Making your first hammer - what I wish someone had told me

My first one came off a section of forklift tine a buddy gave me, and I made the exact mistake with the eye. Drilled a pilot hole instead of punching it clean and spent half a Saturday fighting the drift thru crooked stock. The eye ended up tilted maybe a couple degrees and honestly after two years of use I don't even notice it anymore. Second one I punched from both faces alternately and it went ten times faster. On temper I did mine in the oven at home too, stuck a cheap oven thermometer on the rack because my old oven runs hot. Drawed it to a light straw color and the file skates off the face just like it shoud. Only thing I'd add is let it cool slowly on its own after, don't get impatient and dunk it in the slack tub to speed things up. The two-hammer advice is dead on. My second one I made smaller, about two pounds, because I realized I mostly wanted something for lighter work on the anvil. Now I reach for that one way more than the first. And I left all my hammer marks on the cheeks, kind of grew fond of them at this point.

That 'make two' line is the real advice nobody follows until they've already suffered through hammer number one. I got lucky and started mine off a piece of axle scrap my neighbor had rusting behind his barn. Took three weekends because I kept stopping to eyeball it instead of just working the steel. Funny thing is the flaws I stressed over back then don't even register now, my hand just knows where the handle sits. Still haven't made the second one though, so maybe I'm the cautionary tale here.

The thing that saved my first hammer was an actual drift, not a tapered punch I ground myself. Spent my first attempt with a homemade taper that kept binding halfway through and skewing the eye sideways. Borrowed a proper drift from a guy at our local group and the whole thing went from an hour of cursing to maybe ten minutes of steady work. Sometimes the tooling matters more than the steel you start with.

On handles I'll say the file advice is right but add that a coarse rasp first saves your file a lot of grief. I shaped mine almost entirely with a rasp and just cleaned it up after.