Surely that's just a question of tempering. Tubal Cain in "Hardening, tempering and heat treatment" suggests a temper at 230 -250C for hammer heads. That's dark straw. So I suppose that silver steel is the stuff to use but heat treatment and tempering must be for times appropriate for the thickness of the hammer heads.

Rod

I used square gaugeplate (ground flatstock) when I needed to make an apparently unobtainable shape of panel beating hammer earlier this year. Once the ends were pressed on, I TIG welded them, filed them to shape, gave them a polish and tempered the ends to dark straw. It's been working just fine so far.

I think the American home smiths like to use 1045 which is similar to our EN8 which will harden but not quite as much as gauge plate which is fine as you are not after a cutting edge..

I'm happy to use my "Birmingham screwdrivers" in the form of Japanese hammers to drive my hooped Japanese chisels in the workshop though when on site tend to use the side of the Estwing to drive my European style chisels as just about every other carpenter does.

Worth noting that the Japanese hammers tend to only have the faces hardened not the whole head, the really expensive ones also have steel faces fire welded to iron bodies which help reduce vibration going down the shaft.

Edited By JasonB on 01/12/2020 18:54:47