How many hammers?

[Matt Lau]

For the past few weeks, I've had the pleasure of chatting with Stan regarding gennou and chisels.
He recommends pairing the right hammer to the chisel.

A few nights ago, I read about the ancient Chinese using just one hammer for everything.

How many (and what) hammers/mallets do you guys recommend?

[Jim Koepke]

I kind of wince at the idea of using steel on a wood handled chisel. They are called jointer's mallets or carver's mallets for a reason.

If someone wants to use brass or steel on their own chisels, that is okay by me, just don't do it to my chisels.

If a chisel can not do the work being driven by a wooden mallet, perhaps it is time to take it to the sharpening bench.

jtk

[nima hadavi]

Its not always force that warrant the desire for use of a steel or brass mallet. I personally am on the brass side of the fence as I prefer the "solid" resonance acquired from a brass mallet. I use a very light swing and allow the 8 oz mallet to carry its momentum to the chisel. matching the harmonics of the wood being worked and using the chisel almost as a tuning fork.

As to the OP's original question, I use an 8 oz Brass, a Nylon and rubber double ended, 16 and 32 oz beech hammers, and a quality rubber dead blow in the 48 oz range.

That is just my two cents. Everyone works differently.

[Stanley Covington]

I kind of wince at the idea of using steel on a wood handled chisel. They are called jointer's mallets or carver's mallets for a reason.

If someone wants to use brass or steel on their own chisels, that is okay by me, just don't do it to my chisels.

If a chisel can not do the work being driven by a wooden mallet, perhaps it is time to take it to the sharpening bench.

jtk

Jim:

I do not know what kind of chisels you use, but the only chisels I motivate with a steel hammer are Japanese chisels with hooped handles. I have more of those than you can spend a long time shaking a stick at, and have never broken one. Of course, as Matt intimated, I match the hammer to the chisel.

I once built three timber bridges for the US Forest Service using an assortment of Western framing chisels supplied by the USFS and a Stanley 16oz finish hammer because that was all that was available at the time and place. The 2" chisel was a Sorby framer, a monster chisel with a ridiculously long wooden handle and rather thin metal hoops at each end. The topmost hoop spread and the handle split. I believe there were three reasons the Sorby's handle split. First, the hoop was too wimpy. Second, the hammer had a convex face which really beat up the wood. Third, the steel portion of the chisel was too heavy for the combination of the hammer and handle, and caught between the proverbial swiftly moving rock and a hard place, the handle gave up.

My point is that, if a well-made chisel is designed to be used with a steel hammer, and the hammer/chisel combination are reasonable, the handle will do fine. Too heavy a hammer blow (1/2 mass x velocity) for too light/small/weak a handle, and the handle will fail. Too light a hammer blow for too heavy a chisel, and while the chisel will cut, the work will be slowed. Balance in all things.

A hammer with a convex striking face, or a hammer with too small a face, will beat up a chisel handle and keep the hoop from doing its job.

I tried a brass hammer with my Japanese chisels for a few days on an intense project. It did not endure the abuse well. I even tried a hammer with a head made from an octagonal piece of mild steel once. The steel did not fare well after a few months. In both cases, the hammer faces were parallel with the centreline of the handle (normal for standard hammers). In both cases, the bottom half of the relatively soft metal faces mushroomed.

Any hammer of the right weight, with a flat face, and made of hardened steel will do the job with Japanese chisels. But they will destroy the handle of any chisel not made of tough, straight-grained wood without both a strong hoop and a strong ferrule to keep the wooden handle from splitting. You don't need to use a Japanese genno so long as the hammer is not too heavy and you grind the face flat.

