Everyone’s seen the Stiletto. The shoe from which the Stiletto draws its name is designed to perfectly support and accentuate a woman’s legs to render them sleek and sexy, and the hammer tries to do the same(ish) for grunting, farting framers: no one looks quite as cool as the guy who owns the $240 titanium hammer, right? Snickery aside, the science makes some sense.
A hammer’s striking force is determined by multiplying its mass by its acceleration — the change in speed from the hammer at rest to the speed it’s traveling when it whacks the nail. So we can increase that force one of two ways: We can make the hammer heavier or swing it faster.
The latter is the idea behind titanium hammers. Titanium is incredibly strong, but it’s also light. Theoretically, you’ll naturally swing a 15-ounce titanium hammer significantly faster than its 28- or 32-ounce low-tech siblings, so you’ll drive with the same force. Even though you get the same driving power, you’ll expend less energy hauling the dumb thing around with you all day — a great tradeoff.
But, some DeWalt Engineers thought, why does it have to be titanium? Besides the fact that they cost a fortune in materials and manufacturing costs, titanium hammers can also crack if dropped or otherwise stressed improperly. Could they make a light hammer from simpler materials?
The answer, it seems, is yes. The 15-ounce framing hammer you see above is constructed of steel. DeWalt’s techies tell us that they accomplished the trick by carefully determining which forces the hammer needed to withstand, then choosing the right shape of material for the job and positioning it just right. They also temper the steel differently at different points to cause it to be stronger at key points and yet more flexible at others. And then they MIG-weld the head on. Result: 15 ounces of all-steel hammer.
We look forward to spending more time with one of these in our own shop environment, but we tried one out briefly at the DeWalt launch event recently. It definitely doesn’t feel as weird in your hand as it looks like it would. When you just ignore the looks and swing it like any other light framing hammer, it feels remarkably similar. From a practical perspective, the magnetic nail slot works surprisingly well, and the grip is quite comfortable.
Yes, you can flex it. If you grab the head and the handle and wail on it with all your might, you can see a bit of deflection. (I say this because it’s the first thing almost everyone does when they pick it up.) It doesn’t stay deformed, and I don’t think a normal person could bend it permanently. (I couldn’t.) We look forward to trying some creative overstrike tests to see what happens when you do really dumb things with it, but for now, suffice it to say that it seems to work.
The best part, of course, is the price. It’s available now for around $60. Compare that to $180 and up for Stiletto, Milwaukee, or other name-brand titanium hammers, and it starts to look a lot less weird.
So I guess there is one guy cooler than the dude with the $240 hammer: the one with a hammer that does the same job AND $180 extra in his wallet.
DWHT51138 15 oz MIG Weld Framing Hammer [DeWalt]
Street Pricing [Google Products]
Via Amazon [What’s This?]
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19 Responses to DeWalt’s Titanium Hammer Killer?
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One more benefit to a lighter hammer is it’s a bit easier to get a nail started when you just want to tap it. Sure, dropping a hammer down on a nail is easy but when it’s upside down or overhead, a heavier hammer is unwieldy. Though, the only downside for a neophitic hammer jocky like me is…swinging a hammer faster is harder to do with accuracy, which is why I love my palm nailer. =)
Doesn’t the Stilletto “heel” get its name from the Italian knife with the skinny ice-pick-like blade?
With the hammer – I guess that the physics is that if you can accelerate (a= dv/dt )the head faster you can apply more force to the nail head – and that the mass of the hammer head matters less in the f=ma equation – so the difference in mass of a titanium head versus a slimmed-down mig-welded steel head comes to little difference – but overcoming the inertia of a heavier traditional hammer head/handle combination will result in reduced force due to lower accelleration.
Probably makes sense – and speaks to why tungsten bucking bars – where inertia is in your favor – beat out steel ones.
Fred, you’re forgetting that the key element is energy, not force. Energy is 1/2 mass times velocity squared, so if you double the speed, and halve the mass, you’re still ahead.
It’s mass * velocity, not mass * acceleration.
The kinetic energy of mass m moving at speed v = .5(m*(v*v))
that’s mass * velocity squared, then divide the result of that by 2.
That velocity squared bit; that’s why there’s more energy in having a 1kg weight moving 10 meters per second (50 joules) than a 10kg weight moving 1 meter per second (5 joules).
a smaller hammer that you can swing faster will drive the nails in quicker, yes, but it’s velocity, not acceleration that makes that happen.
i’ll go back to my nerd cave now and cry because society shuns me.
