Fixing up a couple Heller body hammers, pic heavy.

[oneandgone]

I bought both of these in pretty rough shape and really only intended to clean them up and re-handle them, but I got carried away. I still plan to paint the lower part of the handle on the 418 blue, but I'm waiting until I can find a handle for the other one so I can paint it at the same time. I'm not sure what the Heller number was for the other one. It was freshened up by someone else at some point as it was painted silver over the factory red and had a maroon replacement handle as well. Also, they managed to sand most of the "Heller" and horse stamping off. I only touched that area enough to get the rust off as to preserve what was left. Enough jibber jabber, on to the pics...

 

[oneandgone]

One more...

 

[wellpoison]

mind explaining some of the steps you did to get them into that shape? i would love to know! they look great!

 

[oneandgone]

Thank you sir!

It was actually pretty straight-forward. I taped them up good and put them into a vice to cut off the handles with a hacksaw. Then punched the remains of the handles out with my air hammer. After that I sanded the faces of each one, starting with 80, 100, 180, 320, and finishing with 600 grit.

From there I used a thinner soaked piece of red scotch brite to clean up the heads for paint. I didn't mask them up to paint them, overspray on the faces was easily removed with a rag dipped in thinner. It comes off easy due to being fresh and due to how slick the surface of the faces is. It just plain doesn't want to stick to them.

Last step was to tape them up again so that they didn't get damaged when installing the new handles...well, one of them anyway. There's a good thread on installing handles, so I won't go into detail here, but can provide the link if necessary.

I'm really anxious to finish the other hammer, but can't find a handle for it. The Snap On handles are a perfect fit, but I'm really wanting to find one that is a light colored hickory as that's what it had when new. If anyone has ideas of where to look for one I'd be much obliged.

I should also add that the 418 is commonly, and lovingly called a donkey **** in the body shop world.

EDIT: When taping them up to avoid damaging them with the vice I also taped paint sticks onto them and used rags at times as well. Doesn't do much good to polish them all up if they just get damaged in the vice!

 

[87Pomona]

They came out perfect!

Great job.

 

[PCO6]

oneandgone - Nice job!

I have a few Martin hammers that I really like. I also bought a few extra handles from Eastwood. They might work for you.

Martin hammer handles ...
http://www.eastwood.com/hickory-handle-for-martin-tool-body-hammer.html