Why We Make the Exeter Hammer

At about 3 p.m. this afternoon, I assembled our 400^th Exeter hammer. I injected glue into the kerf in the handle and pushed it into the eye of the steel hammer head. I slipped a hickory wedge into the handle’s kerf and lightly set the head and wedge by banging the butt of the handle against the workbench.

Then I smacked the wedge into the kerf with a hammer as far as it would go. To seat the handle fully, I placed it in a 5-ton arbor press and used its ram to squish the handle down until wood fibers began to curl up under the hammer’s head.

Finally, I drove the wedge in even deeper with a hammer, using a narrow steel plate and about 20 hammer strikes.

If the hammer’s head ever comes loose, I’ll be shocked/appalled/hopefully deceased. I trimmed the tenon and handed the hammer to Kale, who cleaned up all the details, softened the hard edges, oiled the tenon and got it ready for packaging.

Gabe wrapped the head in VCI paper (to prevent corrosion), then added a foam envelope (to protect it from dings during shipping) and a heat-sealed VCI bag (just because).

The whole assembly process for hammer No. 400 took about 10 minutes. To be honest, I’m amazed at how easy these pieces of wood and metal went together to make this perfectly balanced tool, because the development process for this hammer took almost three difficult years. Some of the pain was technical. But most of the agony was in my head.

It started with this goal: Make a nail hammer that is ideal for furniture makers.

The journey was long and winding because I began it in the wrong place. So it took a while to arrive where I stood this Friday afternoon, arbor press in hand. Sometime tonight we will sell that 400^th hammer, and we will be out of stock for a month or six weeks as we resupply.

Selling 400 hammers in two weeks is a big deal for a little company like ours. If I said I was surprised by how fast they sold, I’d be lying. All the agony and hand wringing was worth it. This hammer is one of the best tools we make. And this is its story.