A reader brought up Hart’s 14oz titanium hammer (HHHST1), which is now on sale for $79 thanks to a Walmart “rollback.”
I’ve got mixed feelings about this. On one hand – ooh, a more affordable titanium hammer. On the other hand, it looks cheap.
But, maybe I’m wrong – you be the judge.
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The Hart 14oz titanium hammer has a titanium head and wood handle.
Maybe it’s just the product photos, but it looks to me that the wood handle doesn’t fit the hammer head very well.
Hart doesn’t mention this in their Walmart product description, but I assume the overhang is overstrike protection.
Stiletto’s wood-handled titanium hammer looks to have a better-fitting handle.
Vaughan also has a Dalluge wood-handled titanium hammer, with interesting head geometry and longer handle connection.
The Hart hammer has a side nail puller, magnetic nail starter, and straight rip claw. There’s only one model I could find, and it has a smooth face with beveled edge.
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Hart says:
The head of the HART 14oz Titanium hammer has the strength of steel while being lighter and easier on the user.
I have tried a couple of titanium hammers over the years, and now consider them to be cheaper feel-good alternatives to better and pricier designs.
A hammer like this offers one benefit, in my opinion – a larger strike face without as much added weight as steel.
So, compared to say a 12oz or 16oz steel hammer, this 14oz titanium has a longer handle and looks to have a larger strike face.
Titanium is nearly as strong as steel, but it is nowhere near as hard. Titanium is also faster wearing than steel. This is why premium titanium hammers usually have steel strike faces.
Martinez titanium hammers have steel heads entirely, which offers a more resilient claw.
The Hart hammer has a solid titanium head.
In my understanding, titanium provides two main benefits when incorporated into hammer designs. First, titanium has excellent vibration damping properties. Second, its lower density and high strength make it a great material for lightweight handles.
In more premium designs, titanium handles lower the moment of inertia, reducing the effort it takes to swing such hammers. They also reduce the vibrations that reach the user’s hands.
Titanium-handled hammers also tend to be longer, and so you get a faster and more powerful swing.
In a wood-handled titanium hammer, you’re mostly dealing with the weight and vibration damping properties of the wood handle.
I’m sure that a titanium head is going to offer some vibration damping. And, as mentioned, it allows you to have a larger strike face and claw than a steel hammer head of comparable weight.
However, the net benefits aren’t going to come close to that of titanium-handled hammers.
All this gives me the impression of the hammer being cheap. It’s more affordable, but at $79 on sale it’s not quite inexpensive.
In my opinion, most of the benefits from wood-handled titanium hammers come from their longer handles than the titanium aspect. I’d take a similarly long-handled “high velocity” steel hammer over this one.
The Hart hammer – does it have a hickory handle? They don’t say. What’s the length of the hammer? They don’t say.
Hart doesn’t provide further details on their website or on their Walmart listings.
Hart says:
The HART 14 oz. Titanium Hammer is a welcome and excellent addition to any DIYer tool belt.
Hart used to be known for the pro-grade hammers, and is now a Walmart-exclusive value brand. With this hammer, it seems Hart’s just following the titanium trend with an uninspired design.
The Hart seems to have positive reviews, but nearly all of them as labeled as “incentivized reviews.”
I’m very skeptical about the design. Yes, it has a titanium head, but is that enough to justify its $79 sale price? Personally, I’d be much more inclined to buy a different high performance hammer for less money.
If you want the full benefits of a titanium hammer, this won’t deliver it. Based on the design, it can’t. Maybe a DIYer won’t be at risk of wearing out the strike face, but they also won’t see the same benefits as with a titanium-handled hammer.
I really don’t think the Hart Ti hammer is worth it. But I could be wrong. What’s your take on it?
Price: $79
Stiletto (a Milwaukee Tool brand) and Hart are both owned by TTI, but to my knowledge Stiletto is not at all involved in Hart tool development.
Thank you Leo for the tip!
