Thread: Horn hammer

That pic doesn't show much!

Try this one.

It's bigger than I first thought......

I thought it might be good for adjusting wedges and blades of wooden planes.

Is it soft? Most of the hammers used to tap the wedge on a wooden plane are leather-faced.

It's not very big.
275mm long, with the head 125mm long x 30mm dia. at the face.

The head feels quite hard like a dense hardwood with about the same weight.

It feels really nice in the hand, like my small Brades pin hammer, but with a shorter handle.

Stuffy - I can't see the head clearly enough to be absolutely certain, but it looks like (& and your description increases my suspicion) a piece of antler, not horn. Sorry to be a nitpicker, but there is a big difference, as they are made of quite different stuff. Horn is just very dense keratin, the stuff of your outer skin, and usually hollow. But antler is very dense bone, much harder than horn.

I suggest you don't whack anything too hard with it at an angle, as it may chip, but it ought to be pretty tough stuff. When you see two stags going at each other, you wonder how they don't snap bits off much more frequently than they do!

A most interesting tool - I wonder if it was made for a special purpose, or simply "because he could"??

Cheers,

Hi Ian,

You're probably right. I've never seen antler up close, and every horn I've seen is hollow. I was just going by the statement from the site I posted the link to.

"Horn hammers are rather pleasant to use and very good ones may be made from water buffalo horn. Moose antlers and other antlers work but tend to disintegrate."

Apparently they were favoured for jewellery making and used to be available commercially.

Love your saws, by the way.

Steve.