Here is a hammer I recently got. It

Hot eye chisel. Think of it as a hardie on a stick.

Looks like a heavy duty cold cut. We used to make them at the steel mill were I apprenticed.We made them for millwrights to use out in the various mills.The cutting end is too blunt for a hot cut, but is made to withstand use with a sledge hammer when cold cutting.

I'd definately go with a cold set, although I've seen hot sets that blunt (never thought they should be though).

looks like it was made from a splitting wedge :)

Could it be used as a hot cut? After sharpening, of course.

It will cut well enough without sharpening, but a little rust removal and dressing the edge would be approprate.

id say dress the edge wire brush it soak the head an first bit of handle for a bit than put it to use as a cold cut it is probably not the right kind of steel to be made into a hot cut

Hot, cold, chisel, hot set, cold set.... as you can see there are various names for basically the same thing. Hot cutting handled chisels tend to be thinner than the cold variety, preferences vary. Here is version on EBay that is a pretty well photographed example of what I would consider heads that are a bit thick for two hot cuts.

The reason that hot cuts have a curve to the edge is so that you can "walk" the hot cut along a line and have one continuous cut. Without the curved edge, it is more difficult to have one continuous clean cut.

NICE! HUGE VINTAGE BLACKSMITH CUTTER HAMMER HEAD TOOL - eBay (item 120344565193 end time Dec-10-08 20:48:01 PST)

Edited December 8, 200817 yr by UnicornForge