Jared
That’s interesting – a “cheap” titanium hammer. Does seem like an odd mix though. There are plenty of high-quality hammers in or below that price range. I don’t think I would choose this either – unless maybe Toolguyd tested and endorsed it. 😉
Philip Proctor
Overpriced gimmick.
The Ami
Completely agree. Great buy if compressed air tools didn’t exist…….but they do.
IronWood
Absolutely not.
Bruce
I have no idea why anybody would want a titanium hammer. Weight is part of why you have a hammer. This is right on the bottom end of hammer weight, which means it really needs a long handle to be effective at driving nails. What do I gain from having a hammer head made of expensive materials? It’s not as durable as steel. It’s more expensive. It’s from Walmart, so it’s not like I’m buying the name. I suppose corrosion resistance is thing. I’d rather spend my money on a quality hammer at this price range that will still be driving nails when my grandkids need it.
Stuart
Generally, with respect to material properties, lower recoil and better vibration dampening. Titanium also aids in higher velocity strike designs.
https://toolguyd.com/high-velocity-hammer-theory/
https://toolguyd.com/a-look-at-titanium-and-titanium-like-hammer-marketing-claims/
Tim
I’m just gonna reply where ever this lands because left handed folks who scroll your site on Android the reply button is literally where you put your thumb.
Priot to TTI Hart made really good hammers.
Can’t see how it’d be that bad with Milwaukee and Stiletto being part of that company as well.
its_jake
Just putting it out there- a Ti hammer would be better than steel for dampened vibrations as it is more corrosion resistant.
As a bonus, it also damps vibrations better 😉
Cbh
The best thing that a Titanium hammer Can do for a carpenter is is make it easit is your to carry around when you’re not using it for it is lighter than A standard framentered framing hammer also also if you’re framing above your head like like in ceiling Joyce areas it is much less fatiguing.
MM
Do you know of any measurements that have been taken to verify the claims of “lower recoil” and “better dampening”? The damping factor of the alloy is not all we need to look at here, there is also the geometry of the hammer handle, the material it is made from (wood, fiberglass, integral to the head as 1 pc of metal), as well as whatever rubber grip may be present. But it would be very easy to put an accelerometer in the palm of a glove, hook it up to a data capture device with a computer, go drive some nails, and measure the real-world difference between different hammers.
Jerry
Hit an anvil with a steel hammer and feel the ‘bounce’. Do the same with a Ti hammer and you will see a notable difference.
MM
I’m not sure what the point of it is either. The purpose of a hammer is to have weight at the end of the handle.
I’ve heard the claim that Titanium hammers, by virtue of their longer length handle and lighter weight, allow for a “quicker swing” and are “less fatiguing” compared to a steel headed hammer….but I don’t buy that. One could easily make a steel-headed 14oz hammer with the same handle length and striking face diameter as this one. If such a light-weight long-handle design was preferable then why has it not been known before? It seems to me that people figured out the optimum design for a hammer over a century ago, and that Titanium hammers are a novelty product looking for a solution to a non-extant problem.
Titanium has a bit of a mystery to it, people seem to think it is some kind of super-material and that if something is made of Titanium it must be “better” even when there is really no purpose in using it. Case in point: when I had my machining business we made a lot of components for racing motorcycles, both in Aluminum and Titanium. For a handful of those parts the strength of Titanium mattered and we only offered a Ti version. For most of the parts we made both Al and Ti. The aluminum parts were both lighter and less expensive, so if anyone asked my advice that is what I would point them towards: lighter and cheaper is a win-win. But many times they wouldn’t listen and insisted on Ti even though the aluminum equivalent would honestly have been better for them. They didn’t really care about weight savings like a real racer would, they just wanted the bling.
Mike (the other one)
A lighter hammer can be swung faster, and deliver more energy to the nail. Lighter weight also means less fatigue.
There is a reason professional framers use titanium hammers.
MM
Swung faster? Sure. But that fact alone is meaningless. Deliver more energy to the nail? No, that’s fiction, the physics doesn’t back it up as Stuart covers well in his earlier topics he linked above.
