A group of hammers I made

[george wilson]

I posted incredibly miserable pictures of these last year. These are much better.

The chasing hammers have ash chasing style grips,while the "graceful" hammers have regular ball pein type handles of hickory.

They are all lathe turned,of course. I had an unfinished blank head to show also. Its sides need to be milled flat,and the eye drilled and milled oval. The Hammers are all made of tool steel,except for the fatter head. The fat one is for driving engraving chisels along,and is nearly 2" diameter. Its head is mild steel,thoroughly case hardened. The closeup looks rough,but actually the head is quite smooth. The case hardening makes it look rough.

I drew the graceful heads to a fire blue temper. These are for use on silver,not steel. They are still as hard as a saw blade. One hammer has a flat face,the other is curved.

I want to make some cross pein versions of the graceful hammers,and the blank will have its pein forged into a flat cross pein. Then I want to make a last one with the flat pein going parallel with the body.

Amazing how dust you don't even notice shows up under magnification!

[Steve LaFara]

Extraordinary craftsmanship! What type of tools did you use on the lathe to turn these? Any pics of the handles?

[gary Zimmel]

I never tire of seeing your work George. Superb as always. Thanks for the look see..

[george wilson]

I have no photo lights,and didn't like the way the hammers looked from enough distance to see the handles.

These can only be turned freehand, pretty much. Manual metal lathes only do straight lines. HSS wood turning chisels can be used, with a few sharpenings. I have made large steel spinning chucks for the PGA trophies I used to help make by roughing out with the lathe and finishing turning with freehand chisels, just like wood, only more strength needed.

I could post pics of some of the trophies I helped make if anyone would like.

[Jim Neeley]

Awesome work, George!

[mickey cassiba]

Excellent work Mr Wilson! During my years in the machine shops the only'freehand' work was filing and sanding. I imagine with the osha/lawsuit mentality prevalent these days, even attempt at freehand work would cause you to be shown the door. I've done a little brass on my wood lathe, but I'm underpowered even for soft metal.
Thanks for showing these...truly impressive!

[Dan Hintz]

I clicked on the thread thinking "It's a freakin' hammer, how cool can it be?" Boy, was I wrong... very nice looking pieces. Artistic, even...

[Klaus Kretschmar]

Great work as usual!

Klaus

[David Weaver]

I hope you have all of these tools carefully willed so they don't end up at flea markets and on ebay!

(sorry to anyone who thinks that's odd, it's a product of prior conversations - not about wills, but about where all this stuff goes when we disappear)

[george wilson]

Unless my wife is not around they will not get tossed as she will use them. In fact,she already confiscated the chasing hammers years ago!! She now thinks they belong to her jewelry business.

David,you are up early,and seemed up late last night. So was I ,but I could not stay in bed this morning due to back pain.

[Steve LaFara]

Thanks George for the clarification on how they were done. I will have to try that, all be it at a pretty slow speed to start. I would love to see some pictures of the PGA trophies as well.

[David Weaver]

Unless my wife is not around they will not get tossed as she will use them. In fact,she already confiscated the chasing hammers years ago!! She now thinks they belong to her jewelry business.

David,you are up early,and seemed up late last night. So was I ,but I could not stay in bed this morning due to back pain.

I can't remember what I was doing, the mrs. had dibs on most of my evening and I had to sneak on late.

It's doubly nice not only that you've made those hammers, and they are exceptional, I really like the case hardening - how often do you see that outside of reproduction guns anymore? But doubly nice that they are being used authentically, and with purpose, not just as demonstration.

[george wilson]

That case hardening you see on repro guns looks phony. It looks "flame licked" or something. I think you have to at least have a genuine Colt authorized repro to get real case hardening. For sure,Colt didn't make their repros,but we can HOPE they had some quality control over them. I have a Shiloh Sharps 45-70,which is an expensive rifle. It actually has case hardening. I do have a Griswold and Gunnison(sp?) brass frame cap and ball which High Standard claims they actually made years ago. I won't shoot it because the brass frame invariably gets battered by the cylinder,and shoots loose. It has the smoothest action I have ever seen on a repro,though.

