INCREDIBLE Copper Hammer Restoration & Customization - Copper Electroplated & Carhartt Micarta

so in this video I'm gonna take this old dirty beat-up hammer that I got for a dollar fifty at a pawn shop and make it frickin awesome I'm gonna take the handle off I'm going to replace it with Carhartt denim and I'm going to electroplate copper on the head these are the car hearts obviously so they were their ones I used to wear they don't quite fit anymore 30 30s got them at the thrift store part of me was kind of sad doing this because I really liked my car hearts these ones were good till I ate too many donuts at work again I used the family glazed coat epoxy to make this custom micarta you have to mix it for like two sequences of like six minutes I'll save you guys all that I mixed it up then to make sure that I coated these well I put the first layer in the bottom of the tray and then would pour some on top I wanted to make sure that it the epoxy went all the way through the fabric and I did this this sequence that you're seeing right now for all the different layers I don't know how many I ended up with but it was a lot took quite a while I'm just gonna show you the one the paper that I'm using inside my trays here is parchment paper what's cool about the parchment paper is the epoxy doesn't stick to it it just peels off so I lined the bottom of the tray these are Baker's phrase that I got at a thrift store if you haven't seen the first time I use these I use this with my cashmere scarf eskalene hatchet to make the handle scales for that it worked really well with this larger piece though after clamping it down I decided I wanted to make sure it was nice and flat and flattened in the center so I used one of my kettlebells and the 25 pound kettle that you'll see here in just a bit that I put in the center just because I was worried that maybe it was bubbling up in the center there I was putting a lot more pressure on this one and I did with the cashmere scarf now to disassemble the the handle on this hammer I just needed to clear the edges of that and this end plate is really really pretty messed up in contrast with the estwick hatchet that I did with the cashmere handles these leather pieces were well oiled and lasted a lot longer kind of a testament to how if you do care for the handle the leather will last a lot longer the leather on the s-plane hatchet that I did was like rotting and falling apart this leather was better I soaked it in evapo rust to try to clean it up as best I could left it overnight while I was waiting for the micarta to to dry also so this is the next day it does look quite a bit better but this hammer had been painted I think that's probably original it was painted black and it took some sanding to clear off that paint and then I wanted to polish up the the hammer a little bit I took it to my one inch belt sander and cleaned it up this hammer had a lot of divots and dings in the sides I don't know who who likes to hammer with the sides of their hammer but a lot of these hammers have restored have dings on the side I don't know why so I actually after I took it to the belt sander I did take it down to a 320 grit sandpaper and now I'm just cleaning it up in preparation for the Elector waiting in the electroplating one of the key things is to make sure that the metal is clear and clean so that the electroplating happens consistently across the thing so I used distilled water it's five part distilled water to one part your periodic acid and for some reason I missed the the pouring in of the muriatic acid in my video you want to mix it mix it with something that's not metal or wood probably isn't good either I had a ruler handy so I used that you want to make sure when you mix the muriatic acid with the water the distilled water that you mix the acid into the water not the other way around it can cause a chemical reaction because there'll be more water with or more acid than water with you mixing it the other way and it could splash around so here I'm just hooking up the battery the the negative terminal will go to the hammer the positive goes to that piece of copper plating that I put in to the solution and as soon as it's in there it starts bubbling like this and really it only took a few minutes it's recommended that you kind of move it around it only took a few minutes before it started to show some copper plating after I left it in there for a bit the first time I took it out and cleaned it up to even it out with some triple aught steel wool just to kind of polish it up and then I stuck it in for a second soaking to create more of a consistent layer and I think this was good it was in there again for another few minutes and it made a nice very durable finish this muriatic acid used to make this copper plating really really makes a durable coating I can polish it with this trip a lot steel wool and it actually polished it doesn't seem to rub away the way it did when I used the perma blue and this is a much thicker coating so now that I'm done that it's time to get the micarta out start cutting it up this took about a day and a half to really dry well I made the mistake of leaving it in the garage it probably would have been a little better in the house my garage it's still winter we just got a big snowstorm just a couple days ago and it's still cold even though it's spring so at this point I'm still hoping that I have enough micarta to do this handle I want to maximize the area as much as I can and I just used the largest leather piece from the original handle to mark out the whips that I needed for the hammer it was part of me that while I was editing this video I love seeing the stacks of these pieces of micarta build up like a stop-motion kind of they keep growing and this was cool I had exactly enough for two hammers I'm only going to do one right now but I can set the rest of that aside to maybe do another one in the future that matches so so look for that on a future video maybe I don't know maybe I won't show it in a video but I can make a matching hatchet or something like that that matches this I threw in a couple leather pieces one to be kind of homage to the original s twing hatchet but also on the original s wings they always have a few spacers and they're too black with one white in between and I felt like this natural leather actually would kind of match the copper and accent the handle well good contrast in color to the gray green color that we're getting from this epoxy gray Carhartt denim so I'm just marking the center and then where I'm gonna need to drill so that I can slide these micarta handle stacks I don't know what you'd call they're not scales now like you would like I did on my hatchet if you notice I like a white pencil crayon on these