A quick guide to the hammers in my Toolbox
There are some hammers that I've found useful when sinking pans by hand. For well over 20 years I sunk and built pans by hand. Without doubt it was a great foundation for learning the intricacies of pan shape and geometry, but it is also the slow and physically demanding way to do it. There is no way I will ever make a pan by hand again.
If you're serious about building pans in the long term, you're ultimately going to want to invest in air hammers, a foot pedal, and a compressor, and I'll cover that in a separate post.
Sinking Hammers
I've used the two hammers shown here to sink many pans. I bought the green one in South Africa when I started making pans in 1983. I like it because there is plenty of clearance for my knuckles between the handle and the actual pan surface. I took that hammer to Trinidad in '93 and brought it with me to the USA in 2000.
The one with the blue tape I purchased in about 2010 when I started my own company here in the USA, before I acquired my air hammers and compressor.
The green one is about 4lbs and the other one is about 6lbs.
The closeup of the 4lb hammer shows how rounded the sinking end is. It didn't get this way through using it - I took an angle grinder and smoothed it off. When you buy a sledge hammer from a store it generally comes with some pretty hard edges on it which will cut the pan when you try and sink it (ask me how I know...). It's important to round the sinking end as uniformly as possible. Essentially, imagine a sphere with the diameter of the length of the hammer head, and work one end to that shape. It is useful to keep the other end relatively flat for smoothing, but you still need to round off the sharp edges.
I find it useful to sometimes wrap the end of the hammer in masking tape after it has been smoothed off, as a kind of insurance policy against cutting the drum.
The handles are cut short enough that they will fit inside the bowl of a lead pan, but still long enough that I can grip them.
The 4lb hammer has self-adhesive weather stripping wrapped around the handle; the 6lb hammer has a long strip of 1" x 1/2" foam wrapped around the handle and held in place with duct tape. I find it useful to cushion my hands against the shock from the hammer striking the pan.
Shot Puts
Shot puts can be an efficient way to achieve the initial sink on a pan. The rounded shape means that they do a lot of stretching of the steel when you use them. I've used a 6lb shot put as a sinking hammer - both with a handle welded to it and also "free style" where I just bounced it off the surface. You can see examples of this in the Youtube video about Pan Making in South Africa in the 90's at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0X_G84HOA4
If you're going to try "freestyle" then please wear gloves and be very careful. Don't try and catch it if you fumble it - getting a finger caught between the pan surface and the shot put is no joke and it could split your finger open (it took 6 months before I could play guitar again).
I've welded handles on few shotputs here in the USA. It seems that the ones that are available are basically a plastic center with a metal casing and there's not much for the weld to grip on to.
If you buy a shotput you're likely to need to smooth it off with either coarse sand paper or an angle grinder. Wrap it in masking tape before you use it.
Smoothing Hammers
Most hammers you buy at a hardware store are made from pretty low-grade "steel" that's about one step above pig-iron and is pretty malleable. If you hammer nails into a wall with most hammers, the nail will affect the shape of the hammer face.
This means that when you spend time getting a hammer face "just right", there's a point at which the debris in the drum and other factors (such as dropping it) will change the shape of that perfect hammer face. This is frustrating as it is a non-trivial exercise to really get a hammer into the exact shape that's needed.
And so, my smoothing hammer is made out of heat treated A1 tool steel. It has never needed any touching up on the hammer face since it was new in 2002. On the other hand, it cost around $ 500.00 to make in terms of time, labor, material, chrome etc. When I left Panyard I bought the hammer from them and took it with me.
There is no substitute for using a hammer like this in the final phase of making a pan. You get a really close up and intimate knowledge of the shape of the pan, and I use to this to do the final tweaks in shape on a drum before it is ready for burning and tuning.
Grooving Hammer and Punch
Do not use your 24oz prep hammer for grooving as the punch will ruin the face of the hammer!
I use a basic 1/4" metal punch for grooving, with the end slightly rounded. If it is too flat then it will make a