Loose chasing hammer head fix?

mitch

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4-5 years ago I made a new handle for my chasing hammer out of beech and over the next few months learned that it's really not an ideal choice of wood for this application. turns out it's just too compressible, by which i mean i needed to keep wedging it tighter & tighter as the wood fibers kept compressing. this condition was further aggravated by fluctuations in humidity. it would dry out, get loose, i'd put it a plastic bag with a damp rag, swell it tight again, rinse & repeat...

the other day i was going thru my woodworking stuff and came across a bottle of Chair Doctor glue. (http://www.leevalley.com/us/wood/page.aspx?p=30261&cat=1,110) the principle is that the glue is extremely thin/watery and will penetrate & swell the wood fibers, then cure solidly in place. i've used it on a couple chairs and it works pretty well.

so i put my hammer in the toaster oven at about 200 degrees for a couple hours to really bake it dry -the head was about to fall off, then wrapped the head portion in a baggie and poured enough glue in to submerge it and put a rubber band on to prevent any curing or evaporation. i left it standing head down in a drinking glass in the bag for about 8 hrs (probably much longer than necessary, but overnight wouldn't hurt anything). i pulled it out, wiped off the excess glue with a damp paper towel, made sure the head was still pushed on tight (it was) and stood it head up for a day or two.

that was all a few weeks ago and it's still as solid today as the day i did it. yay, no more having to remember putting it back in the damp rag bag after every time i use it...

:hammer: :banana:
 

Dave London

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Hi Mitch
Good fix, if you every need another handle check out Saign Charlesteins, made of Osage orange.
Not inexpensive but look like a quality handle. I do not have one but it is on the list,a very long list :rolleyes:
 

mitch

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making my own was kinda fun, but next time i'd use maple, ash, or maybe a good hard piece of walnut. if i can find a chunk of osage orange that does sound pretty deluxe...
 

Brant

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If I have a loose hammer head, I soak it in a water-antifreeze mixture for a few days. This usually lasts for several years.

I learned this trick during my Boilermaker's apprenticeship, a HOT environment that really dries the wood.
 

mitch

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Hickory,plum,black locust,ipe, elm

funny you mention plum. there's a big plum tree in the backyard of the house i bought about a year and a half ago. just trimming a few dead limbs has taught me that it's some of the hardest flippin' wood known to mankind. i'll save a few hammer handle size chunks next time.
 

horologist

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I have rehandled a number of small watchmaking and engraving hammers and the procedure is pretty straightforward, if you have to do anything more than just keep the hammer in a drawer then the handle is not installed correctly and will probably always require some sort of maintenance. On an axe handle or heavy hammer strength is an issue but for engraving hammers the species of wood is not that critical, anything short of cork or balsa should be fine. Using properly dried wood with a good fit is all that is required. The slight fluctuations in moisture content due to changes in humidity should have no effect.

For those interested in making their own handle, a former member of a list dedicated to old tools once posted a nice tutorial…

< http://contrib1.wkfinetools.com/jThompson/hammerHandMake/hammerHandMake-01.asp>


Troy
 

mitch

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for engraving hammers the species of wood is not that critical, anything short of cork or balsa should be fine. Using properly dried wood with a good fit is all that is required. The slight fluctuations in moisture content due to changes in humidity should have no effect. [/URL]
Troy

well, Troy, I am here to tell you that it does, in incontrovertible, empirical fact, make a difference AND that changes in humidity have a VERY NOTICEABLE EFFECT, observed over decades of hands-on experience. if what you said were even the least bit true, then not only would the head never get loose in dry conditions, but putting it in a more humid container would have zero ability to reverse that problem. wood expands & contracts according to moisture content, whether it's a hammer handle or a table top or anything.

and btw, the new handle i made out of beech (that i'd had in my shop for about 15 yrs) was fit to the head ****ing perfectly. or was the tightness of my hammer's head varying with changes in humidity simply a figment of my imagination??? off hand, i can't recall a more ill informed post in all the years i've been on the cafe.
:beatup:
 

JJ Roberts

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Mitch,Tell me about the head on your hammer,is the hole in the oval or round?if is's round it will come loose.I collect old chasing hammer's and the heads have oval hole's and never come loose. J.J.
 

horologist

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I have a good sized assortment of small hammers from ebony handled antiques aged over 100 years to modern Asian made with soft mystery wood handles. I have made hammer handles from pine, maple, oak, and cocobolo. The only hammers that have had trouble with loose heads have been some made in India. These hammers had a poor fit and were filled in with some sort of black tar like substance that breaks down in time.

