[Sca-cooks] turning hammer?- OT

[Chass Brown]

Aye I cringe when I see people first starting off forging and using OMG 
heavy hammers... it takes them a while to learn you have to coax the metal 
not beat it into submission. Tis kinda hard to explain to those who have not 
worked metal. I once had to try and convince a person not to use a regular 
sledge hammer with the handle cut down lol realize I failed to talk him 
outta it... he now uses a much lighter one lol.

Chass of Rundel of Ansteorra aka of the SCA aka
Charinthalis Del Sans of the portable Chariot
Honorable Recruiter of the House of the Red Shark (Have you seen my Belaying 
Pin??)
Maison Du Corsaire Rouge
Muddeler of Mead, Ailment of Ale, Whiner of wine.

> A turning hammer, Stefan (and Cadoc) is what farriers call it- a rounding
> hammer is what smiths call it. I started as a farrier, so...
>
> All it is, is a hammer with one face convex and the other face flat. As 
> soon
> as my computer is working again, I'll send a picture. The edges of the 
> face
> are radiused so you don't put dings and creases into the hot metal you're
> working, and it's particularly useful for bending steel, as in
> horseshoes "the hard way", as in edge on, to help make the curve at the 
> toe
> of the horseshoe. The head is usually about 32 oz/ 2 lbs- plenty of heft 
> for
> a hard blow, but not so heavy it will wear you out (the claw hammers that
> everyone uses for carpentry are usually 16 oz, to give you some basis for
> comparison).
>
> The hammer that you use for actually hammering the nails into the shoe and
> the hoof is called, oddly enough, a shoeing hammer ;-) and it looks rather
> like a claw hammer, and is usually 12-16 ozs. The differences are that the
> head is shaped particularly at the hammer end to hit horseshoe nails 
> without
> hitting the area around them, and the "claws" are designed to twist and 
> break
> off the "points" of the nails in preparation for clinching them over so 
> they
> don't pull out of the hoof. It also has a handle made of apple wood 
> (usually)
> for additional flex- one of the characteristics of modern horseshoe nails 
> is
> that, if hit softly, they go in straight, if hit hard, they curve out (of 
> the
> hoof).
>
> Most horseshoe nails nowadays have a rough spot on one side of the head
> (called "city heads") so the farrier can place the nail into the nail hole 
> by
> feel, without having to look at it. If you put the nail in so that it 
> bends
> in the wrong direction, the nail goes into the soft tissue (rather like 
> the
> quick of your fingernail, except much more structurally specialized) you
> suddenly have a horse with a very sore foot who now has a puncture wound 
> very
> subject to infection- not a good thing.
>
> Saint Phlip,
> CoD
>
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