One of the things that often bugs me is how there’s a lack of transparency when it comes to product marketing. Often marketing claims will hype-up a product with compelling features, figures, and comparisons. Sometimes the marketing makes sense, other times I struggle to find the basis for certain claims.
I find the marketing language behind titanium and “titanium-like” hammers to be particularly hazy and poorly supported.
Dewalt’s MIG-Welded Hammer
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I never really liked the way Dewalt marketed their 15oz MIG-welded hammer. The feel of titanium at a fraction of the cost! The power of a 28oz framing hammer. Oh yea? How does that work?
Kinetic energy = 1/2 x mass x velocity ^2. So even though we lightened the weight of the hammer, users can swing it faster to deliver greater energy. Our 15 oz hammer swings like a 28 oz hammer! Weight of titanium, strength of steel!
That sounds good and authoritative, but the reality probably isn’t that simple.
First, it seems to me that it would make much more sense to consider the hammer’s strike momentum rather than energy. Yes, the velocity component leads to higher kinetic energy, but with higher speeds and faster impacts there will also be different energy losses. It’s more appropriate to talk transfer of momentum at impact than energy.
With linear momentum, mass and velocity are directly related (P=mv), instead of how mass and velocity squared are proportional when discussing kinetic energy. This means that if you lower the mass of the hammer head, you have to do a lot more other stuff to the overall design in order to increase the swing velocity enough to appreciably improve strike momentum.
For what it’s worth, Dewalt’s 15oz welded hammer really is a pleasure to use. I haven’t determined whether the hammer really does deliver the same striking performance as a 28-oz hammer, but I really hope Stanley and Dewalt engineers used test measurements and not just use quick kinetic energy calculations.
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So where does the “titanium feel” come from?
My feeling is that the increased speed and striking energy is partially due to the lighter head and partially due to the decreased moment of inertia resulting from the longer and lighter handle.
It’s not just about making the hammer lighter, but where they made it lighter. The welded construction allows for weight savings and balancing that wouldn’t be possible using a forging process.
Still, I give the hammer a big thumbs up for its superb performance.
Stiletto Titanium
After the Dewalt hammer was released, I tried looking into what the titanium feel was all about. I spoke with a Stiletto engineer and references on their website offered clues to help me dig deeper.
Stiletto claims that their titanium hammers offer ten times less recoil shock than steel. However, the literature that supports that titanium offers better dampening behavior than steel explicitly says: on average, Titanium provides approximately 10 times greater damping than high carbon steels. I asked Stiletto about the discrepancy and nobody ever got back to me.
Yes, titanium does a far better job at dampening vibrations than steel. Yes, titanium recoils far less than steel. In addition to wasting energy and effort, recoil can be harmful to tradesmen over time as it increases the risk of wrist, elbow, and shoulder injuries.
But saying that titanium hammers deliver ten times less recoil shock than steel is different from saying it offers approximately 10 times better dampening than high carbon steel on average.
This chart, compiled by M. F. Ashby, shows the dampening behavior for different materials. It is also referenced in a Stiletto document that supports their claims titanium hammers dampen vibrations better than steel hammers do.
The loss coefficient is a measure of dampening performance, with the chart showing a range of 10^-4 to 10^-3 for titanium and 10^-5 to 10^-4 for high carbon steels. These material groupings are at the lower right side of the chart, and I’m sorry that you have to squint to read it.
Basically what this says is that the best-dampening high carbon steels perform nearly as well as the worst-dampening titanium alloys.
On average, titanium dampens vibrations ten times better than high carbon steels, since the chart shows high and low points for titanium alloys to be an order of magnitude higher than those for high carbon steel alloys.
But this doesn’t take into account that some hammer manufacturers have spent many years optimizing hammer head metallurgy and handle designs. Presumably, well-made hammers are designed around better performing high carbon steels and handles that further improve dampening performance.
It very well could be that Stiletto’s titanium hammer offers ten times better dampening performance than ordinary steel-head hammers. Maybe the real-world difference in some cases is a factor of fifty. If you take the best titanium alloy and worst steel alloy, in terms of dampening potential, you might theoretically see a 100-times difference in damping performance. But the difference could also be 5-times, or even less.
