I have two nice Trow and Holden B-series pneumatic hammers for sculptors. They are sweet little tools, awesome for claw chisels, straight chisels, and bush hammers. The bigger one is the green device in the picture below. Several other companies make similar hammers, but T&H literally invented this type of pneumatic hammer for stone back in the late Nineteenth Century and they’re still the greatest. T&H tools get you all misty-eyed about “Made in America.” Everything of theirs I’ve seen is super high quality.
Unfortunately, neither of mine has the weight for heavy duty punch work. The green one will do light punch work on marble, but it’s marginal.
T&H make bigger tools in the B-series and they also make a D-series that have a longer piston throw. They cycle more slowly but hit harder for a given diameter. Probably one of the bigger ones would be adequate but (a) I don’t have one and (b) they cost about $300. By the way, don’t be fooled by the designations 1/2″, 3/4″, 1″, etc. All except the smallest take the same size tools, i.e., 1/2″ shank. The number refers to the diameter of the piston inside. The bigger the number the harder it hits and the more air it consumes.
At that price, I thought I’d try a Big Box special pneumatic hammer. The one I bought is a Husky from Home Depot at a cost of $35, including six different kinds of chisels. It’s the pistol grip tool on the left. At less than an eighth of the cost of the T&H, not even including the chisels, why not? Lowe’s has a similar tool for the same price. I notice the Lowe’s version comes with longer chisels.
These aren’t demolition hammers. They’re much smaller. They are a nice size in your hand but they have plenty of power to drive all kinds of bits for cutting sheet metal, cutting bolts, breaking up brick and tile, etc.
The tips they come with, however, are worthless for stone. Maybe they could be hardened, but I sharpened the punch and it blunted instantly so I though, why not make one? That’s what in the video. That and trying it out.
It’s so great when you try a new tool and it’s excellent. It’s even better when you make a tool yourself and it actually works, so the whole experience was a blast.
My homemade punch worked great so I immediately made four or five more out of odds and ends of steel I had lying around. I had some old mason’s tools around. Masons tools and cold chisels are almost literally a dime a dozen at yard sales and they’re usually high-carbon steel that heat treats easily. Practically everyone’s Dad has a box of old ones in the basement.
Problems
There were a couple of minor snags, none of which were the pneumatic hammer’s fault.
Problem One
Out of the box the hammer’s barrel wasn’t properly tightened down and kept spinning off. It’s a nothing problem–I should have just tightened it, which is completely trivial to do. You just need two adjustable wrenches. But I thought as long as it was loose, why not take a look inside?
It’s incredibly simple. It seems to have only two moving parts. It’s so simple I’m not completely sure I even understand how it works. Unfortunately, in reassembling it, I cranked down on the barrel with a small plastic valve part misaligned and crushed it. It might be the only part in the tool that it’s physically possible to damage, and I damaged it in what is probably the only way it is possible to do so. Grrr. Totally my fault. It is probably a $2 part, but I couldn’t find a way to order a replacement. Evidently it is something nobody ever else ever figured out how to break because I see other parts available.
Making a virtue of necessity, I picked up the Lowe’s version which has similar specs but a slightly different design. What the heck-it’s another 35 bucks. I’m still $330 ahead! The Lowes version was equally awesome. I assume it works the same way, so for a mere $35 I found out how not to break it. Meanwhile the first one is languishing in a box while I pretend to be getting around to locating a replacement part.
Problem Two
It’s nice to have a bunch of punches so you can work uninterrupted and then do all the sharpening at once for efficiency. The problem was that the heftier hammer hits so hard that it deformed the end of the first punch slightly and it was a struggle to get it out of the gun. It’s a problem that has never come up with shop-made chisels for the smaller air hammers because they don’t hit nearly as hard. It was easy to remedy: turned it round again and then hardened and tempered the insert end. Nothing to it.
All Things Considered
If you have a compressor of at least three horsepower, you have to get one of these. They’re fantastic and dirt cheap. Not just for stone; you can use it on all kinds of hammering tasks. Breaking the heads off of frozen bolts, cutting heavy sheet metal, or pretty much anything you’d do with a cold chisel. They have plenty of power for knocking out bricks to put a hole in a wall, or breaking up old ceramic tile, etc.
If you’re carving stone, they’re great too, but only for heavy hitting. It’s ideal for the kind of punch work shown in the video. I think you could certainly use one for splitting stone and perhaps for pitching (a pitch has a flat edge where a real chisel is sharp and pushes a big hunk of stone off the block, rather than wedging it off.) They’re way too powerful for real carving, e.g., with a claw chisel of straight chisel.
I love these things!
Sculpture Tech 