Stiletto Ti Hammer?

Cougar Allen said:
I don't think I have a sledgehammering lolcat in stock, but maybe I could make one up ... or find John Henry Was A Steel Drivin' Man on youtube.... Seriously, an aluminum baseball bat hits harder than wood -- a little bit. Maybe a titanium hammer does perform a little better -- or maybe performance is a little worse and people only think it's better because of the placebo effect of all the hype. I want to see some real evidence before I believe in it, and I haven't seen any evidence at all yet (and I posted that the first time years ago).
[youtube]TfkihMR7e3Y[/youtube]
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I agree with you on that. I would like to see some kind of test to offer "proof"
I do think the numbers may be "fudged" by the maker.

According to the suggestions of some, Tiger Woods should take the Titanium head off his driver, and replace it with a steel head that weighs 50% more, so he could hit the ball with more force, and get maybe 600yd drives instead of 350yd drives.
Barry Bonds should get a bat half-a-pound heavier, and hit the ball maybe 600ft, instead of 450ft. A heavier bat would result in more force.
Better yet, just get a 16lb sledge, and he would barely even have to swing :D

All physics and ad hype aside, I think if the Ti hammers were the same price as steel, Ti would win the "which is better debate" hand down. Its kinda like the Surefire vs. XX or XX debate.

I don't think Lycosa or Mahoney and many other owners are lying or delusional, for thinking their hammers are easier on the arm, and can drive nails just as good as a steel hammer.

Vaughn hammers, which are supposed to be one of the best Steel head hammer makers, are now making a Ti head hammer. In their description of the Ti hammer , they say:
"Lightweight Titanium body swings faster for greater power at point of impact with less stress and arm fatigue." And: " Vaughan's patent design includes free floating pin that moves on impact to reduce sting and exclusive anti-vibration rubber pad that isolates striking face for maximum shock absorption."



This is a description of their new Steel head hammer the S2:
"The S2 is a "split-head" hammer, meaning the head is split in two, which interrupts and dissipates shock generated during use thereby greatly reducing stress to the users hand, wrist and arm."

So, sting, vibration, arm stress and fatigue, must be an issue.

I'm through with this one.

I haven't typed this much in a looooong time. :)
 
If you take home anything at all from this discussion, at least please try to grasp the concept that weight and material are independant. A hammer head (or golf club head) can be made as heavy or light as you like with whichever material you like.
 
One more thing:

(advertisment quoted)
So, sting, vibration, arm stress and fatigue, must be an issue.
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No. An advertisement does not demonstrate that any of those things must be issues. If you're looking for evidence, unsupported statements and implications made in advertising ain't it.
 
I have to start off and say that I won't be buying a titanium hammer any time soon....I'm much too fond of my 28 oz vaughn :D

That said there are lots of things to take into account, which could possibly make the titanium hammer perform better.

You're basically dealing with a simple collision, and ideally an elastic collision where the total momentum of the system is conserved.

So the momentum of the hammer is transferred to the nail. The nail is then put in motion, which is rapidly brought to a stop by the material it is being driven into.

So you would think that regardless of the material, the only thing that matters would be the mass and velocity. The problem is that there is also a third party force called impulse which affects the change in linear momentum of both bodies in the collision.

Now its been too long since I took physics to really know for sure, but I think that factors for impulse would be similar to the factors that give an anvil good rebound, and cause the rebound to be different in different areas of the anvil. Pounding on the heel of an anvil is very different from pounding over the center where most of the mass is. So the size and shape of the hammer head probably have as much affect on impulse as the overall mass does.Titanium is less dense so for a given mass, you have more material to work with in shaping the hammer head for good impulse. A 16 oz titanium hammer could have a similar cross section to much heavier steel hammer. So you'd have a faster swing with the same impulse.

And just as a soft anvil doesn't have the rebound of one with a good heat treat, the hardness of the hammer would also be a factor.

