Before we get into this hammer stuff, let it be said that one can go a long way with a regular 16 ounce claw hammer or ball-peen. Nothing fancy, something you might already own. And it wouldn't hurt to start with what you have so that if you find you want to trade up you'll have a clearer idea of what to get. For now, think about acquiring something like a Stanley hammer and an anvil from HaborFreight.com and be done with it. Make life easy.

---

The standard thing to do when you can't get the metal to move is reach for a bigger hammer, but there's another way. Deforming metal is a function of hammer weight AND the area of the hammer face. So, we're talking about applied force in terms of pounds per square inch. There are two ways to increase this force: heavier hammer or reducing the face area. We'll go with the second.

Changing the face diameter from a unit of 1 to 0.71 (left) doubles the striking force. Doubling hammer weight, or halving face surface area achieves the same result. So, a two pound hammer can be turned into a twenty pounder just by regrinding it's face. Since knife forging is precise forging, lighter hammers with smaller faces make sense.

As long as we're reshaping hammer faces, there's another thing that can be done. The depth of penetration can be controlled--the severity of the hammer marks can be controlled by specifying the distance XX. For the hammer to penetrate to XX depth the force is cut in half. The deeper the penetration the less force the hammer has, thus it's self-limiting. Shallower penetration means less metal moved, but a smoother surface finish and more precision. In any event, a hammer's penetration can be controlled by setting the XX distance when its face is shaped. The XX distance will typically be a few hundreths of an inch.

The Two Concepts:

1) Hammer weight can be effectively multiplied by reducing face area
2) Careful regrinding of the face can make penetration self-limiting AND that depth can be set.

Test these ideas out by clay forging. The face shapes you adopt and grind will be based directly on the results of clay work.

---

Engineer's 2 1/2# hammer with the initial impact surface ground to the size of a dime and the other face flattened.

Hammers: Look here at different types of hammers. In general, a hammer in the 2-2.5 pound range is about right, probably either a engineer's hammer (left) or blacksmith's hammer with a cross peen (right). The hardware store should have both. Here's a good selection of forging hammers for sale on the web. Cutting the handles down to somewhere around 10-12" may work better.

Tongs: Vise Grip is a brand name which has become the generic name for tools of that type. Kind of like jello and zipper. Anyway, pick up one or more vise grips. The long nose model works well.