Shop built plane hammer

Dominic Greco

Member
Messages
149
Location
Bucks County PA
Here's some photos of a the plane hammer I finished up last night.

plane_hammer2.jpg


plane_hammer3.jpg


The 1" dia brass head weighs about 4 oz and is faced with a "plug" of end grain bubinga on one side. The end of the brass head with the bubinga has a 7/16" hole drilled in it. The bubinga plug was turned a bit over sized and featured a tenon on the back to match the hole in the brass. Then it was epoxied in place and the assembly turned smooth. The 3/8" dia hole for the handle was drilled with a milling machine and a "V" centering jig back when I cut the stock to length.

The handle is hickory and is about 9" long. It was turned to shape and then shaped with a spoke shave, rasp, and sandpaper. The wedge in the handle is also hickory and was glued into a slot in the end of the handle after I installed the hammer head. The wedge really does a great job of making the hammer feel very solid.

I signed my name using a wood burning pen (another useful relic from my wood turning days!) and the handle was given several coats of Danish oil.

I tried it out on a coffin smoother and was very pleased with the feel. It allows me to adjust it a lot finer than the rubber/urethane hammer I was using before.

plane_hammer1.jpg


Overall I'm pretty pleased with the outcome. I had a couple false starts when I first began this project but all in all it came out the way I wanted.

Thanks for viewing!
 
Scrap piece from work

Hey Dominic, where'd you get the brass head? Got any extra?

Ken

Ken,
I wish I had a piece I could send you. But sadly, it ain't the case! The brass for this hammer came from a small piece of scrap from my job. I used pretty much all of it up on this one hammer.

As Mike suggested, you can get some online pretty reasonably.
 
Top