Hammer

“ The scope of the lathe, slide-rest and operating tool, by its adaptation to cut out from a vast roll of steel a ponderous gun, or by a change in the size of parts to operate in cutting or drilling the most delicate portions of that most delicate of all mechanisms, a watch, reminds one of that other marvel of mechanical adaptation, the steam hammer, which makes the earth tremble with its mighty blows upon a heated mass of iron, or lightly taps and cracks the soft-shelled nut without the slightest touch of violence upon its enclosed and fragile fruit. ”

“ A stone hammer found at Claycrop, Kirkinner, [5] Wigtownshire, is by the courtesy of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, shown in Fig. 145a. In form, it is very like Fig. 136a from Wick, but blunter at the edge.
The instrument shown in Fig. 146 is perhaps more like a blunted axe-hammer than a simple hammer. It has at one end a much-rounded point, and at the other is nearly straight across, though rounded in the other direction. It would appear to be a weapon rather than a tool. ”

“ The labor saved by this hammer is immense. One man sits perched up on the frame to direct it, and another stands below to guide the iron on the anvil. The great long bar, white with heat, is pulled out of the furnace, laid on the massive piece of iron under the frame, and, with a dull, heavy sound, down conies the hammer, swiftly or slowly, according to the wishes of the director. From the forge and the foundry the "rough-hewn" iron-work passes to be planed, and its surface to be made "true." ”

“ It yields with the greatest difficulty to the hammer, but its edges are as brittle almost as glass, and fly into numerous minute splinters with sharp edges—fracture distinctly conchoidal, dull, and rather earthy. ”

“ The head of the hammer, which of course works vertically, is detachable, so that if the monster breaks his steel fist upon coil or anvil, another can be quickly supplied. These huge heads alone are as big as a sugar-hogshead, and come down upon the hot iron with an energy of more than a thousand foot-tons. ”

“ The face of the stone hammer is brought to bear a slight distance only within the margin of the flake, and, however sharp the blow administered, the smooth block of stone on which the flake is placed, and which of course projects beyond it, acts as a stop to prevent the hammer being carried forward so as to injure the form, and brings it up sharply, directly it has done its work of striking off a splinter from the end of the flake. ”

“ The holes, from each side, do not meet in the middle.
The specimen shown in Fig. 145 was found in the Thames, at London, and is now in the British Museum. In form it is curiously like a metallic hammer, swelling out around the shaft-hole, and tapering down to a round flat face at each extremity. So far as I know, it is unique of its kind in this country. It is more probably the head of a war mace than that of an ordinary hammer. A somewhat similar hammer, of porphyry, is in the museum of the Deutsche Gesellschaft at Leipzig. ”

“ When the hammer is drawn back it should come with less and less resistance as it rises, and vise versa when the hammer is let down, exerting its greatest power immediately on reaching the nipple or firing-pin. ”

“ The Hammer Blows.—Metal can be forced into desired shapes or forms by delivering the hammer blows in different ways. All hammer blows are not alike; some will have one effect and others will produce an entirely different result.
45. The upright blow is delivered so that the hammer strikes the metal in an upright position and fully on the anvil. Such blows force the metal equally in all directions, providing the surrounding dimensions are equal. ”

“ A few moments' rapid thought satisfied him that it was by rigidly adhering to the old traditional form of hand-hammer—of which the tilt, though driven by steam, was but a modification—that the difficulty had arisen. When even the largest hammer was tilted up to its full height, its range was so small, that when a piece of work of considerable size was placed on the anvil, the hammer became "gagged," and, on such an occasion, where the forging required the most powerful blow, it received next to no blow at all,—the clear space for fall being almost entirely occupied by the work on the anvil. ”

“ The inter-collegiate rules which govern the throwing of the hammer require that the hammer-head shall be a metal sphere; and the handle may be of any material. Up to within three or four years the handle used to be made of hard wood, but recently athletes have shown a preference for a flexible steel handle. The combined length of the head and handle must not exceed four feet, and the combined weight must be sixteen pounds. The hammer is thrown from a circle seven feet in diameter. ”

