Tools of the Jewelry Trade: Hammers

Time to share a few more tools of the jewelry trade today.  My all time favorite tool to use is a hammer!  There is something gratifying about pounding away at a piece of metal to create something beautiful. Collecting hammers can be a very addictive thing for a jeweler though as there are many different types for many different uses.

A jeweler can have a rawhide mallet, brasshead mallet, nylon mallet, chasing hammer, planishing hammer, riveting hammer, texturing hammer, ball-peen hammer and on..and on....and on....
Not only that, you can find all these hammers in many different sizes for many different projects.  It's hard to know when to stop collecting.

I typically use a plain old ball peen hammer for most of my work, a rawhide mallet for bending metal I don't want to mar, and occasionally texturing hammers.

Other tools like forming blocks, mandrels and anvils can extend the use of hammers even further.