Homemade diesel hammer??? (2026 Update)

I've had some fun with a hand-held air hammer. Bigger than the pistol-sized ones you see in the muffler shop, smaller than pavement-breaker jackhammers. About the size of a Thompson machine gun, :-) With custom-made bits, you can move a lot of hot metal around in a workpiece awkward to manage on the anvil.

BTW, I failed to mention that big steam hammers were typically operated by the "hammer driver", not the smith manipulating the workpiece. There's a yarn about the kind of control the hammer driver could exhibit.

Some loudmouth bigwig comes into the railroad workshop, demands a tour. They take him to the big 1000# steam hammer for a show and tell. The shop foreman puts his pocket watch on the anvil, a drop of oil on the tup. The driver begins to run the hammer, bringing each stroke of the massive tup a little closer to the anvil and the watch until he pulls it back completely. There's a drop of oil on the watch crystal.

Then the foreman says to the VIP, "Try it yourself. Give me your watch." With the VIP's watch on the anvil, the driver brings the tup down with maximum force just once, converting the VIP's watch to the size of a saucer, about 1/16" thick.

Doing that trick with a 75 KG Kuhn air hammer is one thing. Accurately managing the momentum of a massive tup in a big steam hammer boggles the imagination.