Old USA-made hand tools ...(Plomb, etc.)

[Reno]

I'm with Chris. I suppose it is the balance, but the 1427 Plomb is my favorite. Even the 1428 which I believe is a later manufacture doesn't balance the same.

IMG_20220401_134746.jpg

[crystallographic]

When I am working 20 ga steel, i.e. flattening welds, hand shrinking, smoothing, planishing ...
P1070440 c 1421.jpg
The big face and deep reach of the 1421 makes it an easy choice.
- or when working .063 aluminum and flattening gas welds, it's an easy choice.
(It's very rare that I use the small face.)
GT40 threequarters- Proto1421c.jpg
My old Proto 1421 is almost exactly identical, so they are interchangeable.

P1060201c 1424.jpg
When working floor pans and battery trays, the square corners get the 1424 action. Surprisingly light hammer, that flips 180 in an instant, square face to round.

P1070451c 1426.jpg
When setting door skin flanges down, I really appreciate the solid strike of the 1426. Both the barrel end and the round face get used equally.

P1070401c 1427 Plomb.jpg
And the sweet little 1427 - what can I say? .... Well, it has a delicate finesse with the cross peen that allows me to stretch flanges around and then the face is almost flat - to smooth them out just right.

P1070443c 1428.jpg
"Pick and file" is an old method of combined smoothing and metal finishing...
The 1428 is a pretty fine hammer for that - large round face for smoothing and planishing, with a long curved pick for getting into corners and over edges to lift up those small spots, about the size of a dime.
P1070460c 1428.jpg
These are three 1428 hammers. The "short pick" models were used for about 40 years in the old "metal-finishing" body shops, and then at HAC. Halvorson kept sharpening the picks and so they got worn down, compared to a new Proto 1428 model - which has a silvery tip on its pick - the result of welding on some Stoodite and grinding that down. The super-hard Stoody never wore to the point that it needed sharpening.... and besides I changed to using the slapper and spoon for my finish work - a very good thing for the aluminum race cars and airplanes that were to come.

P1070454c 1429.jpg
This old fellow has the deepest reach of all my body hammers. With a lethal pick and a solid ball end it is flat dangerous.
Story to illustrate:
I was working on a '36 Buick front fender (Merle Haggard's car) at my workbench in the body shop at HAC, with Halvorson to my left at his bench, and Jim Taylor to my right, also at his bench, and two other guys further down the long narrow wooden shop. I had worked my way all around this front fender to get back to the headlamp mounting area, a doubled heavy plate spot welded behind the fender panel. I was smoothing out old collision damage and was on the last few inches from being done.
I had one or two low spots left that needed driving up, so I set aside my 1428 and got the 1429. I lined up on the backside of the dimple and swung up at the back side - WHAM! - the dimple came up a bit. WHAM! - again it came up. The third was a swing and a miss - the pick came up and out through the headlamp mounting hole - a 1.5inch diameter gaping target - and the pick hit me spang between the eyes.
I saw stars. And planets. I gripped the table as my vision went dark. Sounds faded away. All feeling left but my feet on concrete and my death grip on the steel top of my workbench. After a time, sounds returned, stars faded and I could see again. I felt something running down my forehead. I held myself stiff and pulled off my work gloves, slid off my head visor/face shield onto the bench, and leaned forward to the big sliding door with the Public Rope hung across it, 3 feet away. The small crowd of folks watching the shop doings through the big double sliders had by then drifted off to other views of the auto restoration processes, and I made my way across the pavement to the restroom.
After a good deluge of cold water and a hefty stack of paper towels I made my way back to my workbench. The other 4 guys were still working on their projects, so I put on my safety gear and went back at it. About an hour later it was coffee break, and as I pulled off my gear, Halvorson strolled up smooth as silk, rand his hand over the now-smooth headlamp area and quietly remarked, without looking in my direction, "Well kid, you're not a real metalman until you hit yourself between the eyes with your pick hammer." And he continued smoothly out the doors and over to the coffee shop.
Later, Jim Taylor chuckled over his coffee, "Well Slim, you have finally graduated into being a real metalman!" and both guys chuckled together as old friends do.

I sure learnt a lot from those guys.