I have written on this forum several times about the inefficiency of using a wooden mallet to motivate hooped Japanese chisels. Certainly a wooden mallet will work just fine, but the elastic and plastic deformation of the relatively soft mallet's face is undeniably wasted energy, which adds up to wasted time. And don't forget the additional wind resistance of moving that monster mallet face at high speed through the air thousands of strokes at a sitting (I mostly sit on the wood when cutting mortices). Great exercise, lousy work efficiency. Japanese chisel handles/hoops are so tough, they will actually destroy the mallet given enough strikes. But I concede that, if you are a hobbyist, or perhaps a historical reenactor, it is your time and energy to waste.

But if you want to waste wood, instead of time and energy, as quickly and efficiently as possible, consider using tools that can do the job quickly and efficiently.

Twei penig.

[Patrick Chase]

Killjoy you-know-what retentive engineer here...

My point is that, if a well-made chisel is designed to be used with a steel hammer, and the hammer/chisel combination are reasonable, the handle will do fine. Too heavy a hammer blow (1/2 mass x velocity) for too light/small/weak a handle, and the handle will fail. Too light a hammer blow for too heavy a chisel, and while the chisel will cut, the work will be slowed. Balance in all things.

If you're calculating energy there it's 1/2*mass*velocity^2. Energy is probably the right metric here though. Momentum is just mass*velocity, but that doesn't correlate anywhere near as well to damage.

Of course the bottom line is interesting - slowing the stroke down is a much stronger knob than the mass of the hammer.

[Brian Holcombe]

Much like Stan I prefer sizing the hammer to the chisel and work. I have four weights of Gennou and two shapes, all useful.

[Jim Koepke]

I do not know what kind of chisels you use, but the only chisels I motivate with a steel hammer are Japanese chisels with hooped handles.

Ah yes, it is easy for me to forget about chisels that are made to be driven with steel.

This makes me wonder if this was Stanley's reason for the everlasting chisel. Did American carpenters break a lot of handles using their framing hammers?

I also have a chisel made by Crescent Tools. It is solid metal and was marketed to plumbers and electricians. There is some very light mushrooming on mine. Maybe it was driven with a steel hammer by a previous owner.

Very few of my chisels actually have any hoops at the top. They appear to be decorative, not for function as they seem to be as heavy as the metal in a bottle cap.

I have a few mallets for chisel driving. One is made from a piece of oak that looks to have come from a pallet. It was likely 8/4 by 4. It is my most used light mallet. Another one is made from reclaimed cherry firewood. It weighs in at about 24 ounces. It comes out for the work on mortises and other heavy work. I also have a beech mallet that doesn't get much work these days.

jtk

[Stanley Covington]

Killjoy you-know-what retentive engineer here...



If you're calculating energy there it's 1/2*mass*velocity^2. Energy is probably the right metric here though. Momentum is just mass*velocity, but that doesn't correlate anywhere near as well to damage.

Of course the bottom line is interesting - slowing the stroke down is a much stronger knob than the mass of the hammer.

Thanks for correcting my formula, Patrick.

Stan

[Frederick Skelly]

For the work I do, including household chores, I use eight different hammers:
Clawhammer
Tackhammer
3# hand sledge
Wooden mallet
Rubber mallet
Large deadblow mallet
Small deadblow mallet
Plane hammer (wood on one end brass on other)

Fred

[Pat Barry]

Killjoy you-know-what retentive engineer here...



If you're calculating energy there it's 1/2*mass*velocity^2. Energy is probably the right metric here though. Momentum is just mass*velocity, but that doesn't correlate anywhere near as well to damage.

Of course the bottom line is interesting - slowing the stroke down is a much stronger knob than the mass of the hammer.

Be sure to keep in mind in this equation that the mass we are referring to is the effective mass being delivered to the chisel handle. This is a combination of the hammer mass and the strength exerted by the user, thusly even a very large hammer can deliver very light taps and a very light hammer can deliver tremendous force (in comparison to what may be needed). The user naturally adjusts his energy delivery to compensate for the results that are obtained. Hammer weight is therefore more of a user preference thing than a real requirement. If people are gravitating toward a lighter hammer because they are damaging something I think they should really be looking at what they are doing wrong or what the real problem may be.

