Hammers and Moulding Tools

HAMMERS AND MOULDING TOOLS form an immense group, termed percussive, from the manner of their use (fig. 27). Every trade has its own peculiar shapes, the total of which number many scores, each with its own appropriate name, and ranging in size from the minute forms of the jeweler to the sledges of the smith and boiler maker and the planishing hammers of the coppersmith. Wooden ham mers are termed mallets, their purpose being to avoid bruising tools or the surfaces of work. Most trades use mallets of some form or another, Hammer handles are rigid in all cases ex cept certain percussive tools of the smithy, which are handled with withy rods, or iron rods flexibly attached to the tools, so that when struck by the sledge they shall not jar the hands. The fullering tools, and flatters, and setts, though not hammers strictly, are actuated by percussion. The dies of the die forgers are actuated percus sively, being closed by powerful hammers.

The action of caulking tools is percussive, and so is that of moulders' rammers.

Moulding Tools.

This is a group of tools which, actuated either by simple pressure or percussively, mould, shape and model forms in the sand of the moulder, in the metal of the smith, and in press work. All the tools of the moulder (fig. 28) with the exception of the rammers and vent wires act by moulding the sand into shapes by pressure. They are made in iron and brass. The fullers, swages and flatters of the smith, and the dies used with hammer and presses, all mould by percussion or by pressure, the work taking the counterpart of the dies, or of some portion of them. The practice of die forging consists of moulding processes. For a discussion of Tool, STEELS see the article under that head ing.