“ The clenched fist must have suggested the need of a hammer. The first thing to be substituted for the fist was a stone held in the hand. Next a thong of fiber or leather was wound around the stone, and used as a handle. From these beginnings we have progressed until we have hammers of all sizes and shapes, from the tiny hammer of the jeweler to the ponderous sledge. Workmen have adapted various shapes of hammers to their individual needs.
Fig. 6.—Hand Hammers.
A, ball peen hammer; B, cross peen hammer; C, straight peen hammer. ”

“ How to Hold a Hammer. —When you use a hammer, grasp the handle a couple of inches from the free end and hold it so that it will swing freely and easily in your hand and keep your hand and wrist above the level of the nail or whatever it is you are pounding; this takes the jar off of your arm and makes the work of using it surer and less tiresome. Never use a hammer on wood-work of any kind.
When you use a mallet as for driving chisels hold it rather close to its head, and need I tell you never to use a wooden mallet to drive nails with. ”

“ In such cases, the workmen acquire great skill and expedition in the manufacture. A tilt hammer is often used in forging large masses of iron, and even in making utensils as small as the hoe, the axe, and the sword; but the hammer which may be employed bears a due proportion in its weight to the mass of iron to be wrought. In all cases in which a tilt hammer is used, the bellows from which the blast proceeds is moved by water or steam power. ”

“ The presence of the hammer and the dog, or of the hammer and the woodman's billhook, appropriately represent the two sides of the god's character as the hammerer and the farmer's friend, while the same idea is the key to the meaning of the multiple sledge or branching hammer.
In all the images referred to, the god is said to wear a goodnatured face, and seldom to have the hammer in his right hand ready for action: so it may be inferred that he was chiefly invoked as the protector of the farmer and the friend of the woodman. ”

“ The hammer is made of high-grade steel, carefully tempered head and peen; the head is usually made cylindrical with slightly rounding face; the eye of the hammer is the center opening through which the handle is inserted. The peen of a hammer is the opposite end to the face, and terminates in a rounded or wedge-shaped point. ”

“ In some handicrafts, and those too involving a high class of finished work, the hammer is the only tool employed. That great artistic skill in the use of the hammer as a finishing-tool can be acquired, is manifest from the many beautiful specimens of répoussé work to be seen in silversmiths' shops. ”

“ Closely allied to the axe-hammers, so closely indeed that the forms seem to merge in each other, are the perforated hammer-heads of stone, which are found of various shapes, and are formed of several different kinds of rocks. In many instances, the whole of the external surface has been carefully fashioned and ground into shape, but it is at least as commonly the case that a symmetrical oval pebble has been selected for the hammer-head, and has been thus used without any labour being bestowed upon it, beyond that necessary for boring the shaft-hole. ”

“ The hammer used to take out nails, is called a claw-hammer, from its having a claw at one part. The claw is placed under the head of the nail, when the handle of the hammer becomes a lever, and the head the fulcrum; and, placed in this position, the hand acquires great power,—sometimes amounting to at least a hundred-weight. In using a hammer, we should always be careful to use the kind of hammer necessary for the work to be done. ”

“ It would seem possible that the greater rebound of the hammer which would be the consequence of a sharp blow upon the key might render the actual contact with the string shorter, while the greater force of the blow might compress and so slightly harden the soft surface of the felt with which the hammer is covered ”

“ The upholsterer's hammer is an unknown; it is not dated, its maker is anonymous, as is its user. It is of American origin, yet of a style that might have been used in England or on the Continent. This lack of provenance need not detract from its significance as a material survival. This hammer, the brace (fig. 46) , the bevel (fig. 47) , and the compass saw (fig. 48) are sufficiently provocative in their design to conjure some image of a technology dependent upon the skilled hand of craftsmen working in wood and of the relationship between the hand, the tool, and the finished product. ”

