Remove the waste with a coping saw, or jewelers saw with a really
coarse blade, and clean up with files. Make the opening slightly
conical, wider at the top.
Elliot
The Thor Delrin mallets I have use a round hole in the delrin (with
a round wooden shaft), and have a brass pin in a cross-hole to hold
the head on. Maybe that would be worth a try ?
Richard
Hi David
go the the local hardware store and show them what you want to do.
I have seen “drill bits” on TV that ream out plastics and metal.
You should be able to get wedges for the handle there also.
Or try the local engineering work shop they may be able to do it
better and faster for a few bucks.
My local engineer loves little jobs that need NO receipt, pays for
his beer LOL.
Richard
Xtines Jewels
Hi Dave
When I started making Delrin hammers I had the same experience you
had with handles with oval eyes. After a couple of disastrous
results I finally bought Hickory handles with round eyes
http://www.ganoksin.com/gnkurl/ep8082
I drilled the Delrin and sanded the handle eye so the handle fit
snug. I bought some common framing nails 1/2" longer than the
diameter of the Delrin (in your case 10 D). I drilled a hole in the
Delrin with a diameter large enough so the nail would fit snugly
without forcing it. I drilled that hole perpendicular to the handle
hole so that it passed through the center of the handle hole. I put
a thin coat of Zap-a-Gap on the handle eye and inserted it into the
hole in the Delrin and tapped it with a mallet to be sure it was
firmly seated. I used the nail hole that I had drilled in the Delrin
as a pilot hole to drill through the handle eye with a drill one
size smaller than the pilot hole. I coated the nail with a thin coat
of Zap-a-Gap and pounded it into the hole so that the point extended
about 1/4" beyond the Delrin. I cut off the head and point of the
nail as close as possible to the Delrin head and filed both ends
smooth with the contour of the head. I’ve made probably 20 hammers
over the past 3 years using this procedure for my wife and several
metalsmith friends of ours and have never had a handle come loose.
Hope this helps. If you have questions email me.
Carl
Dave,
I’m glad you are asking this, my husband just bought some delrin
rods to make some mallets for me. He used this in a manufacturing
business he owned at one time. I am anxious to hear what this group
responds with.
brenda
Hi,
I’ve got another one of those “what am I missing here?” questions. I
recently bought a length of 2.5" diameter Delrin rod to make some
forming mallets. I cut it into segments of the appropriate lengths,
and bought some handles at a hardware store.
I have read that handles with an oval cross section are better, so
that’s what I got. I’ve drilled two side-by-side holes as a start for
the handle hole, but am having difficulty cleaning it out and
removing the excess material. Any ideas/suggestions? Trying to use
the drill bit to kind of grind it out isn’t working very well.
I also understand that I’m going to have to wedge the handle into the
mallet, since epoxy doesn’t stick to Delrin. Any suggestions or tips
here?
Thanks, everyone, for all your help!
Dave
Whod have thought it! 2 wood chisel solutions to wood questions in
one day!
Youll need a bench vice to hold your delrin rod. some wood chisels
say, 1/2in to 1in wide.
and another hammer to cut out surplus delrin.
Cuts like wood.
Re wedging, youll need to make asaw cut into the handle in line with
the long axis of the oval 3/4 the length of hole.
cut a wedge same length but no more than 1/4in wide. and hammer in
to the handle when in the delrin. Cut off surplus.
Drill through the delrin and handle say 1/8in hole and hammer
through a 3 to 4in nail. Cut off surplus.
Done.
There is a bit you can get that is used in sheet rock work called
the zip bit it cuts any direction you want. About 1/4 inch in
diameter. should work great for what you want it to do. In the
Navy we used them to cut metal…
On the other hand, you can drill a single round hole of about 2/3 of
the diameter of the delrin rod, put a round handle in it, and pin in
in place across the diameter of the delrin rod through the handle. I
have some built like this that have worked for me for several years!