I’m not in the construction trade so I couldn’t tell you what a pro framer uses, but if light-and-long is truly better it boggles my mind that carpenters didn’t figure this out a century ago.
Al
A little high-school physics helps explain.
Kinetic energy = one half of mass multiplied by the square of velocity
–or–
K.E = ½(mass) * (velocity)^2
You can reduce mass by 50%, increase velocity by 41.5% and get the same kinetic energy.
A 5-pound rock is the least efficient type of hammer. A 5-foot cable with a ball bearing attached is the most energy per swing…but least accurate.
Somewhere in the middle is a decent hammer that can be swung all day.
Longer handle means that the head velocity increases without the hand/arm going any faster. You need angular velocity for that.
To get that 41.5% increase in velocity, I don’t have to swing my arm faster. I can increase the radius (handle length) 41.5%.
Following the math, that should mean that a 11.5-inch hammer with a 20oz head could be replaced by an 16-1/4-inch hammer with a 10oz head. swinging at the same speed.
That might be too big of a jump. So, maybe reduce mass by 20%, increase handle length by 27%, increase velocity by 25%. You have a 14-5/8-inch handle with a 16oz head. And you only have to swing 25% faster to get the same energy.
If the new hammer reduces rebound compared to the old hammer, then it will impart more energy…so the swing doesn’t have to be as fast.
My math might bad. But, hopefully it makes sense.
Koko The Talking Ape
@AI
Maybe you want to look at our previous discussions, as MM suggests.
Kinetic energy alone isn’t the important consideration, nor is head speed. Angular momentum comes close.
Consider a spear-thrower or atlatl. It’s like an extension to your arm, and it allows you to throw a spear or dart much faster than with your bare arm. But why? Sure, your arm is longer, but now it has far less leverage (in direct proportion). Why can’t you just move your arm faster with it, since the resistance is less? The answer has to do with human biology, and isn’t reducible to simple F=mA calculations.
MM
@AI, I understand your math well as I am a Mechanical Engineer. The problem is that kinetic energy alone is meaningless here. See the earlier article that Stuart already wrote and linked above. Momentum comes closer but still doesn’t tell the whole story.
And calculations aside: old world craftsmen were not stupid. The standard patterns of tools for which ergonomics matter:
knives, hammers, axes, shotguns, scythes, etc, were worked out many decades ago. If a lighter, longer, hammer worked better than the traditional pattern surely our great-grandfathers would already have been using that kind of design as Titanium is not required for it. Now I will be the first to admit that ergonomics of a tool are a very personal thing, and some people prefer longer or shorter handles, heavier or lighter heads, and so on. We all have different body shapes so there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all hammer. I think that some people must prefer a lighter longer hammer simply because of statisical variation among people. But there is no scientific reason why it should be automatically superior in a general sense.
MM
@Koko
I saw a brilliant example of this on Youtube just the other day. A historical reenactor was experimenting with recreating medieval “war darts”–basically huge arrows that soldiers would throw like a javelin, or drop from the top of castles or a ship’s rigging. He had examples of them in paintings and they were mentioned in old records but no real ones survived to show how large they really were.
He built protoypes based on his experience and what the paintings looked like and then went to test them. He found that his throwing ability was miserable so he enlisted the help of an experienced javelin thrower to provide his feedback. And the feedback was very strange indeed: the expert said that had the darts been *heavier* he could have thrown them much farther. This is true because at a certain point the ability to move your arm becomes the limiting factor, not the mass of what you’re holding.
Consider how far and how hard you could throw a ping-pong ball versus a steel ballbearing of the same size.
Woody
Wasn’t available a century ago! My whole framing crew uses titanium hammers. Same reason Pro golfers use Titanium head drivers! Faster the swing, the greater the pact. Easy.
