Yvette showed me an amazing metal smithing book a few weeks ago, and one of the projects that has been stuck in my head was how to repair a hammer, or in my case 'how to make a hammer'. She also told me that delrin hammers were very expensive in the stores, which to me became a challenge to make my own. The visuals didn't look all that difficult (honestly I didn't really read the instructions, and now I am regretting it). First thing is first though, I researched what wood to use for hammer handles. At first I would have assumed to use a hardwood maple or walnut, but the more I read online I actually found that the ideal choice was hickory.
Hickory is the perfect wood due to its hardness, but has a certain springiness that maple or walnut does not have. Another characteristic of hickory that is desirable is that it is very straight grained, which means that it will be structurally stronger than maple or walnut. The worst thing that could happen is you hit the hammer handle where it runs perpendicular to the handle and the handle snaps.
I was convinced with hickory being the best choice and was off to the hardware store to pick up a 6' hickory board.
I drew a rough form of my hammer handle making sure to draw in the center line to make sure when shape the handle that it is even.
Uh oh!
While I was cutting out the handles I heard a dreadful sound coming from the back of the bandsaw only to discover that the key block piece that keeps the pully from spinning freely had fallen out! I quickly removed the pulley and belt, re-inserted the key block, and continued my cutting.
All roughed out!
My Dad ran to Midland Plastics to pick up some Delrin to use as the hammer head. I won't mention how much I have invested in all these materials, but I will tell you that it is roughly the cost of one hammer, and I still have plenty of material to make tons of hammers.
I began to file the handles to fit the hand well. Still a long ways away from the finished project but hey, here's to progress!
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