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Dominic Greco
03-29-2009, 5:07 PM
I found a piece of 1" dia x 4" long brass stock and have decided to make a plane adjusting hammer out of it. I used the milling machine at work to drill a hole for a handle that is dead center of the brass stock. But after some consideration, I think it's a bit big for a plane hammer. I calculated that it weighs just about 1 lb (0.9927 lbs to be exact!).

Do you think that's a bit heavy for adjusting wooden planes? I looked around online and came up with some articles on making a plane adjusting hammer. Most of them are about 1/2 to 2/3 the weight of the one I have. Before I trim some off each end, I wanted to ask those more experienced with wooden planes what they thought.

Robert Rozaieski
03-29-2009, 5:50 PM
I use a wooden plane adjusting hammer that I made. Brass is fine for adjusting the iron deeper as brass is softer than steel, however, brass is still harder than the wooden plane stock so I would not want to be hitting the wedge or stock with a brass hammer unless you like the hammer mark look ;). Sometimes you have to rap the heel fairly hard to remove an iron that was set tight and I think even brass would damage the wood. YMMV.

Mike Henderson
03-29-2009, 5:54 PM
You can have it both ways. Just put a piece of wood on one end of your brass hammer. Use the brass side to adjust the iron and the wood side to tap on the body.

I used a 3/8" dowel and drilled into the brass head and the wooden insert and glued it with epoxy.

I'd have to go weigh mine but I'm sure it's less than 1lb, maybe 9 oz or so.

Mike

Doug Shepard
03-29-2009, 6:10 PM
I've been using a brass/wood one that LV sells and they list the head at 8 0z.
http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.aspx?c=2&p=46540&cat=1,41182
It works pretty well but it's maybe just a hair on the light side. 9 or 10 0z might be a tad better.

Dominic Greco
03-29-2009, 7:47 PM
Thanks for all the input!

I think the consensus is that a 1lb hammer may be "a bit much". So I'm going to cut it a bit shorter and weigh about half what it is now. As Mike suggested, I'm also going to add a wooden face to one side. That shouldn't be too hard. I just need a suitable piece of end grain hardwood. I'll turn a tenon on one side of the brass and glue that into a hole on the hardwood "plug".

Actually, that's exactly what the hammer tutorial I was following suggested. So I went the long way around to end up back at the beginning!