The Huang Raising Hammer

Way back in the later days of my college “career” (I spent 12 years getting my BFA degree) I bought a Peddinghaus raising hammer. This was back when they made a higher quality hammer than they do now. It has served me well for a couple decades, raising hundreds upon hundreds of vessels. I feel a bit bad for it now quietly whimpering softly with forlorn neglect hanging in its storage spot up on the wall. I don’t think I can ever let it go after spending so many hours with it over the years. You will probably find it among my tool collection in the estate sale after I die. It is a good hammer, a respectable hammer, but alas, it’s a hammer that has been replaced by a superior one.

A while back I was communicating with Saign Charlestein, the artist/tool maker who makes the chasing hammers I wrote a review about several years ago. He mentioned he had started creating “signature” tools for some of the well known master metalsmiths in the field. These are tools developed in close conjunction with these masters to create what they feel would be an ideal tool, and which would bear their name.

Saign asked if I would be interested in creating a signature hammer. Knowing that he creates high quality tools, exquisitely beautiful tools, and what I feel are the best chasing hammers out there you can buy today I didn’t have to think too hard before agreeing to work with him on a signature hammer. So for the past several weeks we’ve been exchanging ideas, weights, measurements, critiques, and evaluations. I’ve eagerly received prototypes and put them through their paces hammering out vessels and reporting back what was good and what needed altering to get to a raising hammer I’d be proud to endorse with my name. It’s an exquisite tool, and like Saign’s chasing hammers I feel that the new Huang Raising Hammer is the best hammer out there for the sort of raising I do!

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts I am something of a tool minimalist. I don’t have a huge collection of hammers, relative to some metalsmiths that is. I certainly still have way more hammers than the average person leading one of my gallery owners to declare good naturedly that I have a hammer fetish. Anyway, when beginning this development process I considered the hammers I do have, in particular the two raising hammers I use the most, and narrowed down what aspects I like and don’t like about them. In this process I realized of my two main raising hammers I in fact only use one face on each for virtually all my work. Minimalist that I am, this became the obvious starting point, make a single hammer that has the two faces I use the most.

One face is wider and used for the vast bulk of my raising work, and the other side is narrower, making a sharper hammer mark but focusing the force of the blow to a smaller zone. The wider side is a sort of broad cross peen shape I often compare in form to the end section of your thumb. It’s my go to general use hammer head for almost all forming work. Without a doubt this will be the side I use the most. The other side is the cross peen shape as well, but it’s narrowed down to about 3/16 of an inch. This is what I use when doing my multi-node vessels where I need something to get into narrow spaces between the nodes.

Another feature of the hammer that was critical to me was the overall length of the hammer head. Personally I find with hammers that as the distance between the end face of the hammer and the center of the handle gets longer I have less and less control, while also significantly increasing the forces straining and torquing my wrist around should I ever land a blow that isn’t exactly centered. My old narrow faced raising hammer had a head length that was just a bit too long which I’d noticed caused me to shy away from doing many of the vessel forms that would require it, in order to avoid all that extra strain on my wrist. With this new hammer that is no longer an issue!

I made sure the faces of both sides were rounded back far enough with the edges dressed well so there shouldn’t be any issues with hammering in ugly lines from sharp edges when the angle of a blow is off, or more to the point for me, when hammering down into deep valleys with multi-node raising or hammer chasing work.

Of course the overall weight of the hammer head had to find that balance between heavy enough to hit with good force and yet not any heavier than needed otherwise it is just tiring you arm out. More on this aspect later.

My understanding has always been that forged hammer heads are superior to those that are cast or entirely milled. The forging process alters the crystalline structure of the metal making for a stronger end product. Saign does individually forge each hammer head. This is one reason his work stands out above mass produced hammers and why I would want my signature raising hammer to be made by him. He also polishes the faces to an exquisite mirror finish.

There is one other tiny point to note about the hammer head. It’s more challenging to notice on hammers where the faces are rounded back as much as this raising hammer has. If you look closely you will notice that the overall shape of the head is not a perfectly straight line running perpendicular to the handle, which would result in hammer faces running parallel to the handle. Rather with this hammer there is a tiny bit of an arc so the hammer faces are at slight angles to the handle. This is because when we hammer we swing in an arc. If the shape of the hammer matches that arc then the hammer face will be striking more squarely. It’s a feature that is easier to see on Saign’s chasing hammers, but it is worked into the design of Huang Raising Hammer too.