Last time I did this, I turned the top of the hammer handle down to
a cylinder, drilled a matching hole in the Delrin, put the two
together, then drilled a cross-hole to put a brass wire in to retain
it: Peter's delrin hammer
Doing it with an oval hole would have been a bit stronger, but a lot
more work.
If you go with the oval hole, use the coarsest round file you can
get to file out your drill holes.
Richard
I have read that handles with an oval cross section are better, so that's what I got. I've drilled two side-by-side holes as a start for the handle hole, but am having difficulty cleaning it out and removing the excess material. Any ideas/suggestions?
a coarse round hand file will work for this. Drill bits do not cut
on their sides at all. If you have a bunch of hammers to make, you
might want to consider buying an end mill which does cut on the
sides. Epoxy will not glue the head onto the handle but it is useful
for filling small gaps. The hammer handles should have come with a
metal wedge which is meant to be driven into the top of the handle.
Another alternative is to rivet the head to the handle.
ed
If you look at the deadblow Delrin mallets, they have tubular rivets
running through the head where the handle joins the head. Once you
jam in your handle through the delrin head, drill a hole through the
middle while hammer is lying flat. use a wire that fits very snugly
and force it into the hole. or use a screw and screw the handle and
head together. I’ve had to do that on old wooden mallets when the
head came loose. Coarse file or burs will remove excess delrin from
inside handle hole.
Joy
My suggestion is throw those oval handles away. Use handles with a
round eye. Drill the hole in the Delran and sand the eye as necessary
for the handle to fit snugly in the hole. Before inserting the handle
drill another hole in the Delran perpendicular to the large hole
using a drill bit so that a size 4D (1 1/2 ") bright common nail will
barely fit through the hole. Dab some ZapaGap on the eye of the
handle and pound it into the hole in the Delran as far as it will go.
Run a drill one size smaller than the one you used to drill the nail
hole in the Delran and run that drill down the existing hole in the
Delran through the eye of the handle. Dab some more ZapaGap on a 4D
nail and carefully drive in through the Delran and the handle eye so
that about an equal length of the nail shows on both sides of the
Delran. Cut the excess nail off each side with a hack saw and
carefully use a fine file to smooth the ends of the nail in the shape
of the Delran. I can pretty much guarantee you will never have a
problem with loose handles on your mallets.
My Lixie hammer http://www.ganoksin.com/gnkurl/ep80j8 is far and away
my most used hammer in the shop. Surprised it’s not a planishing
hammer? Don’t be, my business is silver restoration and I have to be
very careful about the metal’s surface as well as not stretching or
altering the object’s appearance. If I can’t burnish out a dent,
this is the hammer I reach for prior to a metal hammer. I RARELY use
rawhide. Why? Because rawhide will always leave a texture on
annealed silver. I also have plastic, Delrin, rubber, leather, even a
Rhino horn planishing hammer, but it’s the Lixie that hangs closest
to my heavy vise. You can see it hanging under the green vise in the
top image on this page: Herman Silver Restoration & Conservation: Shop Views
Jeff Herman
Well here we are - lots of suggestions and most of them involve a
lot of filing. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
But if you want to make a really NEAT oval hole it’s not so hard to
do - IF you are talking about a true oval, that is, not an ellipse
or some kind of freehand squished circle.
To spare lengthy geometric descriptions - an oval looks like an
aerial view of a race track. It has two straight sides, parallel to
the long axis. An ellipse looks more like an egg that is symmetrical
end-to-end unlike a real egg which is tapered, a bit pointier at one
end. All sides are curved.
