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I Forge Iron

My low-budget setup


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Rural King sells a pretty cheap engineers hammer, along with a few others. Round bout $10 or so. 

We have an Amish flea market close to here you can pick up hammers for about $1, along with many other tools like shovels, picks, axes, etc. And boy howdy can them ladies make strawberry rhubarb pie. 

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Mmm mmm m rhubarb.

HF has a cheap cross pien as does Loews, home Depot, and Walmart. You may have to order online and pick them up in store or have them delivered to your house but they're pretty cheap. I got a cross pien at the TSC by me but they don't carry the 2#er in store. They didn't have any wood handled ball piens in store either and I can't pay full price for a new hammer that I have to rehandle.

Pnut

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20 hours ago, CrazyGoatLady said:

we don't need no stinkin' hammers around here! 

Don't Texicans, you just spit the horse shoe nail in? Maybe farriers in your area are chewing up too many rounding hammers making shoeing nails?

Frosty The Lucky.

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7 hours ago, CrazyGoatLady said:

Could be Frosty. You know us Texans are rough and tough. Maybe I should just get rid of my hammers altogether and use my fists. Then I could truly say my stuff is handmade...

I have In laws and a bunch of acquaintances from Texas so yeah, I have a pretty good handle on the Lone Star thinking. You guys don't need no steenkeen hammers and tongs, just pinch out the projects while the steak is warming some distance above the fire. It'll only take a few seconds so the beef won't overcook. ;)

3 hours ago, Potato-Demon said:

Where I live I can only find cheap hammers. Off to amazon I go...

What's wrong with cheap hammers? Have you been cruising: yard, garage, etc. sales? Estate sales are more likely to have the big ticket things like grandpa's: anvil, forge, hammers, tongs, etc. but smooth faced hammers are pretty common and ones with a broken handle go for pennies on the dollar. I've been given hammers after showing interest in even one.

Lots of folk just want the stuff gone by the end of the second day and it's often all or nothing for a table load.

The down side is most of the choice stuff went day one but bear in mind one person's treasure is another's trash.

Frosty The Lucky.

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3 hours ago, Potato-Demon said:

Where I live I can only find cheap hammers

That's what you want. A 24 or 32 oz.  ball pien is fine. Walmart has a hyper tough brand 2.5 pound engineers hammer for $7.24. The only drawback is it has a synthetic handle but it's good enough to get you started. My hammers were all cheap until I bought two dogshead hammers and a Czech pattern hammer and four top tools from a member who lives near me that made them and I paid less for all of those than what many  cost by themselves. Don't think a cheap hammer won't work. The steel doesn't care if it's being worked with a $195 rounding hammer or a $2 flea market engineer's hammer. 

Pnut

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4 hours ago, Frosty said:

Lone Star thinking. You guys don't need no steenkeen hammers and tongs, just pinch out the projects while the steak is warming some distance above the fire. It'll only take a few seconds so the beef won't overcook. ;)

 

Haha you got us pegged. And we can rope the steer and butcher him up just in time for supper. Mmm, steak. My favorite

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I've been known to ask for a steak that my Daughter the Veterinarian *might* be able to save if she gets too it fast enough...

Funny thing; I started out with a fleamarket/junk store/pawn shop/? hammer I paid US$1 for, it's on it's 4th handle and we were using it to forge with yesterday, around 39 years after I first bought it.  Done a lot of pattern welded billets with it over the years, It's forged enough hot metal I can see the wear on the face from the abrasiveness of scale. I figure it will outlast me and go to one of the grandkids someday.

Cheap hammers may need to be dressed a tad more; but one of the nice things is you are more likely to modify them to suite yourself than an expensive hammer.  Making a $2 hammer into a straight peen would be a lot easier to me than modifying a $120 hammer the same way...

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I forge primarily with a 2 lb straight peen i forged but before that i used several cheap harbor freight hammers and. A one dollar ball peen from a garage sale. That ball peen is small. But one of my favorite hammers. I also have a 2 oz ball peen i bought with a 2 lb ball peen for like 3$.  They both work well but the small one is better for texturing than forging. I ordered a 100$ rounding hammer that is 2.5lbs because I couldn’t forge one myself at the time and i wanted to support a fellow smith.  This isn’t necessary though. Cheap hammers wok the same. 

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15 minutes ago, GuardedDig2 said:

. I ordered a 100$ rounding hammer that is 2.5lbs because I couldn’t forge one myself at the time and i wanted to support a fellow smith.  This isn’t necessary though. Cheap hammers wok the same. 

That was one of the things that made me buy the hammers and top tools I purchased a while back.  I also wanted to meet another local blacksmith.

Pnut

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I forged a garage sale 32 oz. ball pein into a straight pein for about $0.50 plus propane and a little time. It's nice for light/medium or precise work.  Oh yeah, add another 1/2 hr. to make the tapered slab handle. Really a SWEET hammer.

Frosty The Lucky.

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Since I consider the hardest part of forging a hammer is getting the eye correct, I have a milk crate of used hammer heads sourced cheaply to modify as needed. Some of the larger ones, sledges, we are making into stake anvils.

A-Z in Alma AR, has a box of chinese forged hammer heads, many if not all with the eye not aligned correctly...at a price I could find a good used one for.

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I personally enjoy forging hammers from scratch so I have a few scrapped hammers I’ve messed up on but I’ve gotten fairly good at getting straight eyes. I recently forged a handles hammer eye punch and a hammer drift for better eyes because my old one was square and I was using a Warren 5/8” blacksmith handled punch I put a rough diamond point on. Way too big of a hole. It took forever to punch. There’s also a round punch I made in the picture.  Reforging a hammer is a great way to go though. 

92B5891C-F610-4BE8-BD23-7285EE0E283D.jpeg

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