While it doesn’t exactly apply to this case as a proper fit involves the compression of the wood, all wood expands and contracts due to changes in moisture content and will always try to maintain equilibrium with that of the surrounding air. It is a slow process, if you don’t believe me there are plenty of wood movement calculators and web pages that explain it in great detail.

Try:
< https://www.extension.purdue.edu/extmedia/fnr/fnr-163.pdf>


Do the math or don’t. I still contend that a well fitted handle made from a properly dried piece of wood will not require all that fuss. You may be a fine engraver, but clearly that is the extent of it, and I have lost all interest in both you and this thread.
 

mitch

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JJ- the hole is oval. the head, and entire unit originally, was/is a Friedrich Dick. i suspect the near constant low humidity of Colorado for its first couple decades accounted for it needing re-wedged from time to time when i lived there. the wood appeared to be a fine-grained ash, or something similar. after another 10 yrs or so of fluctuating humidity- and the necessary re-wedging/re-mounting, here in NC, it finally started to split down the shaft and needed replaced. my first inclination was to just buy a new chasing hammer, but sometime in the previous 30 yrs the company stopped making the small size i prefer (7/8" face), nor do they make the pistol style replacement handles for them. so, using the original as a basic pattern, i made a new handle out of a piece of European beech that had been in my scrap bin for many years. now we're back to where this thread started.
 

mitch

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While it doesn’t exactly apply to this case as a proper fit involves the compression of the wood, all wood expands and contracts due to changes in moisture content and will always try to maintain equilibrium with that of the surrounding air. It is a slow process, if you don’t believe me there are plenty of wood movement calculators and web pages that explain it in great detail.

Do the math or don’t. I still contend that a well fitted handle made from a properly dried piece of wood will not require all that fuss. You may be a fine engraver, but clearly that is the extent of it, and I have lost all interest in both you and this thread.


1) the problem stems from the fact that the steel head does NOT expand & contract with changes in ambient moisture, in concert with the wood. (i suspect an all wood carver's mallet can often stay tight with no problems.) periods of high humidity create an additional wedging effect that can, and DOES, further compress the wood fibers, so when it dries out the wood tenon may no longer fit snugly in its steel mortise- regardless of its shape.

2) "It is a slow process," no, it isn't. i used to work in a building where the boss kept the ambient humidity literally at near ZERO (one day i was drinking out of a plain- uninsulated- plastic water bottle that i'd frozen about half full. the outside of the bottle was bone dry. i have witnesses.) in this artificially arid environment, i had to remember to put my hammer in a plastic bag with a damp rag when i went to lunch, or it might be loose when i returned. if left exposed overnight it would happen every time, so i'd have to do things not requiring hammering for an hour or two while the wood swelled back up. we're also talking about wood movement of much less than 0.010". that's all it takes for a noticeable amount of wobble in a chasing hammer, whereas a bigger hammer, with more wood, might be relatively unaffected over a wider range of wood movement.

3) So you're trying to tell us that the Friedrich Dick company doesn't mount their heads properly, I did it wrong, and the untold legions of artists & craftsmen who have also experienced loose heads all got it wrong, too??? It almost appears as if you're glibly trying to dismiss that it even happens at all. That the other respondents in this thread who suggested glycerine, anti-freeze, etc., were really just imagining they had a problem, or ONCE AGAIN, didn't know Troy's magic recipe for installing a hammer head???

4) "I have lost all interest in both you and this thread." -for that i'm thankful. :banana:
 

dhall

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+1 for a soak in anti-freeze. It's polyethylene glycol, AKA PEG, and many wood turners soak stock with challenging grains and stresses in a vat of PEG for a while before turning. It'll penetrate the wood fibers and then polymerize, sort of freezing things and stabilizing them in an expanded state. Had a buddy need to do the exact same thing with his chasing hammer head a few years ago and it's still nice and snug. I suspect that with aggressive hammering it'd need to be re-done periodically, as previously noted. Not sure if it'll help with hammering in sub-zero weather, though. Ha!

Best regards,
Doug
 

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