A friend gave me a bunch of scrap lead that someone had given him....

Among the stuff was a lead hammer from a machine shop. It has a really beat up lead head, on a steel pipe handle. Anyone know what kind of alloy is used on such beasts?

:confused:

In my experience these are cast from plumbers lead - which is about "pure" lead. These hammers are quite soft and used for "helping" seperate things such as cylinders from engine cases and to split case halves. With the new serious dead blow hammers available from Snap-On and others we dont see these very often anymore.
It is quite easy to re-cast the hammers ans was commonly done with a gasoline plumbers torch.

Ok, then I'll add some tin to it to aid casting. Thanx!

:D

I'd consider since it's a homemade hammer, the lead to cast it could've been from anything laying around. Before alloying it, I'd check it for hardness as is.

It sure would be handy to have a mold for one. Smallish for me for driving pins and such.

Good for a "dead blow" with no bounce. Very controlable.

When the head becomes deformed beyond service, re-cast it. Lead aloy for such use makes little difference. Pure lead or unknown scrap would work as well for my purposes.

Cheezywan

The new nylon dead blows are by far superior. Self healing on the hammer face for the most part.

I have made lots of lead hammers it easy take any one lb lead mould hold a threaded rod up in it fill with lead presto you have a lead hammer when it's all bent out of shape just melt it back down and recast it Forest Punch

You must be Cheezy's echo. So I'll echo Slim. I got one of the Nylon jobs with lead shot or whatever they have inside. Perfectly dead strike every time. Superior technology for the purpose and never breaks or has to be recast (at least, not so far). No lead contamination.