Norse
I prefer a Titanium hammer with a steel head. I bought a Martinez 2 1/2 years ago. It really is a game changer. I started my carpentry career with a 19 oz Vaughn hammer with a wood handle. It is still a very good hammer 22 years and hundreds of thousands of nails and all purpose bashing later. A friend of mine gave me an original Bob Hart titanium framer that he found in the trash. We assumed that it was mistakenly thrown away. After using it, I deemed it useful for only siding and trim. I call it my aluminum hammer because it hits so lightly. It swings fast and hits like a feather. Now the Martinez has become my favorite. My hands have become more sensitive to vibration over the years. As one who makes his living with his hands, the price is well worth the benefit.
GEO
Norse, now finally that is something that makes sense to me about this whole thing
Bobzero
I worked on a framing crew 30 years ago the boss only let you use a ridge framing ax. 28 oz with a longer handle than that commonly used steel hammer. Once used to it will sink 16 p with one swing. Oh reason? We were building houses, not hired to pull nails.
Pietro
14oz of Ti and 14oz of Iron is still same 14oz! I have steel 14oz hammer have used it for years. Steel has more toughness than Ti and is more durable. Unless corrosion is an issue or working in harsh enviroment like Hydrogen Sulfied; Ti hammer is wasting money!
Reason why proffesional framers use titanium = excelent sales man and ingnorace on metalurgy and mechanics.
John
Steel hammers will destroy your joints if you’re a framer. The difference in force felt to your elbow and shoulder with a titanium hammer (a real one, with a full titanium handle) is huge. That’s why professionals use them.
Kent
Companies HAVE made 14oz steel hammers to compete with the titanium hammers and in Canada are priced around $70. To make the hammer that light that have to weld the head to the shaft of the hammer, which if used properly will have no issues, but if you are say building concrete form work and you’re prying and hitting in all sorts of weird ways that welded connection can fail.
I’ve used the Stanley and Dewalt versions of this hammer for 8 years. I have with no recordable data tested these versions against heavier hammers and a stiletto titanium hammer and for a 10 hour a day 6 days a week hammer they hit one price, comfort and can do the task I need it to do.
I deal with bad hip pain so I have to take as much weight off of my belt as possible to reduce the wear and fatigue on my hip. I had considered the stiletto but the cost was a prohibitive factor for me and a 24-30oz hammer is out of the question.
dd
hip pain,eh? BTDT… with bakers dozen m/bike crashes[4 vs cars],falling from roofs,trees,horses…hips&knees shoulda been r&r 40 yrs ago! Rx is osteopathic manipulation! plus alkaline diet for this ret.mechanic…[FYI massage or chiropractic vs osteopathy is like checkers vs chess]…truly amazing therapy that covers nerves,lymph,fascia,organs,blood,spinal fluid et more…saved the right foot which looked like a bbq steak&10 yrs later rescued the entire right arm from amputation…in both instances never considered having the keystone cops /medicalmafia poison/butcher the body. cheers
Matthew
I love my titanium hammers. Swing harder but weighs less. Swing lighter with a heavier hammer. It’s amazing to have a 10 or 12 oz titanium hammer on your hip all day than a steel hammer.
JoeM
Nope.
neandrewthal
It’s not just a faster swing. They deliver equal nail driving power for less weight because Ti is less “springy.” A 5 pound rubber hammer is terrible at driving nails, despite having more weight. Same concept to a lesser degree when comparing steel to Ti.
Sean
I’m in my late 50s and have had multiple surgeries on my right arm giving me a hard time driving nails , hart hammers have been a god send the angle on the head and now Titanium can’t wait to order one . I own 2 stilettos which help but I still use the steel Hart when I have a lot of nails to drive
Steve
I dunno, bending and missing mails “faster” doesn’t seem like a great selling point the way I hammer.
Josh Walters
My .02
Titanium is worth it, it DOES transfer more force with less vibration than steel. Tests have proved it.
Now steel hammers are generally heavier anecdotally nothing drives 16p like a 28oz rigging axe. To get 28oz of titanium on a hammer the head would be the size of a sluggo.
Titanium also isn’t as hard so the milling wears out much faster.
Now I said earlier I think titanium is worth it, and here’s why. Titanium weighs less, less tear on the joints, less weight on my hips and in modern construction we just don’t hand drive 16s like the years of old. Nail guns do 99.99% of nailing on a house with the nail only coming out to drive the odd nail home.