I am absolutely postitive I have never formed these words together as a sentence in my life, but: Jeremiah, You da Man!
Here’s a little gas to the fire: a person can only swing a hammer but so fast. How close to “terminal velocity” is a standard hammer typically swung? By terminal velocity I mean the speed that someone can actually repeatably swing a hammer all day. How much faster is a lightweight hammer over a standard hammer?
More food for thought: the weight of the arm swinging the hammer; this is not accounted for in the equation and would certainly attenuate the difference between the tools.
Time for some free-body diagrams.
I was just thinking about this the other night: be skeptical of any tool “improvement” if that tool has been around for thousands of years. There are exceptions, but evolution works really well.
I was gonna say, “it’s proportional to velocity SQUARED”, so a light hammer moving FASTER actually imparts a LOT more force
(I’m gonna use weight/light/heavy here instead of talking about Mass/Less mass/More Mass – sue me, you know what I mean – most of us work in a 1 G field)
It’s one of those ‘interesting’ biometrics things however. SOME people have ‘slower’ muscles and making the hammer lighter (beyond a certain point) won’t make their swing any faster, so for those people, going lighter than that point (whatever it is) won’t help – OTHER people actually have enough strength to swing the heavier hammer at the same velocity of the lighter hammer, and again, lighter doesn’t help. The trick, as usual is finding the right point on the curve to fit the most people, or offer various weights – what would be ‘interesting’ in adding bolt on weight options to tweek the hammer to the optimum mass
I bust up my thumb really good once when I missed using an Estwing hammer. The narrow edge came down across my knuckle, skinned along the bone and peeled the skin back to my nail. Needless to say I have never used an Estwing since and I would never use this Dewalt either. I now use only hammers with broad wooden or fiberglass handles and shafts.
One thing this test omits to say is that the thinner the shaft, the more prone it is to vibration and flexing during slight mishits.
jeremiah,
huh?
Only kidding.
Your scientific observations are absolutely correct.
You are shunned not sir.
Enlightened individuals are always helpful.
By the way, that hammer looks pretty badass.
My 16oz Stiletto cost me about $9 plus 3 minutes of labor. Neighbor had just the head (broke the handle) and gave it to me. Ordered a replacement handle from Amazon for $9 delivered and took all of 3 minutes to install it. I must say, it’s a NICE framer!
Cool tangents the responses are taking this post on!
The basic physics are true, but the dynamics of motion that John/KG2V started on make this ‘problem’ not as simple as it may seem. Add to this that one can improve on his hammering (get faster, hit harder…).
Extremeframer then adds in a most important variable, cost! FWIW, I’m probably with him. The savings going to toward ice for the cooler, so the beer is cold longer!
I’ll keep on using my old wooden handled “Bluegrass” hammers, thank you very much.
It seems some are ignoring a factor, that the heavier weight of a traditional hammer also means it bounces back in the opposite direction less, delivering a higher percentage of the energy it had upon impact to drive the nail further, also further decreasing the amount of bounce. I think this hammer design will still come out ahead in actual use, but not so much as the overly simplified math that was used would suggest.
Unless I’m mistaken, I believe that another factor is being left out as well. The makers of titanium hammers claim that titanium transfers 97% of the strike force and steel only around 70%. Whether or not that’s true, I can’t say for sure, but it would still put Titanium out ahead in shock reduction and blow force if it is.
Ah, but titanium hammers are cast and the casting process can generate bubbles in the material, similar to bubbles formed when turning over a bottle of liquid soap. These bubbles can be stress spots for fractures. Not worth the risk especially when titatium sells for $230. Steel is the way to go.
The Stelletto with a wooden handle is easier on your wrist and elbow joints. Save chiropractor visits.
Dave, not true. When an object impacts something and then bounces back it means that the collision was more elastic. Thus more of the energy went into the collision itself which is equated to driving and less energy was dissipated. Thats the same reasoning why a boxer is trained to take punches relaxed as opposed to staying rigid.
Back in the old day’s we did have to nail everything, deck’s/ roof’s by hand, (8cc’s in 2 blows). Of coarse now we use nail gun’s. I think this is a signifigant point since nailing by hand is usually out of convenience and not usually an all day event.
@brian
Driving 8p CC nails all day – cripes, that’s impressive. It’ll be interesting to see how they hold up in the field. The first batch was reported to have fast wear on milled face versions, but that could just be an early production run bug ’til the process was sorted.