-end-

[Gojeep]

Love your stories Kent.

[crystallographic]

Originally Posted by Gojeep

Love your stories Kent.

Thanks, Marcus.

[Jaroslav]

Yes Kent. Somewhere I heard "let there be light" that it would be from that? Every thought must get a starting impulse. Good memory.
I would need some of your hammers ... I'll buy them in time.

[skintkarter]

Kent - the old pick hammer to the cranium trick. I can just hear Spike Milligan in the background...

Reminds me of a story, not a panelbeating one, but a hammer story nonetheless.

I spent some time as a fitter welder at the local Steel Mill in NZ back in the early 80's. The grubbiest bit of the Plant - the Iron Plant where local ironsand was reduced by oxidation to fuel the steel kilns along with mountains of scrap. We all looked like Justin Trudeau or Ralph Northham clones at the end of each day. Quite a few pranks and general hilarity with a bunch of young blokes all on massive money with all of the the dirt and heat payments.

Which gave some folk the cashflow to indulge in motorsport.

Flavour of the day in the area at the lower end of things was grasstracking with custom built buggies.

One of my workmates, Cliffy had such a car built from several other scrap cars, but it's ride height was excessive and the car needed to be slightly more slammed to drop the CofG.

He decided that heating the coil springs and belting down the top couple of coils would be just the trick.

So we ended up in the welding bay with me holding the spring down to the welding bench and wielding the gas axe to heat said coils.

Cliff had the hammer - a standard issue Thor copper rawhide jobbie which all fitters were issued with from the Aladdin's cave called Central Stores.

I heated up the top two coils to a bright cherry red.

Cliffy raised the hammer high (luckily copper head down) and brought it down with great force.

I never saw the hammer rebound, such was the speed of it's return journey, but suffice to say that the rawhide end hit him square on the forehead at about 500mph.

Once I had stemmed the spontaneous flow of urine, I helped him to his feet and we headed off to the medical centre, concocting a plausible injury cause story as we went. Thoughts of Pythons 'being hit on the head lessons' running through my head...

Cliffy recovered and his grass track car went on to be quite successful, although he seemed somewhat reticent in asking me to assist in any further 'homers'.

[crystallographic]

Originally Posted by skintkarter

Kent - the old pick hammer to the cranium trick. I can just hear Spike Milligan in the background...

Reminds me of a story, not a panelbeating one, but a hammer story nonetheless.

I spent some time as a fitter welder at the local Steel Mill in NZ back in the early 80's. The grubbiest bit of the Plant - the Iron Plant where local ironsand was reduced by oxidation to fuel the steel kilns along with mountains of scrap. We all looked like Justin Trudeau or Ralph Northham clones at the end of each day. Quite a few pranks and general hilarity with a bunch of young blokes all on massive money with all of the the dirt and heat payments.

Which gave some folk the cashflow to indulge in motorsport.

Flavour of the day in the area at the lower end of things was grasstracking with custom built buggies.

One of my workmates, Cliffy had such a car built from several other scrap cars, but it's ride height was excessive and the car needed to be slightly more slammed to drop the CofG.

He decided that heating the coil springs and belting down the top couple of coils would be just the trick.

So we ended up in the welding bay with me holding the spring down to the welding bench and wielding the gas axe to heat said coils.

Cliff had the hammer - a standard issue Thor copper rawhide jobbie which all fitters were issued with from the Aladdin's cave called Central Stores.

I heated up the top two coils to a bright cherry red.

Cliffy raised the hammer high (luckily copper head down) and brought it down with great force.

I never saw the hammer rebound, such was the speed of it's return journey, but suffice to say that the rawhide end hit him square on the forehead at about 500mph.

Once I had stemmed the spontaneous flow of urine, I helped him to his feet and we headed off to the medical centre, concocting a plausible injury cause story as we went. Thoughts of Pythons 'being hit on the head lessons' running through my head...

Cliffy recovered and his grass track car went on to be quite successful, although he seemed somewhat reticent in asking me to assist in any further 'homers'.

Heh heh heh - metal work can be "self-hardening."
(and self-leveling.)

I was thinking of this moment when reading your "educational" story:

P1120852 copy.jpg
(forge welding - BIG smack on hot iron)