So there may be a possibility that due to impulse, the titanium hammer transfers momentum to the nail better than steel. But I doubt that the performance gains are worth the cost.
 
anyone, please post a video of how many spikes (16d common galvanized nails) you can sink into a 4 by beam cutoff in 10 seconds with your shiny expensive hammer!

bet i can beat you with a old 19 oz. steel vaughn! ($30) :eek::D

ps- my arm won't hurt after!:D
 
Just to add to the confusion, hammer weights don't mean much, all else being equal. A 12oz Craftsman (wood handle) weighs 16oz, and a 20oz Estwing (steel shaft) weighs 28oz. Head weight or swing weight or whatever the manufacturer wants to call it seems to be the relative measure. There are as many variables in what makes a good hammer as in what makes a good knife. I always reface mine for angle, edge radius and flatness to produce even impact and minimum "smiles":D. Regards, ss.
 
pcnorton said:
Wiki pedia article gave me my answer. Ti is lighter and allows for a longer handle for same weight to give more velocity at the head.

There had to be some way they get around a lighter hammer. force=massXvelocity, so if you lose mass you need to boost velocity to get the same(or better) force.

Paul
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Ah... |Force| = | mass x acceleration | ... not velocity.

(The "vertical pipe" characters, |, on either side of something in mathematics mean to take just the magnitude of that thing. For the purposes of this problem, we can assume that the head hits the nail "squarely" and so we're only interested in the magnitude of the force, not what direction it's going it. This similifies the problem a bit... well, actually, more than a bit.)

When an object stops, that is actually, in physics-speak, an acceleration. That's right, in physics-speak pressing the break pedal in your car causes your car to accelerate. It's a negative acceleration in that case, but, thanks to the vertical pipe characters, we don't have to worry about that.

Acceleration is a change in velocity over time. In fact, acceleration = deltaV / deltaT, change in velocity divided by change in time. When a hammer hits something, it goes from whatever velocity its traveling at to zero in a ver short -- but not zero -- time. Assuming the hammer is traveling fairly fast, the change in velocity from fairly-fast to zero is quite large. The change in time is not zero, but it's very small. So, you have a big change in velocity divided by a small change in time; you have big number divided by a small number and the result is large.

We then mulitply that large acceleration by the mass to get force.

Both the steel and the Ti hammer go from some initial velocity to some final velocity. For both steel and Ti, the final velocity is the same: zero. So, the larger the initial velocity, the larger the change in velocity.

It's reasonable to assume that the change in time is about the same for the Ti vs. the Steel hammer. What would cause a difference there would be a change in the deformation of the hammer face and I just don't think there's gonna be a substantial difference.

What this means is that a higher initial velocity (initial meaning the velocity of the head the slit-second before it hits the nail) will result in a higher force.

So, will the Ti hammer have a higher initial velocity (again, initial here means initial at the start of acceleration... ah, deceleration, actually. But don't forget those vertical pipes. Basically, this "initial velocity" I speak of is the velocity of the hammer head just a split second before it hits the nail.). A longer handle would do that, true.

But, handle length is not a function of Ti vs. Steel. There's nothing that prevents you from making a steel-headed hammer with a longer handle. The claim-to-fame of this Stiletto hammer is not that it has a longer handle, but that it's made of titanium.

Wait a minute, though. We've become focused on velocity and change in velocity which is acceleration. There's another piece to the equation that determines force: mass. Assuming that the two hammer heads are the same volume, the same physical size, the steel hammer head will have about 1.75 time the mass of the Ti head. (Desity of Ti is 4.506g/cubic cm and the density of steel varies slightly with alloy, but 7.85g/cubic cm is a good typical value.)

What this means is that the Ti head would have to be moving 1.75x as fast as the steel head to generate the same force. That's a big difference.

Can a longer handle which results in a higher initial velocity overcome the mass difference?

Well, the relationship between initial velocity and handle length will be 6.14x difference in length. To make up for that mass difference, the circumference of the circle must be 0.285x larger. Let's assume that the diameter of the circle for the shorter, steel-headed hammer is 3 feet. The Ti hammer's handle must be 0.855feet = 10 1/4 inches longer. I don't think it's over 10 inches longer.
 
