....because building these natural stone flowerbed walls is very hard on these stone hammers! I've got a whole bunch of antique stone hammers, some dating to the mid/late 1700s, and I bought them to USE them. After breaking the handles on three of them, and with the miserable rainy weekend we had, it was time to make some new ones out of some nice straight grained locust heartwood I put back almost two years ago for that very task.. Didn't get many "during" photos, I was busy all evening making these handles. I used an 18th century curved draw knife (which works incredible for the task) and a sharp chisel, along with an old handforged ball peen hammer (that my great-grandfather made when he was a blacksmith at the PRR in the early 1920's) to do the task, these handles should be good to go for a while to come!
The one handle is repurposed. It was the hickory handle I put on the one stone hammer several years back, it snapped right at the head. I whittled it down, and although it shortened it up a bit, it's actually more usable being shorter... I have a ton of miles on this hammer, it was the first stone hammer I ever aquired.....I've probably worn at least 3/4" off of the point.......
This vintage Craftsman facing hammer is good for dressing the edges. I first made the handle for this one last week, snapped it off at the head, whittled it back down and reused it.....
Then there's this hammer, which I found at a tree job we did a few years back. It was laying in the dirt inside of an old stone foundation at the property we were cutting at. This is the first handle it's had since who knows when....
Lastly, an old blacksmith hammer that I use for stone. The handle had been cracked for years, finally made her a new one....
All very cool and well made, especially the widen bottom ends. I like the short handles on the stone hammers, particularly if the heads are a little heavy. I have all sorts of hammers with ash, hickory, oak and maple handles. I could never tell a difference in shock absorbing abilities between species. It is all based on comfort and fit. The maple handles are used for wooden mallets. I think oak has shorter grains and tend to crack where they meet the head when the wood gets old. I turned one locust mallet handle for a locust dog head mallet I made. It has held up well. I say use what you got that is strong and durable. I'm no purist by any means.