“ Towards the end of the heathen period we find instead of the axe a symbolical hammer, alike on both sides of the eye. The fact that in Scandinavia the sun god's axe became a hammer can be explained, if we consider the original Scandinavian word hamarr. This word signified originally stone, and was thus a natural term for the weapon of the sun god or the thunder god, so long as this weapon was thought of as a thunderbolt of stone. Later on, when the word had acquired its present meaning of hammer, it was just as natural for people to imagine Thor's weapon to be an iron hammer. ”

“ A hammer may be considered as a hard, insensible fist; the bellows as a pair of very strong and durable lungs. Tongs take the place of fingers, just as a spoon does of the empty hand, and the knife the place of the teeth. A great number of machines, on the other hand, may be compared to a complete workman. ”

“ With this hammer, which is set on a thin handle two or three feet long, the workman strikes light but very swift blows along the line of desired cleavage, each tap being about an inch from the preceding one. The stone is so laid that its greater part is free, resting on nothing. ”

“ Axes with or without handles are carved on stones forming the walls and roofs of tombs of this period. The image of a man, or rather of a god, with an axe, may be seen on the wall of one of the caves that in Champagne are hewn out of the chalk-rock (Fig. 15) , and from the time that Gaul was a Roman province we have many reproductions of a god holding in his hand a hammer with a long handle (Fig. 16) . The hammer, symmetrical like the double-edged axe, strongly resembles the hammer of the northern Thor, but the handle is so long that it reaches the ground. ”

“ At the same time there are some hammer-stones in which there are cavities worked on either face, so deep and so identical in character with those which, in meeting each other, produce the bell-mouthed perforations commonly present in the hammers intended for hafting, that at first sight it seems difficult to say whether they are finished implements, or whether they would have become perforated hammer-heads had the process of manufacture been completed. ”

“ There are some instances, indeed, in which the perforation would appear to be almost too small for a shaft of sufficient strength to wield the hammer, if such it were; but even in such cases, where hard silicious pebbles have been used, they must, in all probability, have been intended for other purposes than for weights. ”

“ Their arms were the bow and arrow, a short spear or lance, with a head of sharpened stone or bone, stone hammers with wooden handles, and knives made of bone or stone, and if of stone, lashed by rawhide or sinew to a split wooden handle.
The hammers were of two sorts: one quite heavy, almost like a sledge-hammer or maul, and with a short handle; the other much lighter, and with a longer, more limber handle. This last was used by men in war as a mace or war club, while the heavier hammer was used by women as an axe to break up fallen trees for firewood ”

“ It is thought by many that a purer iron is obtained by subjecting the balls as they come out of the puddling furnace, to the action of the hammer at first, than to the roughing rollers; and that by the latter process vitrified specks remain in the metal, which the hammer expels. Hence, in some works, the balls are first worked under the forge-hammer ”

“ HAMMER-THROWING, a branch of field athletics which consists of hurling to the greatest possible distance an instrument with a heavy head and slender handle called the hammer. Throwing the hammer is in all probability of Keltic origin, as it has been popular in Ireland and Scotland for many centuries. ”

“ In using the hammer, some care is needful to proportion the force of the blow to the size and comparative heat of the metal you are working, and also to turn the iron under the hammer so that each stroke shall help to consolidate the mass instead of splitting it into fibres. ”

“ When using this form of enrichment, the stone should never appear to rise abruptly from the primary mass, but should be approached by a series of rising planes.
Planishing
9. The process of smoothing and, at the same time, hardening the surface of the metal with a steel planishing hammer. The hammer strokes give an interesting texture to the surface which may be varied, from the heavily indented to the smooth surface, at the will of the craftsman. The more obvious hammer strokes are not to be desired as they bring a tool process into too much prominence for good taste. ”

“ If there is any corrosive substance upon it or upon the sides of the hollow in which it is to travel, the hammer will fail to drive it home or explode the cap. The hammer must strike it in exact position, or the pin will bend; any extra length or protrusion of the pin, or any dampness or foulness which causes it to stick, or if the pin be nipped in any way so as to weaken the force of the hammer, a miss-fire will probably be the result; and the pins must not be too loose, or they will drop out of the cartridges on any sudden or violent exertion on the part of the sportsman. ”