darker things it works great I actually just keep that white pencil crayon in the shop because I use it for all kinds of things when I'm working darker items where a pencil doesn't make sense I then just drilled out took three holes on each piece to clear the space I needed for the handles then because I'm gonna epoxy these I just cleaned up every single piece on the belt sander just really quick to clear it up so that I could glue them together or epoxy them together now I needed to because each one of these was a little unique I needed to clear them up and my little saw my Leatherman came in really heavy here actually it cut real well it allowed me to shape the the different pieces just right so that they fit on the handle well I'd had numbered them so that I kept track of what order I intended them so that when I glued them if I mix them up I would while I was gluing any which one went where now I'm just using epoxy to epoxy it all up together once the epoxy was all on I left it for about four hours to to cure also putting this end cap on didn't go well I had too much epoxy on my gloves made a real mess you can see that I did copperplate that end cap but in the end to clean it up I wasn't able to preserve the copper plating so you'll see it at the end of the video it's not quite well it's silver again I thought about copper plating it again I didn't know how well that would work with the epoxy so now in and just cleaning it up i shaped it on the belt sander and then I'm using my rasps that I normally use for carving wood handles to shape it and it works really well then I sandpapered it took it down to a 320 grit this is actually still with just the 220 I believe and the 320 grit actually started to make it shinier like you can see here started to polish out the handle and then I used some axe wax this tax wax this is the first time I'm using it I just got some and I hit I know it's intended for wood but I figured it would work great for this I tested it on a small test piece and it looked great one I really like the smell of this xbox it's all natural I have to worry about putting on gloves like I would with boiled linseed oil and it actually felt like made my hands feel soft like moisturizer don't know but I rubbed it in really good using the the warmth of my hands to try to get it in really well and then I went at it with some number-two steel steel wool and just kind of roughed it up a little bit and rubbed it in I did this to try to help get it into the micarta a little better and then I just rubbed it down with a towel and the handle came out great it feels really good in hand really nice micarta feels nice and smooth and that axe wax makes it just perfect I highly recommend using the axe wax my wife even didn't find it offensive like she does boiled linseed oil so I recommend giving the x-y could try this handle the the hammer everything it turned out great I really like the way the the micarta looks on the handle stacked it feels really good with the leather accents that just perfect with with the electroplated copper it just turned out cool I know when my boys think it looks cool that I've done well and they thought it looked awesome so this was a fun one I've been wanting to do it for a bit originally I wanted to do it with some some of the orange copper colored Carhartt jeans but I couldn't find any other thrift store I had some that I've grown out of that the gray ones that I used for this hammer were ones that I actually got at the thrift store a number of years ago I've actually gained a little weight I went from a 38 waist to now a 32 and those cards don't fit me anymore and I thought sure I'll do the gray Carhartt instead that's what I have and originally I was thinking of using the perma blue to perma blue the handle and that that would contrast with the kind of orange copper colored Carhartt but because I couldn't do that I thought hey I wonder if I could electroplate copper onto the hammer and a little search on youtube showed me that yeah it wasn't that hard so that's how this hammer came to be and I actually think it turned out great I really like the contrast between the gray and actually now kind of this gray green dark color with the the ax wax rubbed in I think it turned out great and I wanted to take the opportunity at the end of this video to thank all of you that have subscribed to my channel I'm fairly new at this and I've really been humbled by the by the reaction I've got to some of my videos and that so many of you have been willing to watch and listen and have enjoyed and liked and commented on my videos it's been great I should be hitting five thousand subscribers probably around when this video goes up and in a way this is thanks to all of you I also wanted to take the opportunity at the end of this video to talk about someone important to me I I grew up going and visiting a shop just like this it was my grandfather's shop similar to mine here he he was not a rich man but loved to make do with things that he could find his shop was full of reclaimed lumber wood that he got in different places and he was always making things and when I was a little kid when I visit my grandpa I would follow him everywhere and tomorrow is my or would be my grandpa's birthday he passed away when I was in high school almost a senior and back in the 90s and he's always been my inspiration the the things I do here in the garage and in my shop when I'm working on them I feel a closeness to him because of all that he taught and showed me it was the first belt sander I used was my grandpa's I used to always make all kinds of things out of out of wood scrap pieces that he had in his garage and especially using his belt sander so happy birthday grandpa thank you all for five thousand subscribers and I hoped you liked my custom s twin Carhartt copper-plated hammer video if you haven't already like and subscribe I plan on making more videos like this I really really enjoy doing these kind of things it's been a lot of fun there'll be more to come you won't be disappointed and look for opportunities to give those old things like this hammer new life and we'll see you on the next video ciao

Channel: oldshovel

Views: 182,148

Rating: 4.9008718 out of 5

Keywords: tool restoration, hammer restoration, electorplating copper, copper coating, make micarta, how to make micarta, how to copper plate metal, carhartt pants, custom carhartt hammer, Estwing hammer, hand tool restoration, creative restoration, tool junkies, restore tools, denim micarta, estwing hammer restoration, fix an estwing leather handle, leather handle, micarta handle scales, knife making, tool making, custom tools

Id: WsbGEOlVeR8

Length: 20min 5sec (1205 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 30 2019