Leetonia Hammer

[Pepr]

Hey y'all, 

Just wanted to share a cool find I came across this week. A coworker had this hammer head laying in his tool box, and I couldn't help but lay my hands on it and get a closer look. He offered it to me because he "already had a sledge hammer" and thought I could use it. 

The hammer shows very minimal use, other than a couple dings on one face and two chisel marks on the side. Stamped as an 8lb Leetonia, made in USA. The shape made me very suspicious of this hammer, to me it looked quite old and the chisel marks whispered the word "blacksmith" in my mind, as many old anvil bodies were seemingly used to test a new punch or chisel.

I did some digging on the name and found an old catalogue advertising what is undoubtedly the hammer I have here.

It is called a "Nevada" striking hammer, and I'm curious to see if anyone else has came across, or knows about hammers similar to this. Would "striking hammer" mean that it was intended for use at the anvil? Or maybe it's purpose would be to strike stakes, drill rods and the like?

Let me know what you think, and if anyone is interested I can try to post a link to the catalog for more viewing of cool old stuff.

https://archive.org/details/LeetoniaToolCoCatalogNo157

[Frosty]

Nice score! I have a 3 lb. hammer head I picked up at a garage, yard, etc. sale a few years back and it has a long profile like a Nevada. I even know where it is I'll have to take a closer look tomorrow. The Oregon profile looks like a pretty typical sledge head. 

In the blacksmith's jargon "striking" means to assist the blacksmith by swinging a sledge hammer while he holds the work and guides your blows with a single jack hand hammer. Strikers sometimes worked in teams. Blacksmiths wouldn't buy a special striking hammer, we tend to just use a sledge hammer. 

I think it might be marketing, but I'm wrong often enough I'm used to it.

Frosty The Lucky.

[Pepr]

45 minutes ago, Frosty said:

In the blacksmith's jargon "striking" means to assist the blacksmith by swinging a sledge hammer 

This picture shows only 2/3 of a page, the lower third displays a typical sledge with the octagonal faces. Maybe it is a marketing thing? I personally happen to find this hammer to be much more attractive, but then I don't know that many other people care so much what their hammer looks like

I decided to Google "Nevada striking hammer" after making this thread and was able to find a railroad supply that are still selling this style of hammer. So for railroad work perhaps? Of course there are plenty of things a guy could wail on with a good hammer, so maybe I'm looking for marvelous answers when the reality is marvelously simple.

I might be trying to romanticize the old thing, but I just find it really interesting to try and dig up the past!

[Frosty]

I'm just musing on the add I actually know nothing. 

It's an attractive hammer, I like the look even if it's just branding. I'm off to bed right now but I'll probably go look on the interwebs tomorrow.

Nothing wrong with wanting to know about your tools, history, age intended use, etc. is all good. I tend to look more at use than try hunting down stories. Still, I do like a good story. 

Frosty The Lucky.

[Irondragon Forge ClayWorks]

If it doesn't fit get a bigger hammer. Thanks for the link, gotta know we love old tool catalogs.

[Frosty]

Thank you for the link, it's an excellent tool catalog, I'll have to see if they have one more modern than 1957. I Bookmarked it and saved the PDF anyway just because.

Nevada and Oregon appear to be Leetonia, Brand, "model" names.  I like the look of the Nevada and Oregon hammers better than their more mundane  "blacksmith" sledges myself. I don't know if they'd make a better working smithing sledge but am more than willing to give them a try if one turns up at a: yard, garage, etc. sale.

Let us know how your's works please. 

Frosty The Lucky.

[Donal Harris]

Ever keep in mind here at Leetonia it is our earnest desire to serve you to earn and retain your Good Will.

Something many companies today don’t seem to practice. 

“Open hearth carbon steel” is what exactly?

 

 

[Frosty]

 

Did you do a search? "Open hearth steel process" hits on pages worth of links. This one's good for a start.

https://www.brighthubengineering.com/manufacturing-technology/114716-steel-manufacturing-process-explained/

Frosty The Lucky.

