Adventures in hammer shopping.

So I'm finally going to try peening. I've gotten pretty decent at cleaning up blades and scales and I have some brass microfasteners to put it all back together. I do think that peened ends look much better so I'm going to give it a shot. Watched the videos, read the wiki articles and ordered my materials online. Already have brass washers from Microfasteners so I got a bag of stainless silver ones. Ordered some nickel and brass rods from Texas Knife and figured that the one thing I could probably find retail was a hammer.

Ace has a 4oz. hammer listed on their website, but none of the stores within 30 miles of me carry it. Called some hobby shops and no dice. Lots of "the lightest one we have here is 8oz., but we can order you one." I'm terribly impatient and wanted it this weekend. Checked Lowe's, Home Depot, WalMart, Target, and Sears' websites with no luck.

The weekend is almost here and I'm about to give up. Was going to try using a tablespoon to practice and order myself a 2oz./4oz. online. On a whim, I went back to Sears' website a few minutes ago and noticed that the auto suggest offered up "ball pein hammer", so I went with it. Sure enough, they have two different brands of 4oz. hammers and one of them was available at my store. DOH!

Moral: if you're looking for a peening hammer, do searches for "ball peen", "ball pein" and "ball pane" as they are all acceptable spellings. Yes, Sears' website really gives different results for each spelling. 45 for "pein", 14 for "peen" and 0 for "pane".
:rant:

Thank you soooooooooooooo much.
I spent all of yesterday afternoon looking for a stupid 4oz ball peen hammer. I looked every place you did excluding walmart and target, (I refuse to step foot in those stores), plus about 6 other. This seemed like an impossible task. I am so glad I decided to browse this site before ordering one on the internet.

The Sears site informs me they have one at the store in my location. Keeping my finger crossed.

thank you nate

I got mine from the Bay for 4 bucks shipped

My 8oz ball peen hammer works as well as anything else... You don't absolutely need a featherlight hammer.

You really dont need one. A table spoon works just as well if not better!

Do some reading and you may just wana try it.

Yes, I know there are alternatives to light hammers. I'm only looking to peen razor pins so if I'm going to get a hammer for that purpose, I'm going with what Glen, Max, Alex and others use. I assumed this would be an easy task, and it would have been if I had just looked for "pein" instead of "peen" to begin with.

I was going to try the spoons but to be honest, I wasn't looking forward to repinning a whole razor with a spoon. I'd also be in the awkward position of explaining to my wife why I needed our silverware to fix razors, and I'd happily pay the $10 to avoid that conversation. :)

hehe, I have not tried the spoon yet, but prolly wont unless my hammer is stolen... lol

Make sure you polish your ball peen hammer head. Go from 120 - 2000 + metal polish. Makes a huge difference in the appearance of your finished pins.

Look on the MicroMark.com website. They have hammers down to a half ounce. Even with interchangeable faces.

Search Results - Micro-Mark

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Scipio

You really dont need one. A table spoon works just as well if not better!

Do some reading and you may just wana try it.

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A hammer works faster. Besides, the hammer will come in handy for doing other brass work as well, like making a honing shim, or if you use nickel silver pins.

gentleman,

i was at micheals today and saw a small ball pien hammer for 5 dollars. i looked to be about 4 or 5 oz. so check your local craft stores.

Just a follow-up; I bought the 4 oz. Craftsman hammer from Sears, which I think is the same one in Philadelph's peening videos.

I did some practice on it right away, figuring that I'd polish the hammer once I felt comfortable. Apparently these hammers come with some weird plastic coating on each end because after a few whacks, it looked like the ball point was chipping. I first thought it was a cheap hammer then I noticed the little plastic flakes around my table.

I took some 400-grit sandpaper to it and it was going terribly slow, so I used the Dremel with my 60-grit(?) sanding drum and then went through my normal progression to get a polished end.

you can also find them at auto stores like auto zone . or high low