This is a small group of shots from a Damascus framing hammer that I made for my dad (a journeyman carpenter) for Christmas. The billet started as 11 layers of 1095 and 15N20, was welded, drawn, cut and re-stacked, and then welded and drawn again. The claws and fullers behind the face were forged to shape rather than ground, to allow proper pattern contours in the layers. The handle was carved by me from a 2x3x18 chunk of beautiful wenge. This whole project took around 60 hours given that the welding and forging was all done by hand and the handle was fully hand carved from square stock. It was very well received, and looks great on his mantle, even though it will probably never actually drive a nail. Way too late into this project, i found that my Ferric chloride was toast, so i ended up doing the etching with a heated solution of water and very strong PH-minus pool chemical, it worked well but didnt give quite the contrast Ferric would have. It also took 2 hours to etch deep enough to feel topgraphy in the layers.
That is amazing man! What a gift! I can understand why it will probably never get used being such a work of art but it needs to drive some nails to fulfill it's destiny!
I've never seen a forged hammer before. Very cool. But, is there something wrong with me that I'd really want to use it?
To the guys who said they would have to drive at least one nail, I feel the same way. It still hasnt been used, but i told him that if he does i can always polish and re-etch the face if I had to. If i was to do it again i would probably twist the billet at some point, because I feel having the welded layers twisted would add a lot of structural integrity in use, especially if there happened to be a poor weld internally that wasn't visible. I think a twisted billet would stand far less chance of de-lamination under hard use.