I'm betting this guy knew what he was doing

[george wilson]

The man in
the picture is a "Gentleman" hobbyiest typical of turn of the last century illustrations in woodworking books,showing how to perform elementary woodworking tasks. They lacked Roy's boyish charm!! Real workmen would not be wearing suits and be as neat as he is. Workmen might be wearing remnants of suits and a derby hat. Google some 19th. C. pictures of workmen. An exception to this was the old gentleman at Wilkinson sword,for many years forging sword blades while wearing a suit,tie and top hat. Since he was about the last blacksmith still hand forging sword blades,I think he was a bit confused about his social station in life!! Most of you are not old enough to remember the Wilkenson razor blade ads on TV. Their razor blades must be good because they also forged the swords used by the British army. (I'll warrant that by then,the razor blades were their chief income producing product!) They'd sometimes show the old man hammering out a sword.

It just isn't the best thing to be bopping a wooden plane with a steel hammer,even if it is an old picture. We all have seen old,beaten up,abused planes treated this way. I have even seen once nice infills with their read ends cracked and sometimes bashed in by whacking with a steel hammer. In which cases,I'll bet the workman did not pay the original high price for said planes! Probably he had gotten it cheap after the original owner pawned it to buy gin. I've seen 18th. C. prints of exactly this happening. It is sad to see them. After the alcholic workman sold the last of his tools,the gutter was his next stop. But it happened many times. The American cowboy was not a bum as long as he still had,at least,his saddle,if nothing else.

I've seen a few old wooden planes with steel strike knobs. They might be the exception to the rule. But the plane in the picture doesn't have the typical tall,rather conical steel strike knob.


I don't know why we are in this discussion at all,really. It is patently BAD to go bashing your tools with steel hammers,Japanese steel hooped chisels being the exception. And, It may be true that the ancient Chinese used only one hammer for everything. They probably could not afford other hammers.

[Pat Barry]

I thought it was Gustav Stickley

[george wilson]

Whoever it was,use of a steel hammer is not a good idea. And,I hate Stickley furniture anyway!

[Brian Holcombe]

That doesn't look like Gustav Stickley, IMO.

I would imagine that he just picked up whatever was available to demonstrate how to adjust a plane. I can't imagine (or hope not to imagine) many craftsmen using claw hammers to adjust their planes.

[Stanley Covington]

It just isn't the best thing to be bopping a wooden plane with a steel hammer,even if it is an old picture. We all have seen old,beaten up,abused planes treated this way. I have even seen once nice infills with their read ends cracked and sometimes bashed in by whacking with a steel hammer. In which cases,I'll bet the workman did not pay the original high price for said planes! Probably he had gotten it cheap after the original owner pawned it to buy gin. I've seen 18th. C. prints of exactly this happening. It is sad to see them. After the alcholic workman sold the last of his tools,the gutter was his next stop. But it happened many times. The American cowboy was not a bum as long as he still had,at least,his saddle,if nothing else.

I don't know why we are in this discussion at all,really. It is patently BAD to go bashing your tools with steel hammers,Japanese steel hooped chisels being the exception. And, It may be true that the ancient Chinese used only one hammer for everything. They probably could not afford other hammers.

I can only agree with George.

I have seen many Japanese planes destroyed by steel hammers. The head of the blade always mushrooms badly, and if the plane is to continue in service of a man that uses a steel hammer vigorously, the head must be ground down to remove the mushroom. Pitiful.

But the damage frequently goes beyond cosmetics. A steel hammer often will cause the block to split at the butt end. Sometimes this can be repaired after a fashion, but why muck up a perfectly good block to begin with.

I was taught to use a steel hammer gently, and to adjust the block so a lot of force would not be necessary. But tool retailers and blacksmiths put me back on the straight and narrow. Now when I see a man using a steel hammer on a plane, it makes me wince.

Stan