Yellowhammer

“ Hammer brought to our hut the red piece, which surely was not of the rock itself, and much we considered of what it might be and of what use it could be made to us. That last thought took but little time. Hammer decided it:
“It will not break,” he said; “it will only bend, and that not easily, yet it may be hammered into many shapes. Such hammering it shall have. I will make a spear-head such as men have never seen!” He took the fragment of metal and one of the heaviest of our stone hammers and went with them to the hard flat boulder in the ravine and there began his pounding. ”

“ The hamlet forge is not yet quite extinct, and the blacksmith's hammer sounds among the oaks. He frequently has to join two pieces of iron together, say to lengthen a rod. He places both ends in the fire, heats them to a certain point, and then presses the one against the other. By this simple means of touching they unite, the metal becomes one almost like a chemical union, and so complete is it, that, with a little polishing to remove the marks of fire, the join is not perceptible to an ordinary eye. ”

“ There was such excitement in the village as had not often been known before when Hammer, who had set the spear-head in its shaft, displayed it to the tribe. There was wonder and great envy and desire and a demand that henceforth Hammer should do naught else but make such spear-heads, that each might possess one and so the tribe be made superior to all about us. And Hammer [Pg 216] promised this, if only they would bring to him the copper with which to work, and he told of how he had found that which he had. ”

“ The manner in which his strokes follow one another puts me in mind of the clever way in which workmen drive an iron bar into a macadamised road by raining upon it blows with sledge-hammers. Almost before the hammer of the first striker is off the head of the bar the second has struck it, this is immediately followed by the hammer of the third, then, without a pause, the first hammerer gets his second blow home, and so they continue until a halt is called. ”

“ This welding of the barrels is performed at a building among the Middle Water Shops. A range of tilt hammers extend up and down the room, with forges in the centre of the room, one opposite to each hammer, for heating the iron. The tilt hammers are driven by immense water-wheels, placed beneath the building—there being an arrangement of machinery by which each hammer may be connected with its moving power, or disconnected from it, at any moment, at the pleasure of the workman. Underneath the hammer is an anvil. ”

“ I worked with Hammer at the shaping, as did two other men, and it was not long, since the anvil rock would accommodate but four workers, before we had rolled down from farther up the valley four or five more of the hard rocks to also serve as they might for other anvils, though to accomplish this required many men as did the later hard work in chipping the tops of the new rocks down to the proper level. Then still more of the men were set to work to learn the way of the hammering and shaping, and became expert according to their gifts, though none could ever hope to equal the way of Hammer. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The red substance was the thing Hammer had found in the pronged rock and was copper, as we came to call it, something now most precious to us and in the getting of which we were all assisting Hammer to the utmost. What arrow-heads and spear-heads he had given us! There had been never others to equal them. ”

“ As soon as the furnace-door on one side of this hammer was opened, a large lump of scrap-iron at a white heat was lifted and then conducted by a crane on to the anvil beneath. At the same moment from an opposite furnace a long iron bar, heated only at one extremity, was by a gentle blow of the hammer no sooner welded to the mass than the head smith, using it as a handle, turned and re-turned the lump on the anvil so as to enable the steam-hammer to weld its contents into proper form. Of course there has been selected for this extremely heavy work the strongest man that could be obtained. ”

“ Wiley summoned his engineer and, in the shattered jaws of the rock-breaker, they found the innocent-looking instrument of destruction. It was not a stick of dynamite, but a heavy steel sledge-hammer that had been cast into the jaws of the crusher. They had closed down upon it, the hammer had resisted, and then all the momentum of that whirling double fly-wheel had been brought to bear against it. Yet the hammer could not be crushed and, as the wheel had applied its weight, the resistance to its force had caused it to leap from its bearings and go hurtling down the incline. ”

“ He was known as Nord of the Hammer, an armourer like to a Norse Volund, burly, strong as a bear. The door was barred upon them. One of the guards plucked the cloth from the bound man's face.
In the malicious imagery of thought, Yeoland had often pictured to herself this Flavian of Gambrevault, a coarse, florid ruffian, burly and brutal, a fleshly demigod in the world of feudalism. So much for conjecture. What she beheld was a straight-lipped, clean-limbed man, slim as a cypress, supple as good steel. The face was young yet strong, the grey eyes clear and fearless. ”

