TURNING A $7 HAMMER INTO A $200 HAMMER!!!

ladies and general welcome back to the workshop it is fantastic to have you here as ever because on today's episode we're going to be taking a $7 Harbor Freight hammer and making it perform like a beautiful forged 200 dollar hammer before jump in looks like today's sponsor which is rain shadow legends for making all of this possible brave is dark fantasy RPG games that reminds me a lot of those old-school role player games back in the day by Final Fantasy which is fantastic you've been hearing about rain shadow legends all over the Internet I'm sure but have you actually played it because now is the time to try here we go look at these beasts okay it's a dismantle there we go thrill of the hunt are we he's down Oh get him no no they're attacking me No yeah there we go he's down I think that guy's pretty strong he's not going to go down there we go and we're through you can get whatever you want from the game whether it is that you want to socialize and fight alongside teammates or 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Mobile the links are in the description we're very grateful for raid sponsoring this let's jump in and turn a $7 hammer into underperformance like a two hundred dollar one okie dokie so here's what we have hammer wise from Harbor Freight and costing a whopping $7 right here is a Pittsburgh three pound sledge hammer with a 16 inch hardwood handle we also have a Pittsburgh three pound cross peen hammer next to some forged blacksmithing hammers let's have a closer look [Music] all righty let me tell you some of the problems I see with the $7.00 hammer start off with the handle was loose off the shelf as it came from the store I had a loose handle and when you're forging you don't want the head of the hammer to be rattling around and it can also end up being a little bit of a safety hazard because if the head flies off it could hit you or somebody or put a hole in the wall or a window no fun the wobbly handle here is caused because the fit between the handle and the eye the hole of the hammer is really imprecise so much so that they've actually jammed some epoxy it looks like in there but it wasn't an epoxy strong enough to actually hold it to the head which is a shame so it wobbles around no good the biggest gripe however is how the faces come the faces come very flat with just one chamfer around it meaning butt though is chamfered here it has a very sharp transition between the flat and that chamfer so if you go to forge with it it'll be putting a few extra hammer marks in your work there's gonna be a lot more difficult to get out it also has two identical faces obviously that's normal for this style of hammer but I am quite partial to the rounding hammer with one rounding face and one flat face with much wider radii on the edges so that you are able to have a much better degree of control over the steel and mitigate the risk of nuisance hammer locks but with all that said a hammer is just a lump of metal on a stick and even with the seven dollar hammer from Harbor Freight you can still make stuff because it's a whole lot more about knowing how to make it than it is but fools used so let's make something [Music] [Applause] [Music] in a quick and dirty two heats we're still able to make something the hammer moves steel it forges the loose head threw me off a little bit but I was able to forge a decent taper do a quick isolation or without a problem the only downside was is that I tried to forge out the leaf itself those edges of the hammer really came to bite me and that's those rather unsightly marks that you're seeing so we're gonna tackle some of these issues first things first we're gonna fix that handle fit see if we need to make a new handle see if we can fix what we've already got and then we're gonna tackle the faces first things first I'm gonna cut off this little rag right here where the sharp head is peeling up the wood the gap in the handle is so bad I can fit this with knife blade all the way down it I don't know if we're gonna be able to fix it that's what you get for $7.00 to see if we can fix it I'm gonna drive the handle further into the head and that is the downside to this shape of a hammer handle as you drive it down that swell on the handle all of a sudden becomes so thick that instead of compressing into the head it just broke off on the sharp edges of the hammer home the good news is the handle is now tight we push it out about 3/8 to 1/4 of an inch you see how much gap there is in there that's really not good that's such a shame but we now need to do is find a way of wedging out the material enough that it fills the top of the eye a little bit of a dilemma here they fitted it with both a wood wedge and my least favorite of wedges the round wedge what I like to do and how is that I make is fit them only with a wood wedge and make sure it's a really good fit that means that God forbid the handle does come loose in time