The heads don't have to have the same volume. Look at a steel hammer head. Try to visualise where you could cut away half the volume without cutting away any of the face or cutting away so much support that it couldn't bear the stress of hitting a nail. Not hard to visualise at all, is it? :cool:
 
I said I would stay away, but this has been an interesting thread to me, since I sell Titanium products and products from stiletto.

I am not trying to argue at all. It is interstesting to me to hear different views and why people have those views.

Anyway, here is part of an email I received from Joel Allen of Stiletto, after I asked him to explain the "claims" of their hammers.

"To answer your questions, it is the fundamental differences in material characteristics between Ti and high carbon steels that most
people do not understand. We didn't either, at first... As we
worked with the metal more and more , we learned that Ti exhibits ten times greater dampening of recoil shock waves than High carbon steel.

In Steel hammers, we found that no matter how much swing energy you create, you only transfer approx. 67-70% of that energy to a nail due to the loss of energy to recoil. With Ti we get upwards of 97% of that swing energy transferred to the nail, regardless of the hammers head weight.. In the golf industry, this is referred to as the "trampoline effect", where the majority of the force applied to a Ti golf driver is bounced back into to the ball.

This is why we get about 30% more performance out of the users swing (thus more productivity), and is also the reason the user's arm is not jarred with recoil upon every individual hammer strike (thus less arm pain). This is so effective that our 14 Oz hickory hammers have been prescribed to workman's compensation claimants with occupational injuries from swinging Steel hammers in California, Washington State and the Province of Quebec in Canada. This is the primary and most important ergonomic benefit of a Titanium hammer, and the secondary ergonomic benefit is that the user is simply not as fatigued by swinging the lighter Ti tool at the end of an 8 hour workday.

Through our continued research with the hard-core pro framers, we have come to rate the 14 Oz Ti Hammer to be compared with the driving force of a 24 Oz steel, with less recoil as well.

I think the nay-sayers of this technology get caught up in their uninformed comparisons, unaware of the difference in material characteristics of the two metals. Their argument only holds water when comparing a larger steel hammer with a smaller one. This is like "apples and orange" so to speak..."

Here is his contact info if anyone wants more info.
Joel Allen

VP Innovation
Stiletto Tools, Inc.
Office: 209-357-1932
Fax: 209-357-2149
Email: jallen@stiletto.com
 
im a professional carpenter. many of my coworker's use 14oz stilettos and love them. i've borrowed one a few times and tested it throughout the day and can honestly say that i can drive nails faster and with less arm fatigue with a Ti hammer than i can with my 22oz estwing. not to mention that it's much lighter hanging off my oxy pouch for 8-10 hours as well.

my issue is that i don't do enough production framing at this point to warrant the cost. most of my work is in highend renovation and i like the estwing's steel shaft for demo as well. i've seen guys crack hickory handles during demo, and the last time i looked at the lot of stilettos at the local tool supply, the grain wasn't exactly fantastic.

do they work?....yep
would i like one?.......yep
am i getting one?.......nope

(one of the contractors i occasionally sub for buys a stilleto for each employee for their birthday....i need to work for him more :D)
 
1kimo4u- what is your take on why a stiletto is any worse than a steel hammer when sheathing roofs and floors?

thanks
 
Great responses Everyone!
The Wind---has shifted.
Good thing---I almost sold mine! ;)
 
So, um ... Woodsrover noticed using a 14oz hammer is not the same as using a 22oz hammer. Carrying it is different too. :)

It would be interesting if he also compared a 14oz steel hammer and a 22oz titanium hammer.

Joel Allen of Stiletto talks about enormous differences in energy transfer. That should be very easy to demonstrate objectively. Even the crudest kind of experiment is bound to show a clear difference -- and it should be easy to find where that 30-33% of the energy is going, too, with neutrino detectors or whatever....
 
cougar have you ever used a Ti hammer? if so what were your personal experiences?

i have used a 14 oz steel hammer. try using one to drive 16d spikes and see where it gets you.

