Dad scored a Fairmount hammer at a garage sale the other day. The handle is in good shape, and the head is tight, but the faces are pretty banged up. Can I just put them on my belt sander and smooth them out? A few of the dents are pretty deep, so I probably can't get them perfect. How much crown should there be? It looks like the faces were almost flat, but they do seem to have a little bit of a curve to them. A straight edge held against the smaller face shows about 1/32" of clearance at the edges, and rocks pretty smoothly from one edge to the other. The same test on the large face shows a bit more clearance, maybe 1/16", maybe a bit less than that.
You can sand them all you want to whatever shape you want, don't over heat them and keep using finer grit. Then polish up for less marring.
When I was about 10 I used my dad's hammer to build a tree house. It looked about like that one by the time he caught me. I learned about body hammers at a young age.
I'd work the faces down with a small flap wheel. add,,,and finish with a ScotchBrite wheel on a bench grinder.
I'd think grinding til the dings are gone, then sanding to about 80 grit would be fine. The first couple uses will smooth the scratches off the face.
Look carefully in the sides of the head and you may find an ID number that may help identify the hammer/face profile. Does the face appear flat or dished? Restore the original flat or dished contour and you will have a quality SHEET METAL working tool.
Thanks John. There is a number stamped on the side of the head. It's kinda in distinct, but Google suggests that it's a 150-G. The faces seem to be close to flat, with a slight crown. I'll see what I can do with flap wheels and belt sander. Trying to end up with a nice tool, without screwing it up.
I don't think it would be easy to maintain the crown with a belt sander. I would try a foam pad on a DA, go slow and move it around trying to get a uniform contact patch.
I do a lot of pounding out silver ingots on an anvil, and my hammers get marked by the anvil surface when doing the rough work.. I clean them up all the time. It just requires a grindstone (co****r wastes less time with the initial shaping) and then progressively finer grinding and sanding until you have a perfect polish. Given the deep marking on your hammer's faces, you'll want to start with a very co**** grindstone, or you'll be at it for hours. If you have any trouble getting a perfect polished dome on that hammer, PM me for my address. It would take me very little time to polish it up for you, and I'd get a warm fuzzy over keeping an old tool on someone's bench. I have a debt to pay in the "pay it forward" world, and this project would be a poetic form of repayment.
There will also be a certain amount of case hardening on that head. The more you grind off, the softer metal you will be left with. Personally, I wouldn't worry too much about the divets, just keep on beating with it.
Robert (MP&C, here on the HAMB) did a thread about restoring old body hammer faces. He is a very thorough guy with a gift for explaining things and lots of pictures. He brings it back to mirror finish. Be worth your time to search for it, it's been a couple years or so. A Fairmont is worth saving.
I got hold of an old very worn masons hammer and reground the face and peen for sheet metal work. Used a angle grinder with a co**** grinding disc for the rough shaping, angle grinder laying on my knees with the disc up and holding the hammer with both hands. The trick is never holding the hammer still, that causes a flat spot that will be hard to get rid off, keep rolling the hammer back and forth and changing the angle you hold it to grind equally everywhere. I finished with some kind of polishing disc on the angle grinder, would have used emery cloth if I didn't have that. In case you wonder why I reground a worn masons hammer for sheet metal work, the real body hammers are expensive and this one wasn't. Doesn't have to look like the right tool, it just has to do the job - and that it does!
The tool is up to you, whatever you're comfortable with, belt sander allows you to keep your angle and roll the head on the belt to keep the crown in it. Go light, go slow. I have a couple of cheap hammers that are just for hammering welds, nicer hammers stay clean and are used on actual sheetmetal. Dont mix em or theyll all look bad. That may be fine as it is for weld work.
http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/dollys-and-hammers.754681/ Is this the thread you're thinking of?
Yup! that's it. You did a great search job, I remembered it as being a seperate thread not part of another thread.
Took a while to find. Had to read a bunch of his other threads too, and I'm not complaining about that at all.
Thanks. I'll give it a shot and see what happens. I'm not too worried about removing metal with ***orted abrasives, that seems straight forward. Mostly making sure I'm aiming for the right shape. Flat-ish with a slight crown is right, I guess.
Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. Just like it's better to measure twice, cut once, it's easy to remove metal, but putting it back is difficult. So, better to go at it slow.
Robert has a gift. I used to have seminars in my shop, Robert would come and do the metalshaping seminars. He was able to to demonstrate and show the principles of metalshaping to 30-40 people crowding around absorbed in what he was doing. One year an old time leadslinger and Robert collaborated to recreate the 2pc hood of a '39 Ford and then leaded the seam in the middle. Everybody watched him make matching compound curves on 2 differet pieces, join them to recreate the hood and Tom leaded the seam like an old custom from the '50's. They did the whole thing in about an hour, hour and a half. I guarantee everybody in attendance will remember that demonstration for decades.
There is really no such thing as a "right shape". Hammers come with no crown, low crown, and high crown. Even full round ends. Just depends on the shape of the panel you're working on. That's why body guys have so many hammers!
All my body hammers are pretty soft and without fail someone finds on and tries to drive nails with it. I am not sure why but for some reason they are impossible to hide. I just use a flap disc on my angle grinder. It works for me. Just looking at the pics I would guess that the arc on the face is going to be pretty close. I do have one that is absolutely flat with a radius around the edge that came that way.
One of the tricks is to develop a smooth motion, moving the hammer face against the abrasive in an arc, then turn 90 degrees and repeat the same arc, then turn back to where you started. Repeating the same arcing motion in different directions helps create a uniform dome.
A Faremount 150-G would be considered a flat face hammer. Grind it to whatever contour you want but with a flat face it would be good for flattening sheet metal against a flat dolly without stretching (thinning) the metal. There are many other uses as well.
Thanks to the motivation that grew out of this thread, I went out and cleaned up several of my hammers this afternoon, even that intriguing pay-it-forward oddball! Now I'm motivated to spend the weekend shaping some patch panels for my rusty old taxi.
The Jalopy Journal
