Thread: A diagonal peen hammer on the cheap

The intention is for hollow hammering razors and or stretching out steel on what ever I forge
Mainly the same as the cross peen but just means less rotation of the job or my arms to get the angles I want.

I am curious how you will fare. I have found that hammering out hollows is usually more problematicc and time consuming than hammering out a triangular-ish wedge and then hollow grinding. It takes a lot of effort to keep the hollows symmetrical, and you remove any margin for hammering error to be corrected by grinding.

Originally Posted by Bruno

I am curious how you will fare. I have found that hammering out hollows is usually more problematicc and time consuming than hammering out a triangular-ish wedge and then hollow grinding. It takes a lot of effort to keep the hollows symmetrical, and you remove any margin for hammering error to be corrected by grinding.

I've been hammering out the hollows on all of my razors with 100% success so far. My pre heat treat grind is deep enough to grind out very deep hammer blows. The biggest problem for me when doing this is that it is very easy to hit the spine, and being so far proud of the hollow, even a light hit with a misguided cross peen causes a big problem.

Originally Posted by bluesman7

I've been hammering out the hollows on all of my razors with 100% success so far. My pre heat treat grind is deep enough to grind out very deep hammer blows. The biggest problem for me when doing this is that it is very easy to hit the spine, and being so far proud of the hollow, even a light hit with a misguided cross peen causes a big problem.

I wonder if the time needed for the careful hammering is less or more than the time to hollow out a triangular wedge.
Did you make those hollows in this picture just by hammering, or was some pre HT grinding already done?

I know it helps at the moment with my current very under powered (1/4hp) hobby belt grinder, as it took me about 1.5 hours to rough hollow my first blade to a pre-heat treat thickness of about 2mm & that was with a bit of hollow hammering to help.
I am sure once the I get the big grinder up & running it will whip through it in a mere fraction of the time.

Originally Posted by Bruno

I wonder if the time needed for the careful hammering is less or more than the time to hollow out a triangular wedge.
Did you make those hollows in this picture just by hammering, or was some pre HT grinding already done?

The time is probably a wash. It uses a little less steel and a bit less grinding belt. I'm not suggesting that hammering into the hollows is a better way, just that that's the way I prefer and that I have been doing it successfully.

The hollows in the previous picture are ground. I was just trying to show the depth of the grind. As long as the hammer marks are more shallow than this, It will clean up pre heat treat. My hammering is still pretty sloppy.


A friend loaned me a 'Smithen Magician' type tool that has much better access in line with the ends of the dies. I made top and bottom fullers for it and will try it soon for starting the hollows. I'll get some pictures up soon in a new thread. I'm thinking that this will take a lot of the careful hammering out of the process if it works.

Originally Posted by bluesman7

A friend loaned me a 'Smithen Magician' type tool that has much better access in line with the ends of the dies. I made top and bottom fullers for it and will try it soon for starting the hollows. I'll get some pictures up soon in a new thread. I'm thinking that this will take a lot of the careful hammering out of the process if it works.

Here is the tool


It worked great for starting the hollow, but by the time I drew out the rest of the blade, it was apparent that I had gained very little from forging the blade hollow, as the shape was a wedge from the groove to the edge.

I think you're right Bruno, that just forging a wedge, using cross and ball peens sparingly to control the amount of smile, makes more sense than forging the hollow.

This would be great for making fuller blades like these


You could grind a curved one also

Originally Posted by bluesman7

Here is the tool


It worked great for starting the hollow, but by the time I drew out the rest of the blade, it was apparent that I had gained very little from forging the blade hollow, as the shape was a wedge from the groove to the edge.

I think you're right Bruno, that just forging a wedge, using cross and ball peens sparingly to control the amount of smile, makes more sense than forging the hollow.

Aye. For the hollows I have found this to be the most efficient.
For the tang and the tail you can win a lot of time by properly hammering out the shape though, so that you need only a minimal amount of metal removal. I.e. If you already know what type fo razor you are making, you can forge in the thumbnoth, hammer out the monkey tail, etc.

That said, usually I don't know exactly what I am going to make, so most of the time I hammer out generic blanks with different sizes and lengths so that I have a small stock of razor blanks in various sizes and types of metal. When I get to the design stage, I can then match whatever ideas I have in my head and on paper, to the blanks I have.

Originally Posted by Substance

Mainly the same as the cross peen but just means less rotation of the job or my arms to get the angles I want.

This makes sense to me intellectually, but I suspect I would have trouble keeping both sides of the peen even in practice. It seems to me that hand height would be more critical than with a normal cross peen, though It's hard to know how much of a problem this might be without actually trying it. I am very interested in how it works for you.