Three new hammers

[Shawn Pixley]

Over the last couple of days, I made three new brass hammers with cherry handles.

One is a little plane hammer with a nine ounce head (1" dia.)
The medium size one is just under 16 ounces (1-1/4" dia.)
The mondo hammer is 2-1/2 pounds (1-3/4" dia.)

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The handles are all shaped relative to how I like and use hammers. The grip is probably thicker than most would like. The chisel hammer is shorter as I like to grip up and sometimes around the head. I also don't polish them much with the feeling that non polished is less likely to slip with a mis-hit and scratches do not show up as much.

[Steve Voigt]

Nice! I like the contrasting wedges.

[Raymond Fries]

Very Nice indeed!!

I am sure they will be a pleasure to use.

[Matthew N. Masail]

look very comfortable and useful! lovely!

[Brian Holcombe]

Gorgeous! Very nice work.

[Malcolm Schweizer]

Well done! Where do you get your brass stock?

[Shawn Pixley]

Well done! Where do you get your brass stock?

Ebay. There are sellers there where you can specify what you want and they'll cut to size and ship. I got these three pieces for under 20$. I true, bevel, dome the ends and drill out the stock to make the heads. I built a nice litlle jig for this (alligned holds in scrap stock).

[george wilson]

I have found that buying from Ebay costs more than buying from Enco when they have free shipping-which is nearly every month now(I think they are struggling to stay in business,just my own theory). But,of course,you have to buy 6 foot lengths-which I do not mind buying.

[David Weaver]

Ebay. There are sellers there where you can specify what you want and they'll cut to size and ship. I got these three pieces for under 20$. I true, bevel, dome the ends and drill out the stock to make the heads. I built a nice litlle jig for this (alligned holds in scrap stock).

Can't complain about three brass hammers exactly the way you want them to be for under $20. I like the level of finish - tidy but not jewelry - maybe out of inability (on my part) to keep tools nice, clean and ding free.

[Ralph Juarros]

Those are beautiful hammers - heads and handles. Nicely done. Ralph

[Jim Koepke]

Nice hammers.

Looks like as much fun as making one out of wood.

jtk

[Shawn Pixley]

George, I know what you mean. I unfortunately don't have room to keep much stock around metal or wood. For the hammers, the rate difference wasn't material. I can imagine your situation being different.

[Shawn Pixley]

Can't complain about three brass hammers exactly the way you want them to be for under $20. I like the level of finish - tidy but not jewelry - maybe out of inability (on my part) to keep tools nice, clean and ding free.

I toyed with polishing them up, but then realized the would have some sort of bench rash in short order.

When I think of this, it's odd. My planes don't get bench rash as I am quite careful laying them on their side when not in my hand or put away. Maybe I need to apply this discipline more generally.

[David Weaver]

I toyed with polishing them up, but then realized the would have some sort of bench rash in short order.

When I think of this, it's odd. My planes don't get bench rash as I am quite careful laying them on their side when not in my hand or put away. Maybe I need to apply this discipline more generally.

It's a tax on using nice tools, I think. A personal tax. I hate getting a big ding in something pristine, but something that I've made that's not such, I can just file it out and never feel too bad about it. My hammers are terrible looking, except for the couple that have polished faces for things like striking saw plates. The rest of them look like a bag of forged irons with no head covers. when you ding one of those, you can think..."wow...i'm glad I didn't polish those" :)

[Winton Applegate]

When I worked at the bronze fine art sculpture foundry I asked the owner to price out some brass stock for some things I wanted to make. I meeeeeeaaaaan wouldn't I get a pretty decent price piggy backing that onto a big order of bronze ingots ?
? ? ? ?
When he told me that the few sticks I wanted was going to cost like three hundred dollars I picked up my jaw off his desk and slunk out of the office. Back then three hundred dollars looked much bigger than it does now, for some reason.

I was credited so many ingots and free pours for every month I worked there.
I never took advantage of it.
I was going to make up some wood models (or wax) and pour me some bronze planes but then the place went out of business before I could do that.

When I started there we had tons of business too. It was crazy.
alack and alas

The photo is my LN skew I bought later with a bunch of cut off sprues and gates I took home from the foundry. (good paper weights).

During the process they are lost wax tunnels that take the molten bronze from the top cup and main mast out into various areas of the ceramic shell mold and or allow air to exit from the mold. Once the metal cools and the ceramic shell is broken off the gates and sprue tunnels end up filled with solid bronze becoming round and square bars on the casting and are cut off with a chop saw with a big abrasive disc.

[george wilson]

Yes,it is true that brass hammers will soon get all scratched and beaten up soon enough. I made several brass hammers over the years,finishing some of them nicely to no lasting avail. I ought to post one I made which is a nice design. I haven't because it is now so beaten up. Some of you might benefit from looking past the scarred head,and to the design itself. I'll see if I can get to it.