That’s all info about the hammer head. In process of physically crafting a hammer the head is likely where the bulk of the time and effort goes. Why I was so eager to work with Saign on these though was the fact that he doesn’t gloss over the hammer handle and just mount his head on any old stick. In my opinion, for a superior hammer the handle is just as, if not a bit more important than the head. The handle is where we, the metalsmiths using the hammer, have the most direct physical interaction with the tool. It is our point of contact. If it’s coarse and rough we can expect to develop massive numbers of blisters until we get really thick calluses. A smooth finish can reduce this.

The shape of the handle also strongly impacts how well it functions and how comfortable it is to hold. The handle for this hammer is designed to tuck into the hand beautifully. There is a section that is a bit broader and flatter than you often see on hammer handles. Just looking at it this might seem insignificant. However, when you use it I think you’ll find the increased control it gives is significant. I myself was surprised at how much more control it offered to have that broader amount of wood tucked into my palm! The little flare out at the bottom also serves a functional purpose of providing something of a stop to keep the handle from wanting to squirt out the end of your grip. If you don’t know what I mean by this then try doing some heavy hammering sometime with a hammer handle that tapers down to the end. In that case it always feels like the tool wants to slide out of your hand, causing one to grip even tighter for control. While putting this new hammer through its paces I realized the exquisite shape of the handle meant I had excellent control even with a very light grip. That is awesome to me since a lighter grip means I get less vibrations from the impacts transferring through to wear down and tire out my arm! When one hammers for hours this becomes quite important.

Related to this, the handle is made from osage orange wood, its many wonderful properties I wrote about previously when reviewing Saign’s chasing hammers. Now a raising hammer is going to be striking with a lot more force than a chasing hammer, so the handle can’t be whittled down to be nearly as thin and springy. However, osage orange is a strong, tough wood with an excellent ability to flex. So for the Huang Raising Hammer the handle is designed to have a section thinner than the rest. This thin zone allows for just a tiny bit of spring to it under the forces used when raising, thus giving the tool a livelier feel and reducing arm strain just that little bit more.

During my initial tests of this hammer I would go back and forth between raising a vessel with it and with my old, much loved Peddinghaus I mentioned at the beginning of this page. I had literally had decades of constant use getting accustomed to and comfortable with the Peddinghaus. Yet in a matter of a couple a hours I found it felt leaden and kludgy when compared to the Huang Raising Hammer! This new hammer was so much more alive and easier to control. I was shocked because again I had SO much experience using and controlling the Peddinghaus I never had to think about it. That hammer was just an extension of my hand. Yet in such a short time I felt how much better things could be! With this new handle the Huang Raising Hammer became that extension of my hand almost immediately, with even more control and life to it! The experience of developing this hammer with Saign has opened my eyes even wider to how impactful and important the hammer handle can be!

So earlier I promised more about the overall weight of the hammer head. When developing this hammer Saign and I initially focused on what I now think of as the “normal” weight hammer, where the head is running around 375 grams. (Being individually forged and crafted one can expect a bit of variation in each hammer.) This is in fact a bit less than my old Peddinghaus, yet I found it struck with a similar force. The slightly lower weight, along with all the other points previously mentioned, meant it had better overall control and ease of use.

That made me wonder in the back of my head just how this design would perform if it was significantly lighter and heavier. How much of this greater control and life to the hammer came from the slightly lower weight and how much was a result of the handle and head design? Unlike me, Saign is not the natural minimalist when it comes to tools. He likes to have a range of hammer weights to suit different applications. So he proposed that if I was interested we could try making both a heavier and lighter version. I didn’t have to think too hard to agree to this! I was already curious what different weights would feel like. As I think about it, I can blame this curiosity on him since he was the one to get me to experience the difference multiple weights of chasing hammers can have for different operations. So we again discussed over all weights, face dimensions, head lengths, and then Saign went back to the forge to hammer up some more hammers. Then I went into my studio and put them through their paces.