HOWEVER. I wouldn’t buy this hammer. At this price I’d spend extra $20-30 on a stilleto or really up my game to a Martinez M1.
Kent
Excellent points. In 20 years of construction I’ve used a hammer so much more driving nails into concrete form work than framing, nail guns do the rest. I got out of commercial construction just when double headed nail gun for formwork came out.
Koko The Talking Ape
No steel face? I’d worry that the face would get marred and gouged, and then mar the workpiece (which matters in my work.)
These simple “physics” explanations of why a titanium hammer is better (or worse) never seem to die. Physically, it’s a complex situation. For one thing, the hammer is rotating, so “speed” should be “rotational velocity,” etc. For another, it doesn’t have a constant rotational velocity, it’s being accelerated by the arm. And there’s lots of biomechanics involved. And kinetic energy isn’t the critical measure, nor is impact speed. A BB travelling at 180 mph might have the same kinetic energy as a 16 oz. hammer travelling at 50 mph (and I did the math) but it won’t have the same effect on a nail. Why not? Might the same mechanism affect a lighter hammer somewhat? (And conversely, a 10 lb hammer at 5 mph won’t have the same effect either.) And anyway, you, a human being, can’t throw a BB at 180 mph. Why not? So maybe what matters is how much force is transferred to the NAIL. So is the collision elastic? Is it inelastic? A combination? Etc. And how much force ultimately can an arm deliver, and what’s the power curve, and maybe that’s what determines the design envelope?
Leo B.
Personally, I went with a Martinez M1. I tend to do a lot of remodeling and demo, and it seemed that I got the durability of a steel hammer with close to the ease on joints of a wood handle. The versatility and ability to carry one hammer that addressed a waffle face framing hammer, a smooth face framing hammer, and a rubber mallet in a compact package was worth it.
On a related note, the Hart hammer has a few similar features to the Martinez. Mostly, a side nail pull and angled strike face. Hart had hammers that featured those, and other features, before they were sold to Walmart. Just out of curiosity, who developed those features first? The claws on this particular hammer look extremely functional for grabbing lumber, but perhaps not quite as durable long term. Titanium might lend some strength to the claws, though. Someone more knowledgeable than me would have to weigh in on that. Overall, I think it’s good to have options!
Blocky
I have a 60+ year old Japanese metalsmithing hammer that has that slight downward rake to the face. I think this feature is centuries old. You see variations of that angular consideration in chasing hammers and axe handles from all over the world. Side nail pullers are more modern— not an easy feature to smith by hand. Catspaws and crowbars performed hi leverage duty.
MM
It’s at least 150 years old. I have some copies of old tool and knife catalogs from makers in Sheffield England in the mid 19th century. There are blacksmith’s and silversmith’s hammers with faces angled like that. There are also wooden mallets with angled faces meant for driving chisels.
OldDominionDIYer
As a DIYer I’m not willing to spend for a top-of-the-line Titanium hammer, and because I don’t do construction for a living, I doubt I could ever realize any real gains from it. I can certainly see how those who swing a hammer for a living would migrate to a faster strike, less vibrating hammer, seems better for arm health longevity for sure. I have to agree with Stuart here, the Hart Hammer appears to be not worth it. Plenty of key words but looks to be a poor execution.
Bob
No I would not buy this hammer. It’s a cheap brand with cheap quality and cheap pricing.
No I would probably not buy ANY titanium hammers.
I’ve asked this question before. Who actually swings a hammer all day every day anymore? Everybody I know uses a nailing gun. The only time you use a hammer is to line up framing sink the odd nail that doesn’t go in all the way or maybe tack something. For that amount of use a very cheap hammer will do just fine for a very very long time.
I can see somebody buying a expensive premium hammer as a status symbol, an appreciater of find tools, or as a gift.