How much better a titanium hammer dampens vibrations compared to steel hammers depends on several things:
- Hammer head material
- Handle material
- Hammer design
So that’s why I’m not happy about how Stiletto markets their hammers. Their claims could be 100% true and accurate, but looking at the source material Stiletto themselves provide, where is the “on average” disclaimer on their sales and marketing messages?
In terms of real-world performance, Stiletto hammers are quite popular with tradesmen, at least those that can budget for the pricey tools. They do offer excellent vibration dampening, and the lighter weight of titanium translates to easier swings with less impact on the body.
I believed the Stiletto engineer when he said that their hammers have been shown to successfully ease, reduce, or treat tradesmen’s arm injuries, at least those thought to be caused by frequent heavy framing hammer use.
I’m not arguing about the Stiletto’s real-world performance, I just don’t agree with their blanket marketing claims that categorize all steel-made hammers as ten times worse. Maybe there is data that supports this, but I haven’t seen it.
Vaughan S2 18oz Hammer
I caught the Vaughan S2 hammer on sale at Sears under Craftsman branding, and ordered one for testing and review. When it arrived I noticed that sales tag boasted how the hammer feels like titanium but strikes like heavier steel hammers. Oh boy.
In an email to Vaughan, I wrote: The 18oz S2 Split Head Hammer is claimed to have the “feel of titanium with strength of steel.” I was hoping that you could elaborate upon this for me.
It’s worth mentioning that I had a very difficult time getting in touch with a human being at Vaughan. Either their web form didn’t work or my emails went ignored.
Their response: Please see attached sell sheet showing features. Thank you!
The attached sell sheet mentioned the hammer has anti-vibration pads, and overstrike plate, nail start, precision balance, and modular head. This does suggest that the S2 has great dampening by means of vibration isolation, and the long balanced handle could allow for faster swings.
Still, I pressed for more: That does not answer my question at all. I am aware of the features of the hammer, and am more interested in an explanation behind “feel of titanium – strength of steel.” Is there a product manager I can perhaps speak to?
Admittedly I could have been more polite, but I was seriously frustrated at how difficult it was to get in touch with someone at Vaughan only to be told to look at the sales sheet.
Their reply: It means it is well balanced and feels lighter than other hammers with the same weight.
Just because a hammer is well balanced and lighter doesn’t mean it has the “feel of titanium.” I sent another email but never heard back from anyone.
I suppose the weight distribution of the S2 could make it feel lighter than when swinging other 18oz hammers. It just seems that “feel of titanium” is thrown around a lot without proper validation or support.
Hey, did you know that the official ToolGuyd hammer “feels like titanium but strikes like steel?” Why is that true? Because I said so, so you must trust me, now give me some money.
The S2 has performed reasonably well the couple of times I used it in the past year. But to be honest, I like my axe-style wood-handled Dewalt 17-ounce hammer a but more.
I Give Up
These are all great hammers, but the marketing behind them is extremely blurry. Maybe this post will help answer some of the questions I’ve been asking for a while.
How is it that the Dewalt welded hammer delivers strikes with the power of framing hammers nearly twice as weighty? “Kinetic Energy!” is not an acceptable answer. I want to see equations and numbers that I can add up myself.
How does Stiletto compare to steel framing hamers in real-world tests? Or is the “10x less recoil!” simply an adaptation of supporting evidence that says titanium – but not necessarily titanium hammers – offers approximately 10x better dampening than high carbon steel on average?
Finally, what is Vaughan using as a basis by which to see their S2 hammer “feels like titanium?”
Jeremy
I actually bought and returned the DeWalt hammer because, at least with mine, the milled face showed serious wear after driving around 100 nails. From what I gather that is because the steel isn’t tempered. I did find it to be more able to drive nails quickly due in part to its 16″ handle resulting in increased velocity vs my 16oz claw hammer with a 13″ handle. My estwing 25oz framing hammer drove nails better than both but wore me out quicker as well.