it's a natural material and changes in humidity can make it happen and not having a steel wedge in means that when it does come loose you can drive the handle down and then install a steel wedge in that new climate so gives you that little extra opportunity to do it well now there's a steel wedge and all we can really do to try this let's try driving the steel wedge in further and I don't know if it's gonna work because a round wedge doesn't really do a perfect job of spreading out the material the same way that first wood wedge does this is why I don't like these wedges they're impossible to drive any deeper than the wood this is not gonna work oh boy oh boy this was a useless way I will no longer turn up my nose of this hammer but I will strive to make it better the reason I'm doing this is I want to make this accessible to you guys I don't use all the fancy tools to get it done I wanted to try and do it a little more simply this time the best thing to do now would be to put an entire new handle in let's see if we can do it without doing that step I want to show this in the easiest way possible okay so as you saw I took that ridiculous round steel wedge out of there after driving the handle up through I then pulled the wood wedge out and I feel like if we had a wider wood wedge we could indeed open up the wood enough that we got a good fit maybe without even needing a steel wedge this is gonna involve a little bit of woodworking and now my dear viewers and wonderful commenters over the last many years I have received a whole lot of flack for not actually having woodworking equipment and at last the peer pressure has pushed me to the breaking limit and I wanna show you some new toys that I got look at this one contractor variety table saw so that we can actually rip wood without needing to use that ridiculous battery-powered saw as well as a thickness planer hugely exciting I've wasted so much time and I made myself have to do someone's rework and over processing by not having woodworking equipment now we will solve that we're still missing a woodworking bandsaw so I need to grab one of those at some point but for this project we don't actually need to use any of that equipment the Silvanus all that we have is all we need because I already have a piece of hickory I'm gonna make a wedge from this [Music] [Applause] [Music] here's what the wedge looks like a few things it is not wider than the eye itself otherwise that won't work it has a slight taper to it in this dimension because eyes of hammers have a taper to them around the end slightly to match up with the rounding of the eye I also gave the end a very thin chisel grind I also don't want to forget you see how we have a chamfer on the top of the wedge that's gonna save it from splitting we're gonna wood glue the wedge in do notice that the bottom of the handle is supported we're gonna use the wood wedge to split the handle apart as it drives down starting to get pretty firm we've actually cracked that wood wedge already not the end of the world flip it over and then I'll ham up from the bottom of the handle since that wedge is starting to really free apart I know I'm not gonna achieve anything by hammering it further it's definitely tightened up the fit of the eye a good deal we're gonna grind off the top [Music] something really weird with the way this happens made this is lip here see where that knife is hitting so it looks like there's a whole lot more space than there actually is because in this weird lip well filled up but there is that little lip in there at the top of the eye which is throwing me off so I'm gonna call the handle fit up ready if it does come loose I'll throw a steel wedge in next thing we want to deal with the actual handle itself because it's nasty it's got a varnish coating on it which is gonna give you blisters and it's also this oval profile I prefer handles that have a flat down the length of them I also want a better chamfer on the end here that's gonna help reducing splitting the handle if you do ever have to read rive it you can tackle this by locking the handle not the head in a vise and rasping on it to get rid of the varnish coating and cranking your flash you could also use one of these cheap belt Sanders or even use an angle grinder for speed I'll just use the belt grinder [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] we lack in the handle with a torch because I like the look of it also means it can look a little cleaner you don't notice the dirt as much taking some pine tar this is made as a byproduct of making charcoal from Pines but a beautiful smell to it and it's gonna help us protect the wood linseed oil would also work an absolute treat for this you really don't have to get too fancy the handle now feels really good it's a little slimmer up here than I'd like but I'm happy with that the idea is minimal effort minimal money making the hammer work like a more expensive one next step in the direction of that