Getting a Handle On Childhood Hammers

I was introduced to tools by being given, not a knife for whittling, an axe for chopping, or a saw for pruning, but hammers for, in my case, causing damage. It was with hammer in hand that I ventured forth in the world to discover many things, for example, how unmelodious is a struck garbage can lid (why were they trusting me around those automobiles with acres of tempting metal?)

Tyke with hammers 1

and how effectively they rendered crawling bugs into paste! Four hammers ended up in my possession somehow this many years later. They hung on a wall board in the basement that was painted white with their and many other tools’ silhouettes painted black along it.

Tyke with hammers 2

At a later age the two biggest hammers in our basement, a sledge and a mechanics peen, served as first rate wreckers of abandoned structures to be found on old farms and woods on our road: chicken coops, garden sheds, and hunting shacks where we kids suspected bank robbers had stashed their unclaimed loot under floor boards and behind paneling. There were plenty of bad guys out there and one needed more than hammers to deal with them.

The Kettle Creek Kid

The ammo that powered my sidearms came in the form of rolls of caps.

Roll Caps

It didn’t take much experimenting to realize that the mechanic’s peen, weighing four pounds, could smash an entire box of caps in one blow, invariably creating permanent craters on the cellar floor and sending my mother scrambling to the top of the stairs yelling what in God’s name was I doing?

It seems amazing to me not only that I survived to the present moment but that the hammers themselves did.

Recently I decided to thank them by re-wedging and/or replacing the badly fitting handles, filing and cleaning the heads with vinegar, soap, and abrasive pads.

RS vinegar bath

Filing hammerhead

Hammers 2

With the exception of the Cobblers Hammer and splitting Maul the collection is from childhood.

With the exception of the Cobblers Hammer and splitting Maul the collection is from childhood.

A great surprise came while working on the smaller peen hammer. I cleaned it up and wedged it well and in the process discovered on the underside of the head that my dad had my initials punched onto it! (C. Michael Vogt, Tico being my nickname.)

Peen and handle

Initials on head

He undoubtedly recognized us as lifelong friends.

Peen rewedged

9 comments to Getting a Handle On Childhood Hammers

  • Mike Hamilton

    Have hammer(s), will travel
    Wire Paladin
    San Francisco

    Nice outfit, brings back memories….

    Regards,
    Mike

  • Interesting story Tico, I don’t have anything like that from my younger years. What is the ‘U’ shaped piece of wood on the file for?

  • tico

    Hi Ralph, it is a bent piece of grape vine that I added as a finger guard. Sometimes I file toward the edge and need to protect my fingers.

  • I remember those caps!!

  • tico

    We could just walk into a store and purchase explosives at, what, seven years old? Man.

  • Alan Van Reed

    Also back in the day …. you could take (steal) your Dad’s shotgun shells (before they started using cordite) and open them up to use the black powder to construct your bombs to blow up your army men (play toy soldiers) out in the woods ……

    Alan
    Boston

  • tico

    And start a small fire and put co2 cartidges in it. I suppose that’s still available.

  • Rick McKee

    Great stuff Tico–those pictures are priceless.

  • tico

    Thanks, Rick.

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