This is a project now almost a year in the making! The Hammer Of Truth is a 7.5lb sledge hammer machined out of 4140 with a 32in handle. It’s been heat treated to ~50RC and has a fire blackened handle to match the black enamel paint in the engravings. The hammer is a gift for my cousin (whose name is Truth).
I started from a 2.5in 4140 round bar, and turned a blank on the lathe. The two flats, and the eye were then machined on my makerspace’s PCNC 1100. I was a bit worried about those deep pockets in 4140, but it turned out to be a total non-issue.
The hammer was then heat treated and sanded to 2500 grit. I surface ground the flats for a bit of texture, then engraved the letters and the scene. For the letters I used a 120 degree spotting drill (which sucked, but it worked) and for the scene I used one of those lakeshore .02 engraving balls at a depth of 0.002.
Definitly not the soft of thing I usually make on our Tormach, but a real thrill. I’ve got another blank so hopefully that’ll be a sister hammer for us to keep (taking recommendations on the name if anyone has a good one!).
Two more pictures! Probably my favorite thing about having a Tormach at PS1 is the way it unlocks new options for the other tools. The blanks for this project need some fairly specific curves, and the radius cutter we have in the space couldn’t be adapted to hit all of them. Which was a wonderful opportunity to make the tool below, a “precision” (in the sense that it has a vernier scale) radius cutter for exactly the range needed on this project.
@Jake_Ketchum absolutely beautiful work! Thank you for posting. This gives me a great idea for Christmas next year.
Where did the artwork for the engraving come from (not the text, but the line drawing)?
Hey! That’s a nice radius turning tool! Was that an adaptation of your existing radius cutting tool, or a completely new thing? Where might someone find a print for something like this? I’m fine to design from scratch, if that’s not available to share/buy, but I’d hate to re-invent a perfectly good wheel.
Nice project! My vote for the Sister Hammer name is “Beauty” as in, “Is There in Truth No Beauty?” from Star Trek: TOS season 3, episode 5 and the poem “Jordan” by George Herbert. Huge Star Trek fan and user of Wikipedia.
@Rogge Thanks for the kind words! It’s a high effort gift but I can’t recommend it enough if you’ve got a good person-fit. Lots of fun, and you’d shave easily 40% off the fabrication time if you’ve got access to one of the CNC lathes.
The line art is a style I settled into way back in highschool passing notes to my now-wife. There’s a couple of different ways I do trees, but for the rest it’s very roughly: dots for water, circles for stone, squares for dirt (not used here), three concentric circles for the moon and an open-half circle with rays for the sum (not used here). I really like line art for ornamenting CNC parts because it looks fancy, but can be done with a simple trace operation.
Process wise I’ll typically draw the rough on paper first with a pilot G2, then do the sketch in fusion for engraving (sometimes with a picture inserted if there’s specific symbolism to capture). All the elements are pre-existing fusion sketch tools, and the ball engravers from Lakeshore super convenient to do the cutting. 7IPM at 5k or 14IPM at 10k in basically every material I’ve tried. This is a 16 minute cut, and the fill is black enamel paint from testers.
@Jason_Rye Thanks! It was scratch built for this project, but based on a few other radius turners online. I can see if I’ve got those links written down. I don’t have a print pre-existing, but I was thinking of making one for my website anyway. Happy to post it here if you want some ball-turner inspiration. Do you want drawings or would you prefer I just post the step files?
Oooh, I love a good star trek reference, that’s a great idea and 6 letters is a pretty close fit too.
Step files would probably be easiest all around. Another thought on the name…”KINDNESS”, but that’s even more letters. If the TRUTH don’t work, hit ‘em with KINDNESS!