The South made brass frame guns as they were easier than steel frame,but they were an emergency measure.

[Derek Cohen]

Coming in a bit late George.

My my my ... those are simply stunning! I would love a couple of pictures of the entire hammer(s) to see the why the handles integrate with the heads.

My compliments on fusing form and function.

Regards from Perth

Derek

[george wilson]

Maybe I can go back and shoot the whole hammer lengths. My wife,who is quite the photographer,says I need a new camera. She claims,probably rightly,that her CELL PHONE takes better pictures than my 3-4 year old Canon SD890 IS. Apparently 3-4 years puts it in the stone age these days. That's what she says is true.

[Andrew Pitonyak]

Maybe I can go back and shoot the whole hammer lengths. My wife,who is quite the photographer,says I need a new camera. She claims,probably rightly,that her CELL PHONE takes better pictures than my 3-4 year old Canon SD890 IS. Apparently 3-4 years puts it in the stone age these days. That's what she says is true.
Newer than my Canon 30D.... been wanting to replace that for a few years now.

My first thought when I saw those pretty hammers was........ "how you gonna pull a nail with that" :-)

I take it that you do silver smithing. Very cool!

[george wilson]

We(mostly my wife) has a jewelry business,Bijou Graphique. I make the tooling,and have made some of the more complex models. Dawn has gotten to be a much better metal worker over her time with me,and I haven't made models for a while. Mostly I make parts for the models,such as stone cups,and a few other things.

[Todd Willhoit]

George,
The maker's mark you use on both your metal and wood productions is very nice. Can you tell us what tools you use for the stampings?

[george wilson]

Unless they are stamped individually with letter and number stamps with serifs that I have collected over the years,they are stamped with 1 piece stamps. I get them made by Buckeye Engraving Co. You can choose from any font you can find on a computer. My name was $75.00 several years ago. I don't know the increases by now. You can actually speak with the owner of the shop. They are great to work with. They will make the cutting angles for metal,or thinner for use in wood. I'd advise metal if you can only get 1 ,as they still stamp wood just fine. We got wood stamps for the folding rules,and they really cut the boxwood very crisply,no tearing at all.

[Scott T Smith]

I never tire of seeing your work George. Superb as always. Thanks for the look see..

+1. Thanks for sharing; inspiring as always.

[Jeff Wittrock]

Beautiful hammers George. I have always loved the appearance of case hardened steel.
I have always wanted to try on some small parts.

[george wilson]

You don't get the mottled appearance by just case hardening. It is done when you quench the case hardened part in a special quench. It's late,and I'm tired,and can't recall the formula. Google it. The only thing I can recall is a little copper sulfate.

I used the formula early on,but we had a 5 gallon brine quench at work that had been used a lot. It had PBC No-Scale crud in the bottom,and who knows what else as we used it several years. For some reason,it would yield case hardening colors exactly like that used on Colt single action revolvers!! A rather sedate blend of shades of gray and blue,not the gaudy multi colors you see on some guns. So,we just used that.

I haven't case hardened anything for color effect since retiring,so must make up my own dirty brine quench here!!

There is a different case hardening appearance that is found on some smaller steel antiques. It is just a bright,silvery,almost nickel plated surface. It is case hardened wrought iron or steel that has had extra carbon added to the surface,and quenched to harden. The high carbon content made the extra bright surface when polished. Wrought iron when plain is quite gray looking. To people in the 18th.C.,the brightness was a treat.

[Ray Gardiner]

Hi George,

Beautiful work, I really like the look and style of the big one, did you make oval holes for the eye? Although I can't see the end other of the handles, I imagine they are the bulbous chasing hammer style with a nice springy handle action.

Regards
Ray

[george wilson]

Yes,the chasing hammers have the thin,bulbous handles, I took a bunch more pictures yesterday. Every one out of focus WITH the tripod!! And WITH lights,too!!. I'll try again,using the delay click feature on the camera. Should have done that in the first place,unless the digital cameras isn't focusing right(which had happened before with digital cameras.)