This marketing claim, like any other, is just a scramble for synonyms of better, or in this case, similar-but-cheaper.
Stuart
CopTool’s photo from STAFDA 2 years ago shows a demo display that directly compares the welded hammer to Stiletto’s TiBone, focusing mainly on price.
I haven’t heard of other accounts of the mill face wearing quickly – that could definitely be a problem, or perhaps it was a one-off defect.
jeff_williams
“Hey, did you know that the official ToolGuyd hammer “feels like titanium but strikes like steel?” Why is that true? Because I said so, so you must trust me, now give me some money.”
I’m not sure I believe you, could you send me a sales sheet with more marketing propaganda? Haha. Weird logic going on at Vaughan.
Stuart
I don’t think it’s necessarily bad logic as much as small company customer service structure. I don’t even have a name for the person who wrote back to me, it’s just info@vaughanmfg.
I do appreciate that they made an attempt to help answer my question. It’s just that after being ignored via their “contact us” form and trying a dozen combinations of email addresses, I expected a more satisfying response.
nysage
As a contractor, and a tool nerd, I own *a lot* of tools. There are very few tools that I own, that I can not go out and just buy any other brand to replace it with and barely notice the difference. Most tool manufacturers have dropped quality for price.. for ex: Hitachi.. I would spend $600 or more, without batting an eye to buy a new C8FB (circa 1998), not the plastic junk Hitachi sells now.
My Stilleto TB15SC is another. After 25 years of swinging hammers, I was given a Stiletto as a gift about two years ago. I never could justify buying one, even as a tool junkie.. (A $200 hammer? @#$$^! that !) Now, I would buy 6 of them if I heard they were not going to make them anymore. After 2 years, I can say I abused the hammer as much as any other. In the beginning I babied it, after all it was $200, and we all heard the rumors that they break pulling nails, etc.. The icing on the cake for me is, the repetitive stress disorder ‘Carpenter’s elbow’ aka ‘Tennis elbow’ has disappeared.
Now… what does Festool have new for 2013? wait, a new $600 circular saw? $@%! that !
Yadda
What? No mention of the Dead On DO-TI7(registered trademark)?
Yadda
My mistake, DO-TI7 is only registered, not registered and trademarked.
Stuart
This isn’t an exhaustive look at silly hammer marketing, just the three brands and models that have bugged me the most.
Yadda
Understood. I was being facetious. Hard to accomplish via text. I life DO’s tools, but they are losing shelf space at Home Depot, their website is shrinking as well as their tool line.
JeffD
If the manufacturers sell 20,000+ ‘titanium’ hammers to the unsuspecting public then they’ve done their job. Most of us know the high cost of true titanium and chuckle at their claims.
What I find more disturbing are the amount of manufacturers who don’t respond to questions send in by prospective customers or current owners. I for one, will never purchase a product from a company that doesn’t respond to my initial pre-purchase questions.
Stuart
It could be worse. One industrial supplier I reached out to once with questions sent me responses that could have crafted by their children.
I also tend to avoid consumer product manufacturers and retailers that don’t respond to pre-sale questions.
AndrewC
Yeah this is all just marketing. The damping ratio of all metals (steels, titaniums) are orders of magnitude less than materials used for damping, as your chart shows. Vibrations are reduced by use of rubber grips and the shape of the hammer. They are trying to convince you that an expensive light hammer is just as good as a heavy hammer, and I really question that. I have been told that proper hammering technique is to raise the hamme and then let it fall so the weight of the hammer drives the nail, not your muscles. With a lighter hammer, you have to exert more energy and will be less accurate in your nailing.
Also, a pet peeve about misuse of the terms “damping” and “dampening.” “Damping” vibrations is reducing them, “dampening” vibrations is moistening/wetting them.
Stuart
I deliberately used dampening since the context of vibration and recoil is in regard to what is transferred to user. My understanding is that damping is a noun, and dampen (and dampening) a verb. I will take another look to see if I mistakenly used dampening as a noun instead of damping.