I was given a nice stiletto to use when I was the new guy on a framing crew. We didn’t have enough airguns and as the new guy I had to make do with manpower lol. That hammer probably saved my elbow from falling off. So no argument the fancy hammers are leaps and bounds ahead of the run-of-the-mill stuff but doesn’t make a good business case due to lack of use in todays work environment.
Leo B.
Concrete form carpenters and scaffolders swing their hammers all day and benefit immensely from lessened vibration. I swing one very often in remodeling, hitting bars, demoing tile, hand-nailing where I just need a few nails, knocking things around, etc. Straight all day hand-nailing is likely not that common anymore outside of formwork and post frames, but high hammer use definitely is.
I actually do it
If you were actually a framer you would use your hammer most of the day. Let me guess, you also use a curved handle? Lol.
Say if you set trusses and deck a roof each day, you will use hammer for riding peak nailing 30″ blocks, all truss strap nails while the crane swings next truss as it is to slow/unproductive to carry a nail gun on wall. Hammer is also used to drop sheets on roof deck, pin with 3 hand drives and that is why pros use straight long handles. In reality dragging a nail gun around for many applications just hinders production. Obviously nail guns are still used a lot but hammers are not obsolete in the framing process.
When 4 guys complete a roof lid each day, titanium hammers make a difference on joints of arm and less fatigue on hips from the tool bags. Weight really matters when your bags have full box of ply clips, lots of 8/16 nail racks, hand drive nails plus all the needed tools. The speed of titanium hammer really matters when nailing hip buckets and lintel straps.
People need to understand that your average remodel guy is not the same caliber as a actually high production carpenter. And because of this misunderstanding, tool companies have stopped making tools for professional carpenters and are catering to only the wannabee.
So frustrating you can’t get quality tools anymore. Even stilleto hammers are no where as durable as they were 20 years ago. The whole construction industry has lost its integrity and skilled labor.
Koko The Talking Ape
I guess you’re just talking about the advantages of lower weight, right?
So why not use a lighter steel hammer? I’m not arguing, just curious. I don’t do that kind of work.
Timothy
IMO it’s less about the materials and more about excellent design (materials as an element). That is why Martinez and Stiletto are top tier.
Blocky
A couple years ago, I bought a 14oz stiletto (that this appears based upon) for the same price of $79. It replaced a 20oz fat max steel Antivibe that had a real weight of 32oz. The anti vibration of the titanium is in fact significantly better. The geometry of those two hammers is identical with respect to hand position and strike face. The titanium hits fine and does not pull down my pants.
I’m sure this is a fine standard hammer, but in the current market, there’s little to push this hammer forward at this price. I suppose this is the cheapest side pull on the market, but a catspaw would be a better investment. This feature is mostly a bottle opener.
GEORGE MICHENER
What comes to mind for me on this is the old question ” whats heavier a pound of rocks or a pound of feathers ?”
Gary Greene
I have (2) 20 yr. or so old Stilettos. Love them both, though I use the large one far more frequently. They’ve saved me a lot of personal wear and tear. Two of the best tools I ever bought.
Davethetool
I forgot about Hart Hammers being sold at Home Depot until your mention in the article! Just the fact that they mention this is a nice addition to the DIYers lineup sounds off. I don’t know any DIYers that would spend $79 for a hammer including myself. Professionals yes as this is a main tool of the trade in many industries. Not sure what Hart was thinking with this tool.
Frank D
$80 for a hammer at Walmart …
Are they trying to get wives to divorce their husbands?
/ eyeroll $80 hammer at Walmart.
John Doak
We thought about getting a titanium pry bar, from Russia years ago, as they made this sort of thing for less money but not for a hammer!
Mainly you want weight to drive a nail, and as steel is HEAVIER than titanium per unit volume and way, WAY cheaper, and a perfectly good carpenters hammer can be had a garage sales for a couple of bucks, I figure steel is the way to go.
No nail I EVER met was insulted cuz I whacked him with a steel hammer!
ALSO. just think, you are so proud of your new TI hammer, and
EVERYONE loves it….. so suddenly it disappears one day.
Know the feeling?
Why pay MORE to suffer more pain?
