[TheForge] Wooden Hammer Handles

Mon Jan 12 16:15:35 EST 2009

It was a big hammer Peter.

Peter Hirst wrote:
> Rereading this convinces me:  note from this description that Rick was not 
> using the heaviest hammer he could lift, but he was moving it as fast as he 
> could "Then he shoved it straight up as high as he could reach on his tip 
> toes
>> before jerking it back down to start the down stroke".
> 
> He is getting maximum energy through hammer speed, not weight.
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "ries" <ries at riesniemi.com>
> To: "Blacksmithing List Sponsored by ABANA" <theforge at mailman.qth.net>
> Sent: Sunday, January 11, 2009 11:54 AM
> Subject: Re: [TheForge] Wooden Hammer Handles
> 
> 
>> That Rick is a sneaky little feller- he's stronger than he looks.
>> He has to be, to keep up with his students- He runs the only graduate
>> level blacksmithing course in the USA, about 7 of em right now
>> (students, that is) along with another60 to 80 undergrads.
>> I spent a weekend with em this fall, and them kids who want to be
>> blacksmiths bad enough to pay big bucks to study it at a major
>> university- they are a wild, tattooed, pierced, hard drinking, heavy
>> hammer swinging bunch. And thats just the girls.
>> The boys,  well, look out.
>> And Rick keeps up with, in fact, usually surpasses em, in just about
>> every category. Although I didnt see him riding a hand forged
>> motorcycle, although I wouldnt put it past him.
>> He was up later, and then up earlier, than any of those 20 somethings,
>> and liquid consumption on his part seemed to run equal as well.
>>
>> Ries
>>
>>
>> On Jan 8, 2009, at 10:56 PM, Peter Fels & Phoebe Palmer 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). He
>> struck so many hard blows for such a sustained period that the
>> spectators started rubbing their arms and shoulders unconsciously.
>> He was not a real big fellow and i was amazed.
>> 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.
>> Then he shoved it straight up as high as he could reach on his tip toes
>> before jerking it back down to start the down stroke. Almost seemed like
>> he was hanging from the handle at the apex.
>> He moved a very impressive mass of steel...
>>
>> No Jerry, it wasn't Handel's 4th movement...he did that in private..pf
>>
>> Mike Spencer wrote:
>>> "David Childress" <trollkeep at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> My first blacksmithing instructor claimed that handles should not
>>>> matter.  If the hammer head was below your shoulder you should just
>>>> be
>>>> guiding it.
>>> That's interesting.
>>>
>>> I had a very clear notion of just what my hammer and I were doing
>>> during a blow and even wrote up a description for someone once.  I was
>>> really quite sure that I had an excellent intuitive grasp of what has
>>> happening.
>>>
>>> Then I got a chance to shoot some high-speed images of hammering and
>>> discovered that I was completely wrong.  See:
>>>
>>>   http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/hammer.html
>>>
>>> and in particular:
>>>
>>>   http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/vec.html
>>>
>>> where measurement taken from the images indicate that the hammer head
>>> is still accelerating below shoulder height.  Those images were made
>>> at a time when I was regularly doing a lot of hammering and was as
>>> much in "top form" as I have ever been.
>>>
>>>> when the head hits the only force should be from the
>>>> change of direction.
>>> Allowing a large margin of error for possibly sloppy measurements, the
>>> vector diagram suggests that's true only near the very end of the
>>> hammer's flight path.
>>>
>>> I've never been strong enough to work for very long with a 5# hammer
>>> unless I use it very differently from the way I swing my favored
>>> 2-1/2# hammer.  At a demo, I was once dared to prove I could do a nice
>>> upset right-angle bend with properly radiused inside and sharp
>>> outside, in 1/2" x 2" and accurately positioned at a predetermined
>>> place.  I did it easily in one heat with a 5# hammer but I couldn't
>>> keep that up for very many heats.
>>>
>>>> He believed in heavy hammers and gravity, your strength should be in
>>>> lifting the thing up to drop it again.
>>> There was a blacksmith in Lunenburg, NS, an elderly guy when I met him
>>> circa 1970, who did essentially that.  He used what I took to be a 5#
>>> or possibly even heavier (diagonal-peen on one face) hammer with a
>>> very short handle [1].  He raised the hammer to about shoulder height
>>> directly over the anvil and brought it down more or less in a straight
>>> line onto the workpiece, more pushing it or dropping it than swinging
>>> it.  I thought it an odd and counterproductive style but he was an old
>>> guy, had been doing it all his life and was still getting orders for
>>> knives by the dozen.
>>>
>>> Another aspect was that he was forging filleting knife blades --
>>> rather broad and thin -- for the guys at the fish plant, for which he
>>> may have figured out a particular style that worked for him, the
>>> particular material and the product.  I never saw him forge anything
>>> else as he passed away before I got around to paying him another
>>> visit.  He might have done quite differently forging, say, graplin
>>> flukes or ring bolts.
>>>
>>> FWIW,
>>> - Mike
>>>
>>>
>>> [1] Or, for Frosty's benefit, haft or helve.  But only scythes have
>>>    snaths and nibs, okay Frosty? :-)
>>>
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>>
>> Ries Niemi
>> Industrial Artist
>> http://www.riesniemi.com/
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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