Dampen (via OED): To dull, deaden, diminish the force or ardour of, depress, deject.
You’re absolutely correct in how the choice and use of handle materials is mainly responsible for reducing the vibrations transferred to users’ hands and joints. I believe this is more through isolation than anything else, but it doesn’t seem to be enough to deaden the initial recoil from each strike.
Titanium does reduce strain on the body, but perhaps not because of the material’s damping properties but because Ti hammers are just lighter and longer. If we could create a Ti hammer the same size and weight as a steel framing hammer, many of its benefits might be nullified.
Jim
It’s not the part of speech that’s different, but the usage: if you “damp” something you reduce its strength, while if you “dampen” something you get it wet. (“Dampen” can also be used less formally to mean “damp” though so you aren’t exactly wrong.)
Stuart
Dampen has 2 definitions though, to make slightly wet, or to make less strong or intense.
Damping is the reduction of vibrational energy.
They’re not the same thing, although there can be some overlap. Damping specifically refers to vibrational energy. Dampening could be generalized and used to discuss the intensity of an energy, and does not necessarily have to mean “to make damp.”
Damping is more technically correct much of the time, but dampen is also reasonably correct as well.
Some dictionaries, at least those I checked just now, define damp as “to make something wet” alongside its definition regarding restricting vibrational or oscillation amplitudes.
If you’re talking about reducing the strength of something, dampen or dampening seems to be more technically correct. If you’re talking about reducing the vibrational or oscillation amplitude, then damp or damping seems to be more technically correct.
The problem is that dampen is sometimes incorrectly used in place of damping. But there are times when dampen is correct for the usage.
fred
I think that I have 1 carpenter swinging a Dalluge (Vaughan & Bushnell) hammer and 2 using Stiletto’s (now part of Milwaukee) . Both of these were personal buys – with the company buying mostly Estwings. My own preference is an old Stanley 100Plus hammer – but then again I never swung a hammer for a living.
Hector Lopez
I have purchased a Stilleto Ti-Bone 15oz and it just doesn’t live to what I expected it to be. Sure, it’s amazingly light and well-balanced even though it weighs around 33oz. It doesn’t wear me out as quickly as my 19oz Vaughan hickory hammer, but it doesn’t drive in 16D penny nails and 8D penny nails as well as my steel hammer. On the flipside I am more accurate with the titanium hammer as opposed to a steel hammer but that’s because I’ve recently started doing carpentry work. In tight spaces, I can’t seem to drive in nails with the titanium hammer because the head is too light + I can’t use the side of the hammer to nail due to the logo. However, I find the side nail puller excellent.
Even though it doesn’t drive in nails as well as my steel hammer, it also doesn’t move certain things as great. Additionally, I can’t beat it up as my steel hammer, because it’s too expensive. When I typically move heavy pieces of lumber, I usually drive in the claw of my hammer into the wood, but it’s a POA to drive in the titanium claw.
Lastly, when I strike washers and hardware, it’s certainly easier with a heavier steel hammer (and I’m not concerned about breaking it).
Given the $169 I spent on this hammer, I would give it 3/5 stars. I no longer use it since I don’t drive in nails all day by hand. I just use my $25 Vaughan 19oz hickory axe handle hammer I purchased from HD.
Hector Lopez
Also when I move studs and walls to knock them into place, I have to resort to using my steel hammer since the titanium hammer doesn’t move them at all or it takes too many strikes.
I’ve also used the 14oz Ruger Titanium hammer, and it’s too light to do anything useful but nail into softer woods like facia.
I can’t believe I bought it.
Jesse
Not exactly what I was searching for on the net, but a good read. Unfortunate interaction with Vaughan, I really don’t like their hammers for myself but almost exclusively use their nail pullers.. To each their own. I tried a titanium 10-12 years ago and really didn’t care for it. To anyone reading this looking for a quality framing hammer and willing to go the extra mile: Find a old Bob hart 21 or 25 oz from 1999-2002 before the company sold. The heads fit a standard stiletto handle with just a little bit of sanding. I’ve been using my 25 for over a decade and went through 10-15 handles. Never mind the stupid sales consumer world of propaganda as this article truly points out.
pictsidhe
Titanium hammers, a triumph of marketing over common sense.
