[TheForge] Wooden Hammer Handles

[Peter Fels & Phoebe Palmer]

Mike Spencer wrote:
>> 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.
With a normal swing, a hammer that big would have me in tennis elbow 
agony in about 10 minutes i bet.
> 
>> 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.
Technique is gonna be critical for that.
When i need to use a sledge with one hand, i tend to choke up on it and 
lay the handle along my forearm to cheat on the lift.
> 
>> Wish we could run differing styles of hammering through the same
>> imaging process.
> 
> Yeah.  Me too.  My annual gig at MIT evaporated after '95
Ungrateful stinkers!

  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.
Probably all obsolete now and available at auction, if we only knew where.
> 
> 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.
Whatsamattah them? Tack hammer...pfffft.
> 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.
Giggle...higher uses, eh?
> 
> 
> - Mike
>