[TheForge] Re: Wooden Hammer Handles

[Mike Spencer]

> At a CBA demo years ago, Rick Smith drew out a billet of fancy
> pattern welded steel in one or 2 heats using a big hammer ( 6-7#s?
> or more)....It looked like he didn't begin lifting the handle at the
> moment of impact like i usually do, but rather, waited while the
> rebound rotated the handle to a nearly vertical orientation. So when
> he began his lift the hammer head was oddly close to his chest,
> balanced atop the handle.

Yeah, something like that was what I meant when I said, "...with a 5#
hammer unless I use it very differently from the way I swing my
favored 2-1/2# hammer."  I've found that slower and it uses very
different muscles overall.

> He moved a very impressive mass of steel...

Maybe I should practice more with the 5-pounder instead of trying to
avoid it where possible.

> Wish we could run differing styles of hammering through the same
> imaging process.

Yeah.  Me too.  My annual gig at MIT evaporated after '95 and it was a
significant hassle, even then, to arrange and coordinate the use of
the cam and dedicated computer that Kodak had donated to the Edgerton
lab.  Since then, I haven't thought of any way to prevail upon Kodak
or its competitors to provide me with the hardware.  (Suggestions
welcome. :-) It would be a whole lot of fun to do repeated runs with
different smiths, hammers, anvil heights and so on.  Even to shoot the
parts of running mechanical power hammers to tune them.

The Edgerton lab also had a hammer with a built-in accelerometer and
data cable.  When I heard about that I was keen to forge with it but
was informed that it was more on the order of a tack hammer or light
mallet and didn't come even close to being usable for forging iron.
One of the students had it set up in a vise and was firing paint balls
at it for some kind of undergrad physics experiment.


- Mike

-- 
Michael Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada       .~. 
                                                           /V\ 
mspencer at tallships.ca                                     /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/                        ^^-^^