I use a variety of hammers. 14lb sledges for maximum impact, little ones for tiny jobs. I’ve even got a couple of long handled light hammers. I studied mechanical engineering at degree level. I’m not going to try a titanium hammer. 1lb of any metal that doesn’t fall apart is going to give a near identical impact to 1lb of some other metal that stays together. If you want a lighter hammer, use a lighter hammer! It would take some ridiculously accurate testing to be able to scientifically differentiate a steel hammer from an identical weight titanium hammer merely by how well they drive nails and the shock felt by the user. I doubt anyone could tell if done blind.
Lk
Who gives a tulip how they market their products. It’s their company. If they say it hits like a wrecking ball but is light as a pillow don’t mean some rabbit has to use rocket science. People who use a hammer for a living don’t give a daisy about velocity squared times yadayadayada. Its a rosey hammer. It’s individuals like yourself that just has to voice their lame eagle opinion about something that doesn’t matter just because you think advertising is wrong. Have you watched TV lately? Just about every commercial is false advertising. If you don’t work for any of these companies or the advertising firms, do us a favor & think… at the end of the day, who cares?
Stuart
False advertising is illegal, you know.
Regardless of what you might believe, people do care about whether or not the tools they buy do all the things they’re said to do, in the way they’re said to do them.
Paddy
If you are swinging two different hammers of identical dimensions, but different weights, swinging down from the same height, it doesn’t matter what weight they are, if you are letting gravity do the swing for you. Terminal velocity and acceleration are the same, independent of mass. High school physics. (hundreds of years ago, the Pope tried to imprison people because he couldn’t wrap his little brain around this fact of physics) They will both reach the same velocity upon striking. Don’t believe me? Try it. Take two of your test hammers, one in each hand and do your full swing, one-one, with each. Switch hands/hammers and repeat. You will find that the lighter titanium hammer feels much better to lift up to swing, and it also hurts less on impact. High speed camera footage shows that the titanium hammer (we’re talking full-titanium hammer/handle vs full-steel hammer/handle) bends back farther on impact and swings back into the nail with more force than the steel hammer. Steel actually has a greater modulus of flex than titanium, but you would have to make a very skinny steel hammer to get the same performance. Metal-fatigue and corrosion problems aside, the skinny steel hammer would still snap back faster (due to its higher density) and still cause injury problems.
Don’t get me wrong, titanium is still less dense. It is also more brittle. It will wear down faster and possibly crack sooner than a steel hammer, but it will perform beautifully during its working life.
For moving studs and things like that, steel still wins. The weight really does its job in those applications. But if you’re nailing concrete forms all day long, (the bulk of most construction work in our condo-economy these days) repetitive stress injuries are among your greatest worries. I’m buying that Stiletto Ti-bone before springtime. I hate getting tennis-elbow!
Stuart
Respectfully, you are wrong.
There is no user in the world that can take a hammer to terminal velocity. Terminal velocity is the maximum velocity an object can attain, where negative acceleration due to drag and friction in air is equal to gravitational acceleration.
If one were to use gravitational acceleration alone to swing a hammer, driving nails would take much, much longer.
Rodrigo Silva
I find titanium hammers to be the ultimate BS!! First of all i can swing my steel hammer just as fast as a titanium hammer the claim that something 2x lighter will swing 2x faster is beyond ridiculous and seccond a steel hammers recoil is not a bad thing it is what makes the hammering motion more automated instead of pulling the hammer back with your own effort to strike again the recoil does it on its own, then you just give it a little swing and let it fall again. Its a perfect cycle. I did fell into the trend a few years back and bought one of the so called perfect hammers, i found that the head is much softer and less dirable than steel, within a few weeks it had ridiculous grooves on the face so bad if it was a steel hammer i would have binned it, incredibly enough i managed to get even more then what i paid for it selling on ebay, never again bought another one.