I understand Delrin cuts like wood - so get yourself a wood boring
bit called a “Forstner Bit”. Most drills are guided by a centre
point. A forstner bit is guided by its outside edges. It does not
have a centre point. With an ordinary drill you cannot drill two
holes which overlap to make an elongated hole. When you try to bore
the second hole the bit will do anything it can to slide, wander,
bend or otherwise get itself back into the first hole. It will make
a sloppy mess and then there you are, left to file and file a crude
approximation of an oval or whatever. A forstner bit will easily
bore overlapping holes. As a matter of fact, I just bored an
uncountable number of such holes today making long oval mortises in
a pair of wooden gates I am building. You can bore a hole and then
move the bit along by a little bit or by a lot. You can bore another
hole next to the first, or overlapping it by a little or a lot,
anyway you want. And you can bore yet more holes in between the
first two holes so that the straight sides of the “racetrack’” shape
become straighter and straighter as you clean out the little peaks
left between each pair of holes. Like almost all boring operations,
this is much more likely to succeed if you use a drill press and
have the workpiece in a firm and controllable position. Drilling
into the side of a cylinder (as I imagine your mallet heads to be)
you will want the delrin cylinder held in a “V” shaped block and
prevented from rotating…
For an example by way of illustration -. Suppose the narrow
dimension of your oval hammer haft is 3/4" and the long dimension of
the oval is 1 1/4" then you will want a 3/4 " diameter bit. The long
and short dimensions of the hole have a 1/2" difference. Or, another
way to see it is that you require two 3/4 holes whose centres are
offset on either side of the centre of the long axis of the oval.
But you don’t locate forstner bit holes by marking the centres of
the holes as you would with an ordinary twist or paddle bit. You
locate your holes by marking their outside edges. So make two marks
5/8" away from centre, one on each side of the centre. 5/8 plus 5/8
= 1 1/4, the dimension you want. Bore one hole so that the right
edge of the forstner bit just touches the mark on the right. Move
your workpiece along its axis and bore another hole so the left edge
of the bit just touches the other (left) mark. Now you have two
neatly overlapping holes. Now move the workpiece again in small
increments so you can bore out the material left in the space
between the two holes until you have that perfect straight-sided
oval shape you want. It is easy and fast and you will not need to do
any filing. Back the bit completely out before moving the workpiece
along to the next position. That is, don’t try to move the bit
sideways between the holes to join them to make your straight-sided
oval. Just keep making overlapping holes.
The forstner bit does not clear chips out of deep holes very well
the way a twist bit does. Therefore, with the first two holes
especially, back the bit out of the hole at intervals to prevent
chips building up in the hole above the bit and causing excess
friction, heat, and generally gumming up the works. Once you get to
the part where there are overlapping holes then the chips can clear
into the adjacent hole - but don’t let them over-accumulate in any
case.
You will be absolutely delighted!
Forstner bits are not always available at ordinary neighbourhood
hardware stores but any shop selling good woodworking tools will
have them. Lee Valley is one good source. The bits are more
expensive than conventional bits but not extravagant in price.
Like most simple things, this takes more time to explain than to do.
Don’t be put off by my verbosity.
To retain mallet head on the haft - You can put a pin across and
through the mallet head and haft as some have suggested. Or, you can
drive a wedge into a saw cut made into the end of the haft. The
wedge will act to spread the haft inside the eye of the mallet and
thus tighten its grip. That will work best if your hole is slightly
flared, a little wider at the outer end so the haft, when once
expanded by the wedge, cannot be pulled back out of the hole. But
I’m not dead sure how well delrin will hold a wedge. I think it is
sort of slippery stuff. Still and all - a wedge is best because the
haft and/or the delrin may wear in time and so even if held from
flying off by a pin, the head can become a bit loose - a very
unpleasant sensation when working. A wedge can be driven in deeper
to tighten, or it can be replaced by a slightly thicker wedge.
Good luck.
Marty the mortiser - in Victoria BC
Jeffrey- Which heads do you use on your Lixie? They seem to offer
several hardnesses. Also how often do you have to replace them? Can
they be resurfaced when worn or damaged?
Jo Haemer
hammer and stake envy.
Hi Jo,
I have the hard black plastic and the green rubber heads which came
with the hammer. You can indeed resurface the plastic head. I have
replaced the black plastic once in over 25 years.
Another company with a great Lixie selection:
http://www.ganoksin.com/gnkurl/ep80jb
Lixie dead-blow hammers rule! You’ll never regret buying one (or
two).
Jeff Herman