Hammer

Also called: claw hammer, warrington hammer, cross pein hammer, pin hammer

A hammer is a hand tool with a heavy head fixed to a handle, swung to drive something, usually a nail, into wood by the force of repeated blows. Nicholson (1832) put it plainly: "The use of the hammer is for driving nails into wood by percussive force."

The parts of a hammer and the common types

Nicholson (1832) also describes the head as having two working ends: one face for driving nails, and the other made either with claws, for pulling nails back out, or with a rounded edge shaped like half a cylinder, for other work. Beyond the ordinary joiner's hammer, heavier types are built for heavier work: Porter (1999) describes the club or lump hammer used mainly by stonemasons and bricklayers as a useful heavy hammer for awkward or confined spaces, and notes that a hammer of this general weight and type suits site workers doing medium to heavy construction work. Sato (1987) puts the general rule simply: the size and weight of the hammer used should match the size of the work being done.

Handling a hammer without marking the work

A joiner has to strike hard enough to drive the nail and no harder: Goss (1888) warns plainly that "hammer marks on the work must be avoided." Joyce (1987) adds a maintenance point behind this: the hammer head has to be kept clean and polished on a piece of worn abrasive paper, because a pitted or dirty face tends to bend the nail rather than drive it straight. Hoadley (1980) records a small case of wood movement working against the tool itself: a hammer that had been stored somewhere damp and was then moved to drier conditions had the joint between its handle and head loosen, as the wood of the handle lost moisture and shrank.

The veneering hammer, which does not strike at all

One tool carries the name hammer but is never swung. The veneering hammer is used to press a glued sheet of veneer down onto its backing and to work the surplus glue and trapped air out from the centre towards the edges, not to strike anything. Hasluck (1897) describes the technique: grip the veneering hammer close to its head, shake off any hot water used to soften the veneer, then press down with the handle pointing away and squeeze the glue outward. He also describes using the handle of the veneering hammer to find blisters, patches where the veneer has failed to stick, by tapping the surface and listening for the hollow sound a blister gives back, then reheating the glue underneath and pressing again. Ellis (1908) sums the tool's ordinary use up in a single line: "Knife-cut Veneers are laid with a veneering hammer." Not every job suits it, though. Jones (1920) warns that marquetry patterns and other built-up work made of many small pieces cannot be laid with a veneering hammer, because the moisture in the glue makes the pieces swell and cockle, buckling and sometimes breaking under the hammer.

A hammer used on saws, not wood

Hammers are also used away from the bench, in sharpening and maintaining the saws themselves, a craft called saw doctoring. Audels (1923) describes tensioning a saw blade by working over it with a round-faced hammer, keeping the face of the hammer round so that every blow it leaves is round too, and warns against striking too hard: it is better to go over the saw several times with light blows than to hammer it too much in one place, which can leave the saw in worse shape than before it was touched.