Democratic Sentinel, Volume 6, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 December 1882 — A Little About Hammers. [ARTICLE]

A Little About Hammers.

To most persons a hammer is simply a hammer, but every mechanic knows that there is a great variety of hammers, from the tiny lump of steel with which the watchmaker taps the mandril of a balance-wheel to the huge trip-hammer under which tons of hot i»n are moulded into shape. The hammer, in fact, plays an important part in the mechanic arts, each one presenting its peculiar form, size, weight and material. In some trades there is great skill and dexterity required in the use of the hammer. Any one who has seen the operation of riviting a boiler has admired the slight of hand with which the strikers wound up the head of a rivet in less time than it takes to write about it. The blows follow one another with wonderful accuracy and rapidity, and when the rivit head is finished it looks as smooth and regular as if it had been cast in a burnished mold. Take even the process of driving an ordinary nail and it is remarkable what a difference there is in the method of a novice and that of a carpenter. The one hits one side, often bends or breaks the nail or bruises the finger that holds it. The carpenter hits with precision and drives the nail home with welldirected blows. The deft hammering of the coppersmith is proverbial, pounding metal into any required shape. The copper plates that are used by engravers are hammered hard in long strips by the uso of large steel hammers with faces as smooth as that of a mirror. The most accurate hitting is required in this process, because the hammer face is flat and must be held perfectly level to avoid cutting deep gashes in .the plates. When it is necessary to make bevels on these plates, a skilled workman will make a bevel with a hammer in a few minutes that would require hours if made by filing and polishing. Silversmiths learn to be very expert in the use of the hammer. Spectaclemakers can take the temples of a pair of ladies’ spectacles and temper them by a dexterous planishing between hammer and anvil. A blacksmith always has an assortment of hammers with which to shape the ductile iron. File-cutters are required to use hammers with great judgment. Each tooth in a hand-made file is made by the burr raised by tapping a sharp chisel held to the soft file. After ?ach blow the chisel is set up against the burr of the last stroke and another burr is raised, and so on untill the file is finished. The force of the blow measures the size of the burr raised, so that the reglarity of the file depends upon the evenness of the hammer stroke. Many files are made by transferring processes by machinery, but the handmade files command the highest price, while with many peculiar forms of files the hand work is indispensable and the regularity of hammer work is a necessity. One of the most difficult jobs to be done with a hammer is to straighten large flat plates of metal. An expert workman will here do, with a few strokes of the hammer, properly directed, work that a non-expert cannot do at all. Indeed, without great skill, the attempt to straighten plates with a hammer generally results in making the crookedness worse. The gold beater’s hammer is wielded day by bay by the trained hand, although an hour of it woul’ fatigue the novice. The calker has a peculiar long hammer. The ax and the adze are but sharpened hammers. Machinists use great copper hammers for work where they wish to strike blows without marring the object struck.— New York Sun.