Replacing a Hammer Handle
So I’m still in to talk about repairs around the house. Today it’s all about saving a hammer by changing the handle. Here is a link by the way to a PDF file to somebody else’s technique for doing the job-but, it’s like 95 times harder. If you’re a craftsman that might be the way to go, otherwise spend the 8 dollars for a new handle, and the little bag of shims that come with it.
Good old fashioned hammers with heavy heads are getting harder to find. You can find giant hammers. But smaller, Heavy Metal hammers are usually old like the one pictured below.
As you can see, it’s kind of an old handle, and I already sawed off the top. Without doing a lot of wood trimming this old handle wasn’t going to fit in that head anymore.
The head/handle meeting point is all held together by various metal or wood shims, or in this case nails that expand the wood handle and force it to fit snuggly into the metal head. If your handle breaks, you’ve got to pull all that crap out. You might have to drill, pound, chisel, set fire to the wood elements or just a combination of all that. That stuff isn’t meant to come out.
Your new handle will come with a little packet of shims, that will fit in-between the split portion at the top of the handle (the part that goes into the head.) My new handle was actually a little too big, so I used a chisel to knock off a few millimeters.
And here’s the finished product. The photo is a little unfocused, but you’ll understand why if you keep reading. But you can see the new handle is in there, and the metal shims are in there to hold things in place. Later I even added a small wood shim for more secure holding.
Be careful! Here you can see I got a little boo boo on my thumb from all that pounding.
And here you can see a cracked fingernail. I took these photos BEFORE it all turned dark purple. I don’t want to dissuade you guys from doing projects at home. Just don’t be as clumsy as me!
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