So, um ... Woodsrover noticed using a 14oz hammer is not the same as using a 22oz hammer. Carrying it is different too.
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cougar, grab your reading glasses. i said that i could drive nails faster and with less fatigue with the Ti. and why would you carry a heavier tool all day if a lighter one works just the same or better? but, i say again, i haven't heard any actual experience on your end. if you want to use sarcasm, use it intelligently.
 
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Something I remembered from years ago(1979) when my police department swithched over to PR24 side handle batons and I am not sure if this is even true but..... We were told that doubling the WEIGHT of a night stick doubled the impact force but doubling the SPEED of the stick would quadruple the impact force. Now if this was applied to a hammers it may be possible to increase the acceleration of the titanium hammer moreso then the steel one because it is lighter, hence more force would be applied to the nail.
 
woodsrover said:
cougar have you ever used a Ti hammer? if so what were your personal experiences?

i have used a 14 oz steel hammer. try using one to drive 16d spikes and see where it gets you.



cougar, grab your reading glasses. i said that i could drive nails faster and with less fatigue with the Ti. and why would you carry a heavier tool all day if a lighter one works just the same or better? but, i say again, i haven't heard any actual experience on your end. if you want to use sarcasm, use it intelligently.
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I'm not sure my point is coming across.... My point was you compared a 22oz hammer to a 14oz hammer. I contend that your experiment did not distinguish difference in performance due to the different metals from difference in performance due to the different weight.

NOW you say you have also used a 14oz steel hammer. That's interesting. Now we might be getting somewhere.

I am not convinced there isn't any difference; I think it likely there is some difference that may well show up in using a hammer all day long. I want to see some evidence of that, though; plausible != true.

I am convinced there can't be 30% of the energy going to waste when you use a steel hammer -- if that were true it would be obvious and very easy to prove objectively.

My own experience of hammering has been mostly hammering on various metals, hot and cold, with many different weights of hammer and some different kinds of mallet. Differences in the kind of hammer and anvil you use can make a big difference in that kind of work. Hammering a nail seems to me much less of a bouncy experience than forging....
 
although i've never had the opportunity to forge anything, i would trust that the hammering in forging and the hammering in building are quite different.

when i hammer with a steel hammer it feels different than a Ti hammer. not drastically, but different just the same. i'm not sure about the 30 percent figure, but i would say that a steel hammer does recoil a bit more. not bouncy per say, but i feel a difference. the Ti would feel a bit "deader" for lack of a better term. anyone who has used a dead blow mallet knows this feeling. now bear in mind, i'm not saying that this difference is drastic, nor would i begin to know how to measure it. but in an 8 to 10 hour workday, that difference adds up. and that is my experience. as far as proof or a quantifiable test, well, you got me there.

i agree that there is alot of hype surrounding Ti tools, and i'm not a fan of most. i just don't see the advantage in most applications. but having had my hands on and used various types of hammers, i can see why some prefer them. i think it mostly boils down to personal preference as with anything else.

p.s. i'd like to try a japanese framing hammer. those things look goofy.
 
Cougar Allen

I brought up the Weight difference because The claim by stiletto is that their
14oz hammer performs as well as a steel 23oz hammer, and people said that it was impossible because of the weight difference.

If the claim of titanium being 27-30% more efficient is true then, theoretically, a 22oz Titanium hammer would be 27-30% better than a 22oz steel hammer.

Even if one didn't believe that titanium was more efficient at transfering energy, or absorbing shock or recoil, you cant argue about the weight savings.
8 ounces is half-a-pound. 1 "swing" would be a 1pound difference. 1/2pound picking it up, 1/2pound swinging down at the nail.

Multiply that times 100 nails a day? Three or 4 strike per nail?

I bet you could tell the difference just from the weight.
 
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