Hammer ID marks?

Perhaps a log branding hammer? Back in the late 40's and early 50's, Dad had a portable sawmill and also sold various types of Douglas fir logs. Each log had to be branded with a registered brand using a hammer about like you describe. Except the handle was 2-3 feet long so you could reach the top logs on a truck.

Felony to cut the brand off a log and rebrand it. Just like cattle rustling.

Paul

Probably drop-forged, not cast, don't recall any of my collection being cast except a cheapy all-in-one that had screwdrivers in the handle. Zinc head, brass-ish screwdrivers. Don't have anything like those marks on any of mine, either. Most of the carpenter's hammers have "Stanley" on them, the blacksmithing ones were mostly homemade, looks like. Have a step-great-grandfather's, two grandfathers' and my dad's hammers, makes a number of bucketsful. And rehandling old hammerheads is a great idea, particularly if you get a free bucket of handles to go with. Kind of wonder about the home-smithed variety, some of those don't have tapered eyes. Relatively easy to put that feature in when they were made, just wonder why they didn't do it. There may be few stores that carry replacement handles, but not around here. Would rather sell you some import crap hammer for a replacement. Last spare handle I saw on a store peg was half the cost of one of those pieces of crap, too.

Haven't seen anything on hammers specifically, but there are a number of old handtool sites out there that might have some info if you'd care to wade through them.

Stan

About 15 years ago a freind had 11,000+ surplus hammer handles, and was selling them for a nickle each at a flea market. I had the fun job of sorting out the crap ones from the usable, and threw out a few thousand with cracks or bad chips. He had bought them at an auction by the pallet.

Local second hand/antique shop about 2 blocks from here. The owner (now deceased) would travel around the US and buy up every thing from wagon wheels to kerosene lanterns and lamps. Here in the oil fields...lots of old tools and sledgehammers and wrenches and whatnot.

He died about 2 yrs ago...and his kids have been selling the stuff off as best as they can. Neither of the kids are in good health either..so they have been selling what and when they can. The old man bought probably 500 hammer handles of all sorts someplace..US made stuff. Ive bought probably 30 of them, some with hammer heads (ball pien) others along for anywhere from $0.50 to a couple of bucks I gave him $80 for 100 lbs of sockets after sorting through all the SnapOn, Craftsman, Proto, etc etc. Got the tool boxes in pretty good shape...up to 3" sockets and wrenches. Lots of Armstrong and SnapOn wrenches. Anyways...he still has a shit load of hammer handles and Ive been going through the 15-20 ball pein and sledge hammers and shop hammers and the axes and roofing axes and similar stuff Ive snagged over the last year or so. Bought a couple Blackhawk 30 ton jacks and

3 or 4 Hi-Lift jacks for the trucks and shop last month for $60 for the lot.

I liked the old man and I like the kids..so do what I can to help out..and stock my tool boxes and trucks. Im up to my ass in 10,12 and

16lb sledge hammers and extra handles for them.

Red Chief seems to be promenant in the hammer handle brands. I guess I should look em up and see who they are/were

Just looked for em..couldnt find any reference to them. Shrug

Nice hickory handles though.

Gunner

The methodology of the left has always been:

1. Lie
2. Repeat the lie as many times as possible
3. Have as many people repeat the lie as often as possible
4. Eventually, the uninformed believe the lie
5. The lie will then be made into some form oflaw
6. Then everyone must conform to the lie