 

[Donal Harris]

No. I got distracted when I searched for Leetonia. It is astonishing how quickly sites will return back to a wild state once they are no longer maintained. I thought it cool the town voted to make it a park.

Then I became interested in the town itself and saw the town seemed to have an unusually high percentage of white people and the per capita income looked low at $14,620, so I compared it to my hometown of Rush Springs and found Leetonia is rather flush in comparison. Then I looked at the same for Purcell, Lexington, and a few others. I learned something I never knew about the town of Marlow which is just south of Rush Springs. Marlow was a sundown town. I knew of others that had been such, but never knew one was just nine miles away from my hometown. 

Then I got lost in researching sundown towns, red lining, the Tulsa race riots, Route 66, Green Book, and other such. 

I lost about half my day all because of a hammer. 

[Irondragon Forge ClayWorks]

I hate it when that happens. I get sidetracked often.

[pnut]

It looks like a lot of drilling hammers I've seen around old coal mines and mining museums. Eight pounds seems a little light for drilling shot holes though. 

Pnut (Mike) 

The striking the ad refers to may be striking a drill. The other hammer on the page is for breaking rocks. Just speculating about that though.

[Pepr]

On 5/1/2019 at 4:00 PM, pnut said:

It looks like a lot of drilling hammers I've seen around old coal mines and mining museums. Eight pounds seems a little light for drilling shot holes though. 

Pnut (Mike) 

The striking the ad refers to may be striking a drill. The other hammer on the page is for breaking rocks. Just speculating about that though.

I think you're probably right. I was a blast-hole driller for a couple years before I started welding, ran a bunch of stand-by-side Ingersoll drills, ran a pneumatic hand drill on occasion, and I cannot imagine drilling a hole with ANY sort of hammer. That would be a miserable job.

I have been way way up in the Sawtooth Wilderness where only a mule team could haul supplies and was fascinated to see signs of blasting way up there. I have heard that in the days of western expansion, mining towns were made way up in the rocky mountains, they fed themselves with deer, elk and whatever else professional hunters would sell in town. Did they have pneumatic drills way up there? Were they all drilled with a rod and hammer? I don't know, but either way it's amazing to me.

[Frosty]

Never heard of "The Legend of John Henry?" The first link is a synopsis of the legend. The second is the only version of the song that I found with a quick search and didn't want me to buy into a "service."

https://www.thoughtco.com/john-henry-1322502

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k23yjt4Nzn8

Frosty The Lucky.

[pnut]

Jerry Garcia used to do a song titled Tell him I'm gone that was a version of the ballad of John Henry. I seen him play it many times. The ballad of John Henry was done by many different musicians. Joe Bonnamossa was another.

Pnut (Mike) 

[Frosty]

I think every vocalist has a rendition of John Henry, it's like Hallelujah EVERYBODY records a version. I like Jimmy Dean's rendition of John Henry I think "Big Bad John" was developed from the same period in history. John Henry was one of hundreds, maybe thousands of steel driving men during reconstruction, probably more of a metaphor than one real person. 

Eddy Arnold has a good rendition too. I don't know of many bad versions but there ARE a few.

Frosty The Lucky.

 

[pnut]

That's what I like about traditional songs. They get adopted and changed and rearranged by each new musician that plays them. There's a long history of folk songs in KY that goes back to the 1600's . Like froggy went a courting started out as a ballad called the frog and the mouse.or the mouses wedding or frog at the mill door. It's an old Scottish ballad whose earliest reference was around 1640. I love old songs and the way they've mutated over time.

Pnut (Mike) 

 

[Frosty]

I prefer songs that tell a story and don't have music so loud you can't hear the vocals. Appalachia is the home for Border Scott immigrant history going WAY back, even the drawl is based in Border Scott, English. 

