hey YouTube it's Jeff at DARPA medals I want to make a quick video to respond to a question that was posted on blacksmithing forum somebody asked how do you get the hammer handle separated from the head of the hammer itself and depending on how it's attached there's one of a few different methods that you can use being that I have a bunch of tools I said hey you can use an arbor press or a hydraulic press and a punch and everybody said yeah that's a really good way to do it it's a fastest way to do it but what if you don't have that so I even suggested well put it on a couple of blocks and you can use a drill press if you have a heavy-duty drill for us just pull out on the letter put something like a pin inside at the inside of the chuck you can actually push the handle out as if you have a regular Arbor press well someone said well if you don't have a drill press what's the old-school way of doing it so today I'm going to answer that question alright guys so I looked around my shop and I found four candidates for handle replacement normally if I have a hammer that breaks I just grab another hammer I don't take the time to put new handles on right away unless I really need to I go to a lot of tag sales and estate sales and whatever I see hammers hammer heads out of habit I just pick them up now I've got a sledge hammer - well peen hammers and an axe head and they are all kind of in a different situation the axe head has a huge wedge put inside the head along with the broken off handle so I'll show you how to get around that this is one of those job lot hammers usually get them instead of five it's got a cheesy fiberglass handle a lot of people will buy these for the heads and just take the handles off and put new handles on but you can see that the the plug on top broke out of there and I really don't like how that's in there it's it'll probably hold but um I want to put a wooden handle on this and you know give it a more traditional look and feel now this is a hammer I picked up at a tag sale regular ball-peen hammer but you could see and you go to tag sales or you go into some people shops they don't have wedges they'll just throw a nail in there this thing has three different nails and if you look really close you can see that the top of the hammer kind of rolls over to cover the top of the handle so this has to be driven from the top down to get the hand out even with all these nails in the way last but not least got the sledgehammer you can see that the handles all cracked through here and it's just not safe anymore and I want to replace the handle the tools I'm going to need for this project are relatively simple I'm going to be using a lead hammer you can use a brass hammer or any other soft metal I've got a punch a hacksaw and two wooden blocks now the hacksaw what I'm going to do is I'm going to cut all of the handles off of these off-camera and then come back the last thing that you're going to want to have pair of safety glasses whenever you use in a punch and a hammer even that soft metal always protect your eyes alright guys I'm going to start off with the two ball-peen hammers I've got the one that's got the synthetic handle in it I think it's some kind of fiberglass and then I've got the one with the wooden handle in it as you can see I cut both handles off the reason I suggested using a hacksaw for this in this case where you have a bunch of nails sticking through the top if you hit one of the nails with a wood cutting blade it it could you know damage the blade a little bit or it's just not going to go through anyway so you might as well choose a hacksaw and cut through I just avoided the nails entirely but you want to just cut it off so you have some clearance in your blocks so let's start with these I put my safety glasses on and the fiberglass handle is going to be the easier of the two so what I'm going to do is I'm going to set this here grab my punch yeah that was real easy the handle was garbage but it's a halfway-decent hammer head so let me try the other one with all these nails now with this particular one this nail is actually I don't know how why you could see it but this nail is clearing that little lip so I'm going to put my punch right on top of that nail try to drive the handle through and these two nails if they grab this lip it's going to take a while to beat but these might just pop out of the would go in this way I'll show you what I'm talking about get my blocks together here starting to come out now you can do this in a vise I like two blocks of wood because I'm not hitting metal on metal like the vise jaws wood makes it fly around a little bit more but yeah she's coming out and there we go alright YouTube here we are with the axe head now normally I wouldn't use the two block method with an axe but since this has a flat back it's pretty easy to do now I'm going to try top tapping from the bottom with the punch because this wood is very old I'm going to send the punch right through it and see if I could get to the bottom of this wedge and drive the wedge up a little bit and I drilled a little bit of a pilot hole think I'm on the wedge well it came up a little bit I don't know how much more I'm gonna be able to get it can't tell if that's up a little more or not alright what I'm going to do is I'm going to pull the punch out I'm going to have to put it in the vise and twist the axe head off because it's really in there and I'm going to come back with my cordless drill and drill a couple of holes in the wood if just to kind of move some material out of there so the punch can be a little more effective but this this is working it is starting to come out all right now I can actually I think I can see the top of the wedge there you go all right YouTube here is the sledgehammer head now with these hammers you want to try to cut this as flat as you can the smoother the surface the flat of the surface the easier it is going to be to set a punch on this and drive drive it through I am going to change one thing I was using this is a punch for all of my my other removals I'm actually just going to switch to a piece of round stock I'm using the round stock because as you can see there's just a bit much bigger diameter here and it's going to work better considering the size of this with fiberglass you want to have as much surface area as you can because you don't want to push down the fibers and expand the fiberglass inside the head so the more surface area you have on your punch the better see if I can get this puppy out there you go the bottom is going to need a little bit of cleanup there's still some of the broken handle itself in there that I could just punch out now the reason I'm making this video somebody said well why not just burn the handles out well if you have a wooden handle yes you can burn the handles out but what's going to happen if you have a tool that's been properly tempered and heat treated you're going to change the entire temperature of the metal so putting it in the fire you're going to make your hand hammer soft or too hard it may become brittle and break or you start getting mixing things in the face because you just completely softened it so this is the best way to remove a hammer handle if you don't have some kind of a press now I have one more hammer head to show you I just found it when I was looking for this little piece of tool stock this is another ball peen hammer head and this one I bought at a tag sale as it is was in a bucket with a bunch of other old wrenches and things and you can see that this one was actually pretty nicely made it had the three wedges in there the center which apparently rotted out the whole handle kind of rotted out but what do you do if your handle isn't completely flush well you can still use the same principle to get this out it doesn't matter if the handle you've cut it off or it breaks off as long as you use the punch and you try to get it over where these wedges are it'll come out it might be a little hard to line up because the wood jacket inside but if you're patient there there's one piece of wood out already now for the other side we got a second and there you go all right you soon well I'm about ready to wrap up another video before I do I want to talk a little bit more about this tax hit now you saw me drive that punch in there and yes it did get stuck I took him off camera put it in the jaws of the Vice and wiggled it until it came out pretty easy to do this punch has a knurled handle and the jaws of the Vice it locked in really nice and tight and I was just able wiggle the head off a little bit hard to do by hand but I was able to get it out and try again now normally what I would do in a situation like that I would try to find the center point drive through the wood because this punch will go through a wood - it'll crush the lift to an extent and I was hoping to push that shim out and obviously didn't pan out that way so I had to remove the punch drilled a couple bowls rounded out the holes until I could actually see the top of the metal now this particular shim in here was made out of lead so I wasn't worried about hurting my drill bit at all I wasn't worried about a drill bit getting caught you know twisted in my hand anything like that once I saw where the shiny spot was in the metal and was able to put the punch in put it right on top of it and eleven but the whole point of this video is if you don't have the big expensive tools the hydraulic press or the arbor press or even a drill press you can still get the job done now a lot of us who are starting out I know might sound weird me saying I'm just starting out but as far as Blackston thing goes I really am I'm still brand new at this I don't have a lot of good flex that's tongs of cooling and I'm using a lot of my metalworking tools to kiss advice I don't have proper punches and drips and things like that but everybody has to start somewhere and if all you have is a punch and a hammer you can still get the job done you can still get your hammer handles out and you can refurbish your hamburgers reposition them whatever you need to do so with a little bit know-how and a little bit of elbow grease you can definitely get the job done so on that note I'm going to end the video here this is the jet that DARPA medals I'll see you again soon you