mnidoone Posted March 16 Share Posted March 16 So I'm super amateur at all these skills. I've been in the craft for less then 4 months (cumulative time). I've just enjoyed challenging myself and trying to make usable tools. What you see here is a rail road track head (i guess you would call it, the thick portion that the train wheels would ride on) turned into a straight peen (so far my all time favorite style of hammer.) Please understand this was very much a project i committed myself to no matter what happens, seeing it through unless it catastrophically failed. So its uglier then the back side of a hyena. I've learned alot of lessons from this project I'm going to use moving forward. But overall please rate my hammer. Are there any secrets you learned that made a better more balanced looking hammer? Some lessons i learned. 1) if your going to use a press and a punch make sure the punch is straight before you start jamming it in. 2) when using a power hammer to make a peen, (pein?) take your time to get precise hits. 3) make sure you have a drift for your handle style (thats the biggest reason for the large gaps in between metal and wood.) But all together I enjoyed the process and am happy with what I made. Side note. This isn't 100% complete. Still need to finish sanding the handle and then fixing it with wedges and glue. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George N. M. Posted March 16 Share Posted March 16 Welcome aboard from 7500' in SE Wyoming. Glad to have you. If you put your general loction in your profile we will be able to give better answers to your queries. A surprising number of issues are controlled by geography. Also, we may be able to suggest local blacksmithing groups and you may be within visiting distance of other smiths. There is nothing better than learning from someone with more experience. I was a lone eagle for the first dozen or 15 years of smithing. It was pre-internet and all I had for instruction were books from the library and my own mistakes. This is a world wide forum and we don't know if you are in Lapland, Tasmania, or Kansas. Re your hammer: Yes, it is obviously a first try but it will work. You ought to be able to compensate for the irregular eye by some custom work on a handle blank. You may need to start with a plain chunk of wood (hickory is a good material but other hardwoods will work) to come up with a shape that will fit the eye. The one thing that bothers me a bit is that in the last picture the head does not appear to be at 90 degrees to the handle. This will likely result in the hammer head hitting your hot metal crooked and that is not a good thing. You may need to drive a wedge in the front of the eye from the bottom to rotate the head a bit. "By hammer and hand all arts do stand." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mnidoone Posted March 16 Author Share Posted March 16 Its not sitting very 90 its off kilter a little bit, but I'm working on the handle more. The handle is the biggest thing throwing it off I need to work it a little more on the front end. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frosty Posted March 17 Share Posted March 17 Welcome aboard mnidoone, glad to have you. There are plenty of top flight smiths in Tn, a number on Iforge, I believe there is a list of blacksmith organizations under the Iforge front page. Of course someone might give you a shout out, they're a friendly bunch. I'm a mostly self taught hobbyist who only very rarely makes something for money so that means we have "extreme amateur" in common! There are a number of experienced hammer makers here of which I'm not one, I'm sure someone with the experience will speak up when they check in. Covid really changed how quickly folks speak up so be patient please. Frosty The Lucky. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mnidoone Posted March 18 Author Share Posted March 18 No worries frosty, appreciate it! I know only a couple on Tennessee area, mitch owner of little dipper forge (can't recall his last name, but i believe hes the founder of an organization here in TN.), Robin Duane owner of healing flames forge and Kim Breed. They are all fairly local and all have offered me some tips or advice at one point or another. (P.s. thanks for all your help that you didn't know you gave me on burner design. I was just about to commit to building one of your burners.) The hammer itself turned out much nicer after properly fitting the handle George. Well.. proper for me at least. Not the greatest fit, but its snug and solid. I actually used it to whack a power hammer die I'm trying to forge out right now. The hammer is a little unbalanced on the rebound sometimes because of how off center the eye is, but altogether is a perfectly functional hammer, and definitely ready to be used at my makeshift home forge. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frosty Posted March 18 Share Posted March 18 There are only a couple changes in the T burner since those plans were posted here. They're in the brass fitting between the mig tip gas jet and the copper supply line. The change simplified and made it stronger. If you have questions during the build give a shout. Frosty The Lucky. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Latticino Posted March 18 Share Posted March 18 One of the first steps in forging a hammer head for me is to make the tooling necessary to forge it efficiently. For me, at minimum, this is a hammer eye punch and a hammer eye drift. There are a bunch of different designs for each, but the one recommendation I have is that you size your hammer eye drift with a crossection and taper than matches standard commercial heads. If you then use it from both ends, you will get an hourglass shape that will fit securely on a handle and be able to be wedged. There are also some tricks to keeping the eye punch correctly centered in the billet: Some folks predrill two holes all the way through the billet at either end of the eye before any hot work. Essentially then you use a large slitting punch to remove the web between the holes. Some folks just drill a single hole at the center of the eye that works as a guide for a hammer eye punch that has a center finding face (see the Brazeal style hammer eye