goal is for us to tackle the faces I'm gonna be doing it with an angle grinder because you can pick up an angle grinder for like 30 bucks and just like anything it's really a whole lot less about the tool than it is knowing what you're trying to achieve so you can see the grinds here flat across the top and then there's just one chamfer on the edges here we actually have a square with the corners broken off and I like this I like having this long flat and it has a much more gently sloping radius the first thing that I'm gonna do is I'm gonna flatten off the face and then I'm gonna take the angle grinder and I'm gonna start at a very shallow angle and I'm gonna go back and forth rounding my way around it to create a similar radius on the edges to this I'm gonna be using a 60 grit flap disc you can pick these up anywhere I'm fine licensing the pressure you can achieve a better surface finish but there are also finishing discs that you can use to get an even higher polish them either more interested in the geometry [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] we got it done with the angle grinder it's not as clean as it would be with a belt grinder but it gets the job done next step is the rounding face need to turn this a little more into that this isn't a ball Roy brown Brazil describes it is as a squashed ball you have a very large radius at the top of the ball and then a progressively smaller and smaller radius as you come around the sides of the faces this means you have progressively more and more and more psi that you can apply with the hammer to control how you move it and so the trick as I round this is to make sure that the top is a much flatter radius than the edges but it still has to be a very gentle transition between side of the hair and the faces itself [Music] [Applause] [Music] it's definitely not as fancy as one of these forged hammers it definitely doesn't have the fit and finish has longer proportions that I'd like it's a rough old job but it is gonna fall and we're gonna prove it [Music] it is so much nicer to Forge with those edges give you so much more control some much more consistent hammer below because you know what those edges are gonna do they're softer there's less unsightly hammer marks this is a hammer you could Forge anything with the difference in this hammer before and after is worlds apart so much more pleasant to use so much more control you can get a much more aesthetically pleasing and have a mark in it it's definitely not the best leave I've ever made but it's a lot better than the first one because the hammer wasn't wobbling on the handle it felts so much more comfortable to use and this I hope helps show it's not all about the type of tools that you have it's also about how you can modify those tools to work for you fundamentally it's just about getting stuck in and keeping it a go because getting the experience and the practice gonna be so much more than having the absolute best tools now after how simple this was this only took a few hours to get this sorted why would you get one of these well out of the box it comes ready to go it's beautiful beautiful things are nice to have that's why I like having Abbott's like this supposed to like this you don't need this to get the job done before the video ends I wanna let you know we're gonna be giving away a square circle rounding hammer and you can have a chance of winning it simply by dropping a comment down below with the blacksmithing or Bladesman in question that you want answered we might be able to help out with will be picking a winner at random thank you guys so much drop that comment down below see you soon bye

Channel: Alec Steele

Views: 1,235,154

Rating: 4.8096108 out of 5

Keywords: alec steele, alex steele, steel, alec, damascus, blacksmith, make, forge, anvil, mill, lathe, weld, tig, mig, engineering, blacksmithing, blade, bladesmithing, knife, knifemaking, sword, handmade, diy, craft, woodworking, forged in fire, axe, fabrication, art

Id: 2b4ih9pEM0c

Length: 16min 2sec (962 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 09 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/GuardedDig2]

I did this about 1.5-2 years ago with a club style hammer. Just a word of advise to anyone starting out get the style in the video. These short handled ones are not really that great. You get much more scale on your hand and you get less energy swinging one of these https://imgur.com/a/bRmxZAn

[u/Adenchan]

I’m glad to see y’all made it over here to reddit! I love you guys in youtube! Thanks for all your videos! I actually followed your advice when I was doing my dressing last weekend!

[u/Minechaser05]

A handmade hammer forged by your own hands is better than any hammer for sure!

[u/astrodude1789]

Just watched this...and a bunch more. I'm hooked!

[u/donotresuscitate666]

Take a hike

[u/MeanygreenySquadYT]

Alec is this ur r real account

[u/MeanygreenySquadYT]

Ok what steel is rebar made from