Squished hammer face

[Donal Harris]

I purchased this hammer from a well known maker. I really like it. The balance is good and it is easy to use. 
 

But one edge on the side of the face has begun to deform. Should I send it back to the maker and ask him to straighten it up and leave a little more hardness in it?

Or should I just do it myself. Assuming the problem isn’t the material, cleaning it up and doing the HT and tempering over again should be fairly easy to do. 
 

I want an Osage Orange handle in it anyway and not the handle it came with. 

[BillyBones]

if it is a well known maker i would guess you paid a pretty penny for that. I would contact the maker. Discuss with him how to go about rectifying your problem. 

[Latticino]

There are different philosophies regarding hammer face hardness.  Some folks want their hammer faces to be diamond hard (the hardest thing in the shop).  Others, like myself, prefer their hammer faces to be pretty hard, just not necessarily harder than the anvil face.  The logic there is that it is a whole lot easier to reface, or even replace, a hammer than it is an anvil.  Unless you have only been using the hammer for a short time, I would be tempted to just reface the hammer to address the slight mushrooming you are seeing.  Up to you of course...

[Charles R. Stevens]

Liability issues have let to poor tools. Hammers and chisels being examples. They just don’t usually make them hard enough because idiots abuse them, then some one (often not the idiot) gets hurt when they spald and shrapnel goes flying. 
I routinely re harden hammer and chisels if they aren’t old. I want hammers to be as hard as my anvil. The exception being the short handles stone masons hammers. They are ment to be soft wile the back of the chisel is hard. 

[Frosty]

I like my hammers just softer than the anvil face but I need to make a couple from mild steel for guys who just can NOT use a hardy without hitting it with the hammer. I get really tired of having to sharpen my hardy every time a beginner uses it. I'd hate to spend much for a hammer soft enough to not damage the hardies. 

This like so much else is a matter of personal preference.

Frosty The Lucky.

[ThomasPowers]

I have a dead soft hammer for students who have no hammer control; but I make them use  a different one when they go to use the hardy.  For me it's a lot easier to zip the hardy edge on the belt grinder than have a deep cut in the face of the soft hammer to deal with.

It's interesting that my old: tools, anvils and hammers have a  range of hardness and I will sometimes choose which to use based on that and what I am doing.

[Frosty]

True but after I sharpened the hardy a couple times I'd turn my back and a beginner would start "sharpening" it for them self.  Yelling at them tends to discourage them and sometimes I'm sorry. I discovered a beginner who has to forge with a hammer they've cut up mercilessly on the hardy learns to use a hardy more quickly. 

Doesn't seem to matter how may times I tell them NOT TO PART the stock on the hardy, they revert to . . . the Mild steel hardy thumper.

Frosty The Lucky.

[Donal Harris]

I cut the head off today. Will try to heat treat it tomorrow. The face files easily. I sent the maker an email today to find out the steel used. 

[gewoon ik]

On 7/30/2022 at 6:03 PM, Frosty said:

True but after I sharpened the hardy a couple times I'd turn my back and a beginner would start "sharpening" it for them self.  Yelling at them tends to discourage them and sometimes I'm sorry. I discovered a beginner who has to forge with a hammer they've cut up mercilessly on the hardy learns to use a hardy more quickly. 

My teacher (ok it is a school) has multiple hardys. Good ones for the last years students. Fast disappearing ones for beginners, who also grind them. 

The good ones are forged pieces. The others are a sharpened piece welded to a square.

[anvil]

If the whole face files easily, it is not hardened properly. Thats why it is mushrooming. If it won't file around the center,but does file and mushroom around the edges it still isn't hardened properly. However, if this is the case, keep dressing it as the edges mushroom, and it may work its way down to good enough. This worked for me on one of my hand made hammers. Its a common problem not getting the edges hard enough. 

Or do like you are doing and find out the type of steel and do it yourself, no matter how many tries it takes. Just reanneal and heat treat from there. It wont hurt the steel, unless you burn it.  You shouldn't have to worry about renormalizing it because normalizing generally happens at a slightly higher temp than annealing. 

For what its worth, I like my hammers a bit softer than my anvil and my hardy tools are made to dress easiest, so I'm not concerned about them. Actually, I've never had a store bought hammer, old or new that has dinged my anvil. 

Strange, but I have never had anyone misuse my hammers or anvils, student or otherwise. So I don't have any "trainer wheel" tools for anyone. No matter the hardness difference, it takes a real serious double handed over the head type of uncontrolled blow to ding either hammer or anvil and if done, seems the rebound cold cocking them between the eyes would solve all issues.   

Lol, I'm curious just how you separate the "wheat from the chaff". Do you screen your students before hand, then assign hammers and anvils accordingly? Or do you assume all is well, then swap tools after they trash your tools after their first blow? I call the latter a day late and a dollar short. I guess you could be real safe and have a "trainer set for all students, then when they "prove their proficiency" they can graduate to the concept of "proper tools for the proper job,,, modified by time in class.   