punches). This avoids the offset from each side of the eye that can make punching the eye a challenge. Some put a deep centerpunch on each side of the eye to act as a locator (see above). Make sure you look for the center of the "swell" when you flip the billet and start to work the other side as one of the punches will get a bit washed out while you are punching the original side. If you have a coal forge and can selectively heat one side of the eye, you can try to correct a thinner side by heating the thick one when you go to drift the eye. That can even the eye out, but may twist the face orientation a little (easily corrected either hot or cold). Make sure you rotate the billet 180 degrees every couple of strikes to help you punch perpendicular to the face of the eye in both longitudinal and latitudinal orientations. Unless you are using a hydraulic press to punch the eye, ergonomics work against you in punching truly perpendicular. What you have made looks more like a handled top fuller than a hammer to me. However, correctly heat treated, it will likely work for either role. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mnidoone Posted March 18 Author Share Posted March 18 I never would of thought of predrilling. Thats an awesome idea, thank for that! I did do a fairly good prepunch mark. It was about 1\4 in deep, I'll explain in the following line why it STILL failed (user error lol) I don't have a coal forge. I was using the ribbon forge my mentor uses. Hes prohibited from using coal because of the zoning commission for his non profit. We did use his hydraulic press, and a not so straight and older chisel as a punch. It was the idea of one of the other guys which i figured, if it worked it would be great. Worse case scenario it would be totally blown up. It didn't have a catastrophic failure, but it did screw up. So after that i just settled with if i can make a USABLE hammer I'll be happy. I can definitely see it looking more like a fuller then a straight peen hammer, but no matter how hard I tried, i could not figure out how to temper it enough, or anneal to retreat it. So i settled with it being a hammer. Which in all honesty after finishing the handle and using it, I'm really happy with it overall (besides the occasional unbalanced rebound.) its a little harder then i would like, so i just kind of have to feel it out, and test it on some hardened scrap to make sure its not going to projectile some shards of steel. Before I try my next one I'm going to take a small piece off and really play with it to find the tempering and annealing parameters. Don't know what steel it actually is but its not the typical 1084. It almost seems to act like an air hardening tool steel. On a side note though, i might try and make a hot cut top tool out of the second piece. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mnidoone Posted March 18 Author Share Posted March 18 On 3/16/2024 at 5:59 PM, George N. M. said: The one thing that bothers me a bit is that in the last picture the head does not appear to be at 90 degrees to the handle. This will likely result in the hammer head hitting your hot metal crooked and that is not a good thing. You may need to drive a wedge in the front of the eye from the bottom to rotate the head a bit. I'll try to get pictures today, but it took just a little sanding work to correct this issue, as well as a pretty sizeable wedge. Theres still a small gap present at the bottom, but thats likely because of the bad drifting which was a result of the 2 off center eye punches that i connected by a small diameter punch. For latticino, i definitely forgot to mention. I 100% should of prepped more tools before trying this, but I didn't know what I didn't know, and now I do. I'm currently making a power hammer die that will make a much cleaner eye this time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
swedefiddle Posted March 18 Share Posted March 18 Good Morning, mni Welcome to our world. The best Teacher is to pay attention to our "OOPS" and learn what the material is telling us. There is no failure, if you are learning. I learned from Tom Clark (RIP) to take the time and set up the blank with a small square, center punch and either 2 or 3 small drilled holes. Jennifer has a video here about a Handled Cold Cut she just made. She didn't predrill and she shows how to correct for an uncentered hole. She also shows how to create an oval Handle Hole by punching the hole with a Round Punch and then ................. 'watch the Video'. Enjoy the Journey, there is no Destination but it all matters!!! Neil Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jlpservicesinc Posted March 20 Share Posted March 20 Swedefiddle, you beat me to it. Wanna forge a hammer.. Watch the video on making a Hot set or Handled hot chisel. Forging an accurate eye in is not difficult.. The hardest part is where to place the hammer eye hole for weight balance.. But if you forge the peen first it becomes a no brainer since one should ideally know what they want for balance in the hammer. I have great respect for "Brian Brazeal" and his method of hammer making popularized by everyone and their Grandmother.. I'm not a huge fan of slot punching unless its needed for thin metal. Unless you are using thin metal slotting and punching for hammer eyes is way over rated and you need a lot of extra tooling. If you punch the eye round and ovalize it, it's a 2 step process and can have a finished hammer in just over an hour depending on hammer size.. There is no reason to drill multiple holes.. Draw out the peen to the desired size, cool off the piece slowly, drill one smallish hole (THE SIZE OF YOUR FIRST PUNCH)where you want to run your first punch thru, then follow it up with larger sizes until you see the hammer handle eye size you like.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mnidoone Posted March 24 Author Share Posted March 24 Definitely wish i would of forged the peen first. Would of made the balancing and overall length of the peen a little less.. elongated? Appreciate all the advice of ideas and where to look. Got some reading and watching before my next attempt Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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