Hi every body!
Thank you so much for joining me!
This is Alec Steele here for this little tutorial video about how to make and fit a hammer handle.
We will be using an inch by inch and a quarter blank of ash wood, 14 inches long.
Hickory is ideal!
The grinder i will be using has a 2hp motor and turns at 30m/s.
You can equally use a rasp or an angle grinder to achieve the same results!
The 2hp motor gives me just enough oomph for the scale of work I do!
I am going to be using a 40 grit ceramic belt.
Ceramic belts are the top spec belt and last an incredible amount of time when grinding
steel.
I first use my belts on wood, when they get too clogged up for wood I transition to using
them on steel.
We begin by taking off the diagonal.
I take one cut, creating a facet then begin to work on the corners of the facets.
This will reduce our surface area of contact efficiently so we can begin to round it off
and create a capsule cross section after doing this on all four sides!
I like my hammer handles simple and without any swells.
This handle design proves to be very comfortable.
I learnt these techniques of handling and interpreted them to my liking from Brian Brazeal,
while studying during my travels for a good while.
I will put a chamfer on the end I don’t want to fit in my eye,.
The Chamfer stops the wood wanting to break as
easily!
At this stage I will go back to the hammer eye and ask myself, is the handle proportionally
correct and which sides to I need to taper further!?
The reason there is a taper to our hammer taper is because there is a taper to our hammer
eye.
The reason we have a taper to our hammer eye is because we have a taper on our drift.
We want the handle to fit 1/8-1/4” and we can then begin to cut a slot 2/3 the length
of the hammer cheeks into thew wood.
I like hacksaw blades because they are thinner than a conventional panel saw.
Make sure your cut is nice and square to avoid premature breakage of the handle!
The larger blade of a panel saw can mean you need to put a larger wedge in and the hammer
will drive in too far.
You can also use a thin angle grinder cutoff wheel.
However I wouldn’t want to endorse it too much, I do not know how safe it is.
I have seen it done.
They are only about 1mm thick so there is a very small amount of kerf.
After having done the roughing out on a 40 grit belt, I will go ahead and move to an
80 grit belt.
This belt is a zirconium belt, a their down from ceramic and a definite step up from aluminium
oxide.
I don’t do too much work on the 80 and 120 grit belts I use so i don’t find the need
to step up into the price range of ceramic belts as i do all my hogging on the 40 grit
belt.
I will be using the slack belt, this particular grinder doesn’t have much slack belt area
but it helps smooth off the facets and make it softer on the hand.
Using the hump tools I will oil up our handle and drive it in.
Did you see that the hammer eye had a radiuses edge?
I hope you did!
The reason it was radiuses was so that we don’t get any splinters of wood coming out
from the eye area.
We want to take our time and make sure the hammer is coming on nice and square.
If it is way off, it is likely because the hammer was drifted wrong.
If it is slightly wrong, you can simply hit it on the side at an appropriate anvil with
the wooden mallet.
The way I will drive a hammer with an equally proportioned face and peen.
This is a rounding hammer with a round and a flat die, is I will use the inertia of the
head of steel and hit the but end of the hammer with the mallet, sucking up the hammer eye
onto the handle.
I then want to work until it wont go any further.
We want that wood thoroughly compressed.
Once it goes no further, I will go back to the grinder and shape it down till there is
only a quarter inch protruding.
The way i make my wedges is I cut them out with a bandsaw whenever I have access to them.
You can also make them by cutting it with an axe, whittling with an angle grinder or
grinding it straight out of a piece of ash on the belt grinder.
this is the stage where you will really want to watch your fingers.
after saturating the wedge in oil again, I will begin to drive it in.
Nice and slow at first as we centre it.
Avoiding breaking it as it is very fragile at this thinness.
Once it is set I will flip it over.
By flipping it over it means an errant hammer blow is less lfileluy to fracture the wedge
- something we would really want to avoid.
there are remedies to it, however if it is too dire, we would have to cut the hammer
head off and start again.
For aesthetic reasons I will grind a nice radius to the top of the hammer handle above
the hammer eye after having fitted the wooden wedge.
These steel wedges are made out of 8mm or 10mm round (5/16 or 3/8 round stock) a little
chisel taper with a hot cut hardy cut ring around the middle.
I will drive it down and then I will use a punch to set it down just slightly below the
cheeks.
Trying not to drop it too many time!
Making sure that punch sits that wedge just below the cheeks!
Again, this is crosswise to the wood.
Once it is just slightly below the cheeks, it is not going to come out any time soon.
Daniel lea has a terrific video on youtube detailing why he likes to char his hammer
handles and this was the inspiration about why I started doing it too.
It smooths off the surface and is ready to use after a lick of oil!
Guys, thank you so so much for making it this far!
I really appreciate your watching!
It has been a pleasure having you here!
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Bye bye!