“ 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. ”

“ His hammer is a tool of immense power and pliancy, but for which we must have stopped short in many of those gigantic engineering works which are among the marvels of the age we live in. It possesses so much precision and delicacy that it will chip the end of an egg resting in a glass on the anvil without breaking it, while it delivers a blow of ten tons with such a force as to be felt shaking the parish. ”

“ Fig. 3047 represents Corr’s power hammer, the construction being as follows: The semi-elliptic springs, shown on top and bottom of the beam, serve to balance the stroke, so that the hammer may run from 350 to 450 strokes per minute, with safety to the machinery. The hammer is adapted to almost any form or kind of forging. Large dies may be inserted for various kinds of forming and welding, such as making plough-shares and other articles, which require that the operation be commenced with a light tap, and increased to a heavy blow at the will of the operator. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 two-pound drop-hammer falls a distance of twenty-two inches in the grooves of the vertical posts which are mortised and glued into the base, as are also the oblique braces to which are attached the bobbin, or axle, and crank, on which the cord is wound that raises the hammer. This hammer is a flat piece of iron having two pieces of wood, each four by two and one-half inches in size, cemented to it. A wire hook is attached just above, and the extended arm of the hook as the weight nears the top, meets a projecting pin, and slips the weight from the cord. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is curious to see how the rudest of primitive weapons, after its serious warlike use has ceased, survives as a symbol of power, when the mace is carried as emblem of the royal authority, and is laid on the table during the sitting of Parliament or the Royal Society. While the club has been generally a weapon, the hammer has been generally an implement. Its history begins with the smooth heavy pebble held in the hand, such as African blacksmiths to this day forge their iron with, on another smooth stone as anvil. It was a great improvement to fasten the stone hammer on a handle ”

“ Nominoë rose, took up and opened his traveling wallet, and drew from it the iron head of a heavy blacksmith's hammer.
"Look at this, Bertha! This shall be joined to our family relics—sad and painful relics of a serf family."
"What sort of a hammer is that? It carries, cut into the iron head the Breton words Ez-Libr."
"They mean To Be Free. It was the device of Tankeru the blacksmith. He used this hammer as his weapon during the insurrection. I arrived this morning before dawn in the forest of Mezlean, feeling greatly alarmed over the fate of Tina's father. ”

“ The hammer is the basic tool in the collector’s kit. Almost any type of hammer is satisfactory, but as collecting experience is gained it may be desirable to get a geologist’s hammer. These hammers, also called mineralogist’s or prospector’s picks, are of two types. ”

“ The part which serves as a reflector is raised by placing the metal face down on a sand bag, or on pitch and with the pein end of a chaser's hammer or with a pointed horn hammer, driving the center down to the required depth. If the face is somewhat irregular, it can be trued up by placing it on a block of wood and going over it with a rawhide hammer. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But before the axe could reach him there was no dwarf there. Whether he melted into nothing, or whether he disappeared down one of those trap-doors which [Pg 123] are to be found in every stage, or what else became of him, will probably never be known. At all events the blade of the axe came down upon the bare boards and buried itself six inches deep in the wood, and no dwarf was there, but only the glittering half of a spade guinea, strung on a broken thread of silk. This the Headsman placed in Yellow-cap's hand, and he hid it in his bosom.
'He lives still!' said Silvia, smiling again. ”

“ Never attempt to sandpaper surfaces or parts which are to be put together later on to form joints, the edge tools alone must be depended upon to secure proper smoothing.
65. Hammers. —Fig. 125 shows the two kinds of hammers most commonly used by workers in wood. The plain faced hammer has a flat face and is somewhat easier to learn to use than the bell-faced hammer, which has a slightly rounded face. The advantage of the bell-faced hammer lies in one’s ability to better set a nail slightly below the surface without the assistance of the nailset. ”