With my tool minimalist nature in mind, I wasn’t sure I personally would have uses for a heavier and lighter version, but I could imagine others wanting them. Then I used them… Dang it! I think I’m being slowly transformed into a tool junkie! What we ended up with was a slightly smaller hammer weighing about 275 grams, the “normal” size at around 375 grams, and a slightly larger one coming it at 475 grams. In my trials I did, in fact, find all 3 sizes useful to me.

The heavier hammer is nice for when I’m doing larger vessels, or operations that need more power behind the blow, such as using thicker metal, or when I’m trying to get more compression in a course of raising. I’ve been using it to raise some vessels from 12 inch disks of 18 gauge copper. I find I am switching back and forth between the middle weight and heavy weight hammers depending on what stage I am at on the vessel. I can see I will be using this larger size quite a bit in conjunction with the normal size. Mind you, the normal size could still do everything I’m trying to do. It just is nicer and a bit easier in many spots to grab the heavier version instead.

I was expecting the smaller, lighter version to be good for those doing smaller raised pieces using thinner metal than the 18 gauge I normally use. I also thought it would work rather nicely for some of the rough forming in the early stages of a technique I call hammer chasing. (This is what I call going straight at a wax filled vessel with hammers to develop lines and forms rather than using traditional chasing tools.) When I tried it for normal raising I was surprised at how well this smaller hammer did work. I think it will be good for those who just want to raise with a lighter hammer. Being lighter it is much easier to swing and control. There is just a bit less force behind the blows and the faces being smaller naturally strike over a smaller area. Personally though, for a general raising application I will likely still be predominantly using the normal and heavy weight versions.

For the hammer chasing application the lightweight version did function as I expected, working quite well. What surprised me though was that the normal and heavyweight versions worked good too. In fact having all three, gave me a set of hammer faces spanning a range of widths which was extremely handy with the sort of forms and lines I like to develop with hammer chasing. I can see I will be using them all on a regular basis, and thus why I say Saign is transforming me away from my tool minimalism! (As a heads up side note, we are probably also going to be creating another hammer of a different design specifically for the more controlled work needed in later stages of hammer chasing. Stay tuned!)

So for those of you numbers oriented here are the approximate dimensions for the different sizes. Again, because these are individually crafted you should expect some minor variances. However, as many of you already know because it is Saign crafting these you can also expect the resulting hammers to be exquisite!

The small 275 gram hammer has face sizes of 1/2″ x 1″ and 1/8″ x 7/8″ with an overall head length of 4.25″.

The middle, or what I think of as normal 375 gram size hammer has face sizes of 5/8″ x 1 1/4″ and 3/16″ x 1″ with an overall head length of 5″.

The large 475 gram hammer has face sizes of 3/4″ x 1 1/4″ and 1/4″ x 1″ with an overall head length of 5 1/4″.

The handle length on all of them is about 12 inches.

I’m extremely happy with how these hammers have turned out and am excited to be able to present them to you all as an option for those wanting the highest quality and most beautiful raising hammers. I do believe these are the best you could buy and am proud to put my name to them as the signature Huang Raising Hammers!

Those of you who follow my blog will know that I am frugal by nature and thus I feel I must acknowledge that the lower cost, mass produced raising hammers like my old Peddinghaus can work just fine for the task. I was using mine for at least 2 decades after all. That said, if you have the desire and means I think you will find these hammers individually crafted by Saign Charlestein to offer a superior experience in both form and function. These are the premier top of the line tool!

The cost of these hammers is $239.99 each, with a discount price for all three of $649.99. They are an investment in a high quality tool. If I were to only get one I would go with the middle, “normal” size as I feel it is the most versatile.

Again for full disclosure it will probably not surprise you to know I do receive a royalty from the sale of these signature Huang Raising Hammers. That said, Saign has given me a discount code to offer readers of my site which will get you 10% off these hammers (and other tools on his site, metalsmithing-tools.com). That code is DH10.  If you are interested in purchasing one or more of these hammers here is link directly to them on Saign’s website.

I do hope you enjoy the premium experience these raising hammers have to offer! While I still feel kind of bad for abandoning my trusty old raising hammer, I don’t see me ever putting it back in regular use after experiencing the new Huang Raising Hammers. The new hammers just feel and function so much nicer for me!