Hammer Time!

We have been making a few hammers just for fun. The heads are made from O-1 steel hack sawed, turned on the lathe and filed to shape. The eye is drilled out on a mill/drill machine, They are then heated red hot and quenched in peanut oil. After cooloing they are polished a bit so you can see then metal and then heated at the center of the head until the head and pein reach straw color and are quenched again in peanut oil. This gives the head a diferential hardening with the center being softer than the head and pein. The handles are made from hickory that fell in a neighbors yard during a wind storm. I turned them on the lathe to get the general profile and then shaped them to more of an oval in cross section with spokeshave, rasp and card scraper. Natural Watco for a finish. I prefer a handle with very little finish on it. These are great little hammers, we made up a miniature Hammerschlagen game to test them out. We are calling it Nageltreffen, you pound in the nails with the cross pein, everybody gets one hit per turn as you go around in a circle. The winner gets their nail in first, a great game to play with your favorite beverage!