made a straight peen

[Scott Roush]

Once upon a time, when my dreams were larger than my hammer, I tried to forge a giant ball peen into an axe.  The dream died hard and the failed piece found a lonely nook in my shop.  Then one day I was looking at some shiny new straight peens and the cost deterred me. My thoughts drifted off to that ball peen and suddenly I realized I already had a straight peen! What do you get when you start to forge a giant hammer head into a blade and give up? A hammer with a straight peen on one side and a ball on the other. With excitement I found this thing, ground the rebar off that was still stuck to it, took it to the grinder and made it into something symmetrical and useful, brought it up to critical in the forge, threw it into my slack tub with a resounding hiss, tempered to 450 and stuck, of all things, diamond willow into it.  Folks, let me introduce you to my new straight peened hammer:

[kbaknife]

That's got class!

[prarieboy]

And plenty "o" characatur!

[Lin Rhea]

That handle looks comfortable. Good job. Lin

[Jeremy]

Originally posted by Scott Roush:
Once upon a time, when my dreams were larger than my hammer

 Story of my life, right there!

Real nice hammer!

[Scott Roush]

Thanks guys... I can tell right now that this hammer will become a special heirloom to me. That is if the handle doesn't break.

Speaking of dreams being larger than hammers... I was whining to Jason Knight the other day about my lack of a power hammer and he turned me onto this thing... A Leonardo Da Vinci 'blacksmith hammer'.

http://www.msichicago.org/scrapbook/scrapbook_exhibits/leonardo/models/12_model.html

I might make it just because it looks cool!

[gudspelr]

Now that's a power hammer   .  I've never seen something quite like that-sure like the ingenuity, though.  And cool hammer-really like the handle.


Jeremy

[Ragnarok Forge]

No power hammer = the armstrong method.  We all need to learn to do it by hand first.  The only problem is the Popeye hammer arm.

[Scott Roush]

The problem is trying to work down the huge bloom steel when I get my smelting running... as well as the wootz stuff I'm learning.  Not to mention the material loss through scaling that I'm experiencing through excessive heats.