Thread: handle making - hammer

I don't think it matters too much, Bob. I don't usually have the luxury of choosing grain orientation because I like to use a local species of wattle that I've found to make very good handles. However, they don't grow very big before grubs & old age finish them off, and I can usually only get a handle's worth out of a quarter of a log, so the grain of many of my handles goes at 45 degrees across the axis.

I think what's more important is to choose a wood that has the right properties - toughness and a bit of 'spring' are what I look for. Many of our hardwoods tend to be short-fibred & brittle, which is definitely not what you want in a handle. Once I spent half a morning making a handle out of Blue-gum (E. tereticornis) for a splitting maul which snapped at the head on the 3rd or 4th stroke!

I have a crude test that gives me some indication of a wood's suitability for handles. Take a scrap of the wood you are considering using, & either split or saw a thin sliver along the grain. Then bend it til it breaks. If it snaps cleanly, that's not a good sign, but if it tolerates extreme bending & hangs on to the last fibre, I take that as a good sign: snap test.jpg

As I said, it's a very crude test, but if you compare a few woods, it will give you a good idea of which are the tough ones...

Cheers,

Aussie timbers I have experimented with for hammer handles include; Spotted Gum (Corymbia maculata), Red Gum (both WA and Eastern states varieties), Rock oak, Sheoak, Jarrah, Tuart, Karri, Olive and Apple. Of these Spotted Gum would be the easiest for you to get that has the best overall strength but like Ian says you should test a sample of the wood your'e thinking of using first in the manner he describes. The required properties for tool handles depend not just on the tree itself but where on the tree it comes from and how it has been dried.

Olive and Apple have the best tactile feel and have more than enough strength for smaller hammers and mallets. Karri is the strongest but has the worst splinters. I made my log rolling "can't hook handles out of Karri and every time I use them (with gloves) I continue to be impressed as to how much "hoike" can be applied without even a hint of breakage.

Thanks fellows. It was one of those 'I wonder' moments for me. Yes, I can see you are right about the right kind of timber for each task being way more important.

I plunged in and used a piece of figured Tassie Blackwood. Bugger of a thing to turn but got there.

Funny thing, last night I couldn't sleep and started wondering if such thing as grain orientation (i.e. flatsawn or qtr sawn matters in such things as table aprons and so on, where such matters would actually be more significant. No doubt, will be doing some trawling through whatever reference material I've got.

generally grain orientation should be parallel with the long axis of the hammer head (or across the long part of the oval hammer eye if that makes sense).

most current handles from retailers you will have to search though a lot to find a handle with the "correct" grain orientation.

Originally Posted by Zsteve

generally grain orientation should be parallel with the long axis of the hammer head (or across the long part of the oval hammer eye if that makes sense).

most current handles from retailers you will have to search though a lot to find a handle with the "correct" grain orientation.

Zsteve, that orientation would certainly give maximum bending strength in the fore-aft direction in most woods, and I suggest it would be a good idea to try to get the grain that way on a handle for something like a claw hammer or a sledge-hammer. For woodworking mallets and light-duty peening hammers, I think grain orientation matters less than the actual wood you choose. (Edit: though I wouldn't advise using fiddle-backed or other highly-figured woods as you are likely to end up with cross-grain in a vulnerable spot [damhik!]. Better to stick with plain, boring straight grain in this application).

I've got a coupe of favoured mallet handles that have lived with me for a few decades - but they've each had several heads! I confess to being a bit rough on mallets, I tend to treat them as a 'consumable'. I've lost track of how many mallet heads I've split belting an old axe-head as a wedge to split turning billets. I keep meaning to make myself a hooped head like the old time splitting mauls, but it's easier to just grab a bit of scrap hardwood from my pile of offcuts & make a new head, so that project has never progressed very far. Someday.....

Cheers,