More About Hammer Care

While thinking about hammers some thoughts came back to me from over 30 years ago when I first read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values. It is one of the few books I have read more than once. It explores the notion of quality from the perspectives of romanticism and rationality. It seems to conclude that striving to combine the views may result in the greatest satisfaction. I suppose it appealed to me because I regard some concepts such as art/craft metaphorically as poles of a bar magnet. The poles can be stretched very far apart yet the field is never broken. Art isn’t worth much unless crafted well and craft is worth much is not artful.

So part of any project is forming the creative vision of the tactical goal and part is planning the strategic approach. I was thinking about an extension of the “Choosing a Hammer” ideas and the maintenance issues crept in.

It didn’t take long for me to learn to treat my forging hammers with special care and not use them for demolition, chipping slag, driving and stamping which are better accomplished with hammers whose face polish isn’t as critical. Appropriate segregation of use for each hammer is a starting point for maintenance.

Keeping the head solidly connected to the handle hasn’t been any problem for me since I switched to the Gorilla super glue bonding technique.

With use the handles of my forging hammers get worn slick and hard to grip so I lightly sand them to increase the friction. I like the flexible pads about 1/4” thick and 4.5” x 5.5”. Some handles have been spray painted for identification and that seems to do about the same thing as sanding.

The faces of the frequently used hammers get dressed about monthly. Sometimes I have to use a zirconia flap wheel or sanding belt but usually only the silicon carbide wheel and hard felt wheel with chromium oxide buffing compound will do the job.

With the tools in good shape I can turn my imagination loose to do some creating.

http://www.persimmonforge.com/

Very Sharp or Very Dull

This phrase occurs to me from time to time. I heard it used by a demonstrator at a conference. Unfortunately I can’t recall that person who said blacksmithing tools generally fall into two categories, the very sharp and the very dull. I also recall a blacksmith who emphasized the importance of keeping punches sharp. These phrases usually come back to me when I’m dressing a tool face or making a new tool or perhaps relieving the edges on a die.

It is pretty obvious that cutting becomes fullering at some ambiguously fine line. Hammers, too, are essentially fullers until the face radius is zero in which case they become flatters.

Neither dull cutting edges or sharp fullering edges are very useful. What ever the working surface radius it seems to work best when highly polished. That is where the progressive smoothing from coarse wheel grinding to belt sanding to silicon carbide wheel preliminary polishing to hard felt wheel and buffing compound finish polishing is important. The highly polished surface seems desirable no matter whether it’s a face tool or and edge tool.

The forging atmosphere is a corrosive one. I can easily see that the rust forms on steel surfaces fastest in the forge room. Every spring die which was once polished is today rusty because it has been affected by the humidity and the chemicals in the coal smoke. It’s just not practical to keep all the tool faces mirror bright so it’s always a matter of thinking through the work process and deciding what is “good enough.”

http://www.persimmonforge.com/

The Tumbler Room

The center of the room is occupied by a 16” x 60” tumbler on a timer switch and filled with about 100 pounds of steel balls and small scrap drops serving as the polishing aggregate. This will clean, deburr and polish steel in about 15 minutes. The hood with tarp is to help collect and contain dust.

A garage door opens to a chain hoist that slides along an “I” beam 13’ above. Usually there is a 30 gallon scrap barrel hanging from it ready to go to the recycle dump.

On the west wall is the paint and patina supply area and a 30” diameter 6’ tall hardware carrousel. A 5” bandsaw is mounted on a stand so I can cut small pieces while working at tabletop height.

On the south wall is a steel storage rack where I store nonferrous metals and steel drops. I reconstitute steel scrap into approximately 6’ lengths by tack welding. These short pieces have been through the tumbler and joined and organized in the PVC tubes by dimension so I have easy access when I need just a short piece of material. A 14” chop saw is on a moveable stand.

On the north wall is a workbench set up as a tool making station. I use this mostly for making tooling to use under the pedal hammer. Along the row there is a 6” bench grinder, a 1” belt sander, a bench grinder with one 3M deburring wheel and one hard felt wheel with chromium oxide buffing compound for polishing, and finally a bench grinder modified to run a partially used up deburring wheel with no guard around it and a table saw type of setup using a partially used up blade from a 14” chop saw. Underneath is a storage shelf and small refrigerator.

Next I’ll describe the loft and outdoor areas.

http://www.persimmonforge.com/