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I Forge Iron

Framing hammers


JD Forge

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I like the one on the left. To me framing hammers should have a waffle face, but only  because my dad’s did. No other reason.  You did a good job with the waffling. It doesn’t appear milled, yet the lines are straight and essentially evenly spaced. 

I prefer the shape of the handle of the one on the right. I don’t particularly like handles which bulges in the middle. The one  on the left seems to have a bulge, whereas the one on the right appears to have be evenly tapered, growin wider as it gets closer to the butt of the handle. 

Like others, I don’t care for burning a handle.  Supposedly you can harden a handle by burning, but here I think you have done it strictly for appearance.  Rather than burning the handle, have you consider trying something like ferric nitrate or Auqua Fortis reagent to make the grain and any figuring in the wood more prominent?  The effect will not be as dramatic as it would be with a highly figured wood like curly maple, but it does look good nonetheless.  It gives the wood a nice rich yellowish color as if it were an old, well cared for handle.  The stuff is fairly nasty though.  It is safer to purchase the commercial reagent, but you can make it yourself.  If you ever decide to try it, follow all the recommended safety precautions as if your life depended on it, because it does.  There are videos on YouTube about how to use it.

Lastly, I prefer handles to be finished flush to the top of the hammer.  Leaving them proud to me makes them appear unfinished, but as will every single one of my other comments is  simply my own personal preference.  I believe your hammers appear to be very well made and I only wish I could forge half as well.

BTW, from what I have read from other posts of his, my saying Frosty is right is likely redundant, but I believe he is right.  A roofing hatchet would be more marketable than a framing hatchet, although even they are being replaced more and more these days with nail guns. And having worked as a roofer’s helper in Jacksonville the Summer after I got out of the Army, I can tell you all those I have ever met are stupid free with their money. (No offense intended to any roofers in the forum.) All that Summer long we worked hard from morning till dusk every day the chance of rain was less than 20%.  And every night we were in the clubs until long after we should have been in bed asleep.

 

Edited to add: Jeez I sure laid down a wall of text there.

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Nice hammers!  Heres my positive critique.  using 1045, i would pull a spring temper on the claws.  Thats about a blue.  And for the face, i'd shoot for tough, not hard. So about a speckled light blue. Tough prevents mushrooming, where a hard, like your dark straw, has a better chance to chip. I'd run my heat from a hot iron in the eye, and use wet rags to maintain temper while the other end reaches its color.  Then just let the eye air cool.  This gives you a more or less normalized eye. Its not too soft, and has a refined grain after all that forging.

You can get this type of information from old blacksmith books (pdf) from before say 1920. Its amazing just how they refined those temper colors to get really specific tempers for such a range of jobs.  This especially works well with the 10xx series steels.

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