[ThomasPowers]

Well I sometimes have prior warning from the instructor that sponsors my intro to blacksmithing class. I also watch them as they select their hammer to use and make some swaps at that point. As the first thing they do is taper a sq bar it's hard to totally trash things at that point and I get to see them at work before we go to more skilled processes.

[Frosty]

I learned early I can't keep watch on too many new guys at once so I only work with 3-4 max at a time and they work one at a time on my anvil. After a little while I let them work on both anvils. 

I've had to 86 a couple bad actors but just a couple. Ever.

Frosty The Lucky.

 

[Donal Harris]

It files easily around the edges. A bit less so across the face. I chopped off the handle yesterday and will repeat the heat treatment just as soon as my wife says I can go play again. 

[anvil]

On the hammer that I made and had this problem with, I just used it. The mushrooming was about like yours here. I made the hammer from a willys axle and kept the profile and used it as one of my three rounding hammers.  Each has a different profile and weight. I believe a rounding hammer, contrary to "I saw it on the internet", makes a poor second rate daily driver, but when used as its namesake implies, can't be beat for forging(rounding) concave surfaces.  

[ThomasPowers]

Also helps new blade smiths to get the edges thinner.   I know some smiths  use a tight ring to draw temper further on hammer edges;  what did the maker say?

[Donal Harris]

Nothing yet, but perhaps instead of email, I should try messaging him on Instagram, or just call him. 
 

Tomorrow I will attempt to re-do the HT. Unknown steel. Maybe 4140. Take to just past magnetic and oil quench? Then temper to dark straw and quench in water?

[ThomasPowers]

I'd call if you have the number.  Note that I wouldn't warrantee anything that the user had messed with the heat treat on...

[anvil]

For me, a hammer should be tough. An anvil face should be harder. So I would quench an unknown steel for a hammer in oil, and draw to a blue.

Hard is good for cutting edges and tough is better to keep your hammer, when properly heat treated from mushrooming out. Generally, straw colors are "hard" and the blue range is "tough". 

[Donal Harris]

Still no word from the maker, but as much spam as my gmail account gets, I could have just missed it. The steel for the demo where he made it was provided by the club anyway. That was 4140 I believe.
 

Took me longer than I thought it would to get out there at the forge again, but I took it to what seemed to be reddish orange and allowed it to air cool three times and then quenched in oil after hearing it a fourth time. It is now tempering in my daughter’s oven at what the oven says is 465. I will leave it in for a couple of hours. I should maybe do 500, but I want something just a little harder than blue. 
 

What I should do is just get a handle in it and hang it on the wall. I can get more of his hammers, but getting one I watched him make is likely to never happen again. 

[Donal Harris]

The color turned out just as I was looking for: very dark straw, almost at the point it would begin moving to brown. I think 2 hours was enough, but maybe not. I can’t read the tempering charts. May should have soaked it for 3. 

[Donal Harris]

He got back with me and offered to redo the heat treatment, but it was too late. Assuming my wife hasn’t already spent the money, I plan to buy one of his Modified New Style hammers. Head only. I want to carve my own handle. His are fat enough I could shape it to fit me, but I really like bois d’arc. 

[jlpservicesinc]

Not to sound sarcastic nor judgmental. 

 

Why would you buy a custom hand made hammer from someone that you had to redo the temper on again? 

I'm ignorant in the ways of the world.

 

If I sell something it's got to be all it can be and be up to my standards. 

If it can't be used as a true tool.  It ain't a tool..  

 

It's just a chunk of metal with a hole in it.

 

Anybody can make those for little coin. 

[anvil]

absolutely

[Donal Harris]

On 8/26/2022 at 7:44 AM, jlpservicesinc said:. 

Why would you buy a custom hand made hammer from someone that you had to redo the temper on again? 

I am fairly certain I am the reason the face became squished on one side. I was using it for something I probably should have used a heavier hammer for. Plus the handle is longer than on any other hammer I own and I was holding it about as close to the butt end as I could and swinging way faster than I should have been for someone who doesn’t have the best accuracy with a hammer to begin with.  
 

The right side of the face hit the face of my anvil with about as much force as I could deliver. I am not sure the face of my anvil can be dented even with a center punch. When the edge of the hammer struck the face of the anvil, something had to give. Had the maker not tempered the head as soft as he had, I am pretty sure the head would have shattered. 

The head was one he had rough forged during a demo at our conference last year. I bought it at the auction they have during the conference to recover some of the costs of putting on the conference. I don’t remember how much I paid, but it was easily two or three times what I would have paid for the same on his website. After the auction he told me he would finish it out if I would ship it to him. Having spent two days watching me flail away on the axe head he showed me how to make, it is entirely possible he tempered it softer than normal knowing I was likely to miss my mark and hit the anvil with it. 

Later this afternoon I plan to try rust bluing the head and start on the handle. 
 

 

 

[jlpservicesinc]

What I lack in conversational skills I more than make up for with my stupid comments..   

Enjoy..