A lot of our better music is really old, a test of time thing I shouldn't be surprised but . . . "The House in New Orleans" can be traced even as superficially as I have to a song sung in the Bawdy sections of Paris in the 15th. century. And the original version makes better sense than the recent American version, it isn't about a BOY.  

Frosty The Lucky.

 

[pnut]

There's many early and proto blues songs that go way back too. Specifically songs by Huddie Leadbelly leadbetter and son house w.c. handy and blind lemon Jefferson. I have a pretty diverse taste in music. Folk, traditional,old English and Irish ballads, gypsy music to punk rock. Variety is the spice of life. 

Pnut (Mike)

 

 

Charlie Patton from dockery farms is the proto blues musician I was trying to think of. He taught Robert Johnson to play blues guitar.

Word selection anomic aphasia is frustrating.

Pnut (Mike)

 

[SLAG]

Mr. Pnut,

Throw in the collected ballads of Harvard professor Francis J. Child into your list.*

Known as the "Child Murder Ballads".  (many discovered/collected in Appalachia, in the last half of the nineteenth century). They hail from England and Scotland of the 16oo's to the early 1700's and brought to the American South, in the mountains. Some go back as far as the 1300's.

Regards,

SLAG.

*It figures that I.F.I. has a few members that have this interest.

p.s. there seems to be a number of folks, here,  that have aphasia. (myself included).

[pnut]

Yes sir. I'm familiar with his collection. What I think is kinda fascinating is that the southern Appalachian region was/is so isolated and insular that many old ballads remained somewhat pure in their nearly original forms with slight variations between family and social groups until now in some instances. I try to collect old songs myself but am not doing it in a scholarly manner just as a music lover and a poor excuse for a musician.

Pnut (Mike)

[Frosty]

Everybody experiences aphasia, some of us just do it most of the time. I'm just following now, I don't know much of anything about music and am no musician at all. I can tap my feet to the beat but . . . What I do love is etymology and the music I enjoy most are stories, history. 

Right now I'm just adding to my look into and maybe listen to it lists. 

Frosty The Lucky.

[pnut]

I love songs that tell stories also. I'm a junky for words and vocabulary etymology etc. That's why the word selection anomia is so frustrating. Nothing gets to me more than not being able to find a word I know in the middle of a story or conversation. I've gotten better at faking my way through it though by describing  or pantomiming the action of the  word.  

I'm sure you could play percussion instruments If you can tap your toe. When I'm playing the congas and everything is right it feels like dancing. It's a strange feeling.

Pnut (Mike)

[Frosty]

You may  not know this about me but I love a good story!  The etymology of   word is a story often millennia old and with so many branches it often turns into an evening's reading looking up a word. I've developed some decent work arounds for my TBI worsened aphasia and while I have my moments of anomia It isn't an issue. I enjoy the challenges of almost constant aphasia so maybe I can imagine a similar situation with anomia. 

Do names come to you after a while or are they just not there? Misfiled is maybe a better description?

I think most everything I ever learned is still there but my filing system was scrambled, things don't get filed where I expect and my short term memory is often transient. For someone with a near eidetic memory for the written word not being able to find what I just read gets to me. I'm also finding I don't recall books I've read so well either. The last may just be age or maybe my brain's getting full and new stuff is pushing the old out.

Frosty The Lucky.

[JHCC]

Conversation between me and my doctor a couple of weeks ago:

Him: "There are three nutritional supplements with proven pharmaceutical benefits. St. John's Wort for depression, glucosamine for your joints, and...and...."

Me: "The one for memory?"

[ThomasPowers]

Misfiled seems a very good description.  I am beginning to relax a bit as I realize they still seem to be out there there is just a lag between the request for a word and it's presence.   Hmm I should do some time tests  and see what the speed of light distance is; perhaps my mind really is on a different planet---or at least the word store...Scary though when you lose the name of your eldest grandchild for 12 minutes.   My wife is good about putting up with it.