x

Lead's a lot easier. Just sayin'

Rgds Simon

FWIW I played much the same tune on an old (hammer), though my ambition fell short of casting copper . But I did discover that their fitting is essentially a one trick pony, as the cast iron head is crimped around the copper insert to hold it in place. Un crimping cast iron isn't going to work.

I'm guessing casting in situ with copper is dodgy. 1093C melting point is going to be interesting, no?

I imagine the insert – if annealed – would retreat into the original tapered socket if hammered home enthusiastically, I haven't tried it.

If it is of any interest I found the thread where I played with this, and got (as ever) detailed advice about what I'd taken on courtesy of the forum. Here's the link.

Thor's Hammer

Do let us know how you get on.

Out of interest: If one were to mix pieces of lead with copper chips while heating the lead to it’s melt point and giving it a stir before pouring into a mould…
Would the copper be coated enough with lead to stick properly together as it floats to the top and effectively be a copper topped lead insert? Flux needed?

pgk

ANTIMONY ! Noel

Copper is a good material for the job [with a nice balance of properties] but personally, I prefer screw-in plastic faces on a lead-shot weighted head. [of the hammer, that is !]

MichaelG.

Speaking as someone who owns two copper faced hammers, I'm not actually all that convinced about the value of them Copper work hardens, to the extent that it will bruise mild steel. Since the whole point of a softer faced hammer is to avoid bruising things, it seems to me that lead or plastic is actually a far better bet. So mine are mostly of historic interest…they were made from pieces of copper locomotive boiler stays. I keep meaning to buy one of those hammers with lead on one face and plastic on the other, but so far mostly just put a piece of wood in between the hammer and the item that needs persuading.

John

They're malleable iron, not grey iron. Thor give a drawing of a suitable press tool for expanding and contracting the heads with their fitting instructions on the web site.

I do find that the rawhide ends are more useful for a lot of things than the copper ends.

The youf of today look at you askance when you talk about 'soft hammers'

Hi, I made the tools as per Thor's instructions for swaging the hammer for fitting new hide's, but when trying to open the rim big enough to get a new hide in, the rim fractured and some of it broke away.

I did though, acquire a second hand hammer that had a loose dried out hide, which actually broke up and fell out after many uses and the rim just happened to be just wide enough to squeeze my new hide in the above photo and it was successfully crimped in using the closing tool without any fracturing. To be honest though, the hassle of replacing these is more trouble than they are worth, in my opinion.

Regards Nick.

Copper hammers are traditionally used for belting motorcycle flywheels into alignment. But they do, as mentioned above, tend to work harden and leave "babies' bums" on the steel flywheel rims. I like Phil Irving's (designer of the Vincent) suggestion to instead swing the flywheels, held in hand by the rods, against either a lead or hardwood block firmly attached to the bench. Much more sensible.

When I worked on full-sized steam turbines, we cast our own lead hammers using a piece of 6" pipe split as a mould and a bit of 1" pipe as handle. They worked well but deformed very quickly. They came complete with a monstrous 6'2" Albanian tradesman's assistant who loved nothing better than to swing them as hard as he could until they were a mangled mess.

Edited By Hopper on 01/07/2022 10:52:20