MTFCA Forum

I bought box of junk tools at an auction recently, just for a couple of forged steel G clamps. Buried in the bottom of the box was an Eastwood forged claw hammer, minus half the leather handle and the remainder wrapped in heaps of black insulating tape.

I'd rescued another one time by making new leather sections and filing/shaping them down into an acceptable handle. Before I lost it, the leather had shrunk, become loose and was rather softer than the original Eastern stuff.

I took a different tack with this one. I cut laths of timber to fill the channels in the handle and epoxy resin glued them in place. Then I machined two channel pieces to go over this assembly and epoxies those in place. Then I made a replacement brass keeper for the end.

The linisher belt on my bench grinder was used to shape the handle from there. A final sanding and oiling with used vegetable oil produced this. The timber is an acacia species, Blackwood, I cut it from the same tabletop plank from which I cut the dashboard for my wide body roadster. It closely resembles the rosewood used on early Stanley plane handles.

Allan from down under.

Nice job and that is a OLD hammer

It was dated in the forging under the handle, a 1964 model, with the number 20, presumably the weight in ounces.

Allan from down under.

Dad had one with leather wraps like that. E S Twing 20-oz head.
Nice job making it useful.
Rich

Richard, your Dad's hammer shows the typical deterioration of the leather handles. As they dry out, the leather shrinks, the segments get loose and the handle diameter shrinks too. I guess frequent applications of leather dressing would keep the handle in better order, but It doesn't usually happen. Tradesmen just keep on with the job.

Allan from down under.