MFC
It’s got a ton of 4-5 star reviews so it has to be good!
I love the incentivized good reviews on things. They send it out to johnny homemaker and of course get a good review, cuz it was free and it’s cool and they want more free stuff.
King duck
I don’t know how much hammers are even used anymore in framing I know I built a 36×80 garage and only remember using it to drive a cats claw in for nail pulling. I can’t really see people that have a need or desire for a tool like this buying it at Walmart though
Brad
I’ve scoured academic and industrial research related to hammer materials, and come to believe that Titanium is indeed the way to go. I’m also extremely guilty of spending extra for pro-quality tools for occasional household use. But no, I’m not going to buy this hammer. If I want another heirloom-quality hammer to replace my American-made Estwings, I’ll go with a Martinez or one of Stiletto’s American-made models.
Koko The Talking Ape
Can you say why? If you have extremely technical details, I’m fine with that.
Kenny
Get rid of the gimmicky nail starter… Or if you’re absolutely set on including one, put it at the bottom. I use the top section of my hammer in tight places. More that I would every use a magnetic nail starter.
Milo Rudge
Surely if the hammer weighs 14 ozs, that is the weight of the hammer? If its lighter than a steel hammer, its lighter, so it cant be 14 ozs.!
MM
Hammer weights are typically the weights of the head. So a 14oz hammer has a head weighing 14oz and the whole hammer will weigh more than that because of the added weight of the handle. But yes, a 14oz steel hammer would weight the same as a 14oz titanium one.
The reason why people call the Titanium hammers lightweight is because they’re being compared to a heavier steel hammer. I.e. people will compare a 15-oz Stiletto Ti-Bone titanium hammer vs. a 23oz Vaughan California Framer (steel head)
Gary
Form and scoffolding carpenters swing hammers all day. To say that no one uses a hammer any more just shows , that you have very little real world experience.
As for the cost? Why do some posters care how much pro carpenters spend on thier tools? Why are thier panties in a bind when a $200 tibone hammer comes to the market? Is it because they can’t afford it?
Not all of us are working for min wage. Most pros , union or nonunion, at the top of thier game , make more then a lot of college students, with master degrees. Plus as a carpenter, we can build anything, fix any problem, and in the rare instance, we come across a problem, that we never delt with before, we as a trade have the knowledge and skills to figure it out and make it happen.
Chazferret
Since I’ve collected framing hammers for almost 30 years, I’m kind of considered person that has an opinion.
When you see the hammer in person you almost think it came from the toy section.
The over strike protection and the side nail puller I think are good features to have on a reasonable priced hammer.
The curve of the handle has a natural feel, it looks exactly like the Woody handle after Hart had to give up the Douglas design.
I was sad that there is no milled face version but milled face titanium wears is out pretty quick!
They should’ve made the nail holder so that it could handle duplex nails!
The design thing only sold by Walmart doesn’t stand a chance which is why I’m sure the price rollback has happened. After they roll it back some more I’m gonna buy a couple because I’m sure they’ll be gone forever!
erik bender
The point of titanium is the massive advantage it has over steel. Titanium hammers are more efficient than steel at transferring energy. In fact, a titanium hammer transfers up to 97 percent of energy to a nail (or other striking surfaces), whereas steel transfers about 70 percent.
Joaquin Chanyan
I actually own this hammer and I have to say it’s decent to say the least. I took it to a job where I had to work in a crawl space to reinforce a post that supported a beam above. In addition to driving strong tie screws, I had to add some hangers with tico nails and this Hart did the job. Not the greatest, but I thought it was cute and all to carry this Walmart hammer with me. I do like the flat top at the head rather than the traditional round head making it perfect for driving nails in tighter corners. This did raise my curiosity to try Stiletto and I thought it was alright…Gave it to my dad lol. I will still with the Hart in the mean time. I do, however, also own the Dalluge Titanium Hammer, which I haven’t touched. Only reason why I got it because Scott Brown said it was good and all…it’s alright. Dalluge hammer is cheaper than the Stiletto Tibone, so that’s a good thing.