hammer on it. Are drilling hammers typically soft so they can be used to strike drills? 

I have a short handled 2 pound sledge I use on mine. I made my mark from an old chisel.  

 

Is the struck end hardened or normalized?

For the most part stone working traditional tools have hardened struck end, do traditionally drilling hammers have soft faces

Awesome. Thanks. 

*check*  If you can't test the hardness of a hammer face should you learning how to do that first?

I like to use a brass hammer, as there is little chance of it ever hardening more than even a unhardened HC steel tool, though I do plan on forging a simple chasing hammer out of mild steel in the near future like the ones Elmer Roush makes.  The 2# brass hammer I use was from Harbor Freight, but you can sometimes find them at flea markets.

 I prefer to use a soft steel or bras hammer with some weight  when striking  a stamping tool  . This seems to give a clearer impression, probably  because it's more of a solid dead blow without any bounce or vibration.

On 2/22/2018 at 11:32 AM, ThomasPowers said:

*check*  If you can't test the hardness of a hammer face should you learning how to do that first?

I know how. That’s not the question I asked. 

OK the correct answer to your original question is: Some are, Some are not.

 

okay, I'll bite, how do you test the hardness of a hammer?  I watch some Brian Brazeal videos where he's using his 3# rounding hammer to smite his tools (eye punch) and it makes me cringe.  

I have two soft hammers: an Andy hammer (an all-metal hammer with a replaceable wooden face, great for straightening twisted sections) and a 5-ish pound hand sledge with a wrought iron head (picked up from a junk shop in Maine). The latter is great when I have to hammer on anything hardened.

I check with a file. I know some smiths that will draw the temper back on a hammer to have a softer one for tooling. (And mark it as the soft one!)

As mentioned; for a touchmark you could use a brass hammer.

I have one dead soft hammer in my bucket that I move students to if they are having trouble hitting the workpiece and not the anvil.

I have a screwpress for indenting stuff.

Just came into possession of a hammer-size chunk of mild steel. Now I'm getting ideas....

People don't always appreciate your going after their hammers with a file. Not that I won't do it, just that I try not to lead with it. I come across drilling hammers at the swap meet pretty regularly, so I'm just trying to have a place to start.

I keep threatening to make a new coil for my forge that has three loops in it (since induction forges drop efficiency rapidly as the material gets farther away from the coil). I think the largest loop I'm considering would heat a hammer head. No reason I couldn't just normalize a swap meet hammer if I need to.

Well there is the ball bearing test...or "poor smith's Scleroscope" .

Could just pull the handle, heat it to red,  let cool slowly,  then rehang the handle. Then you would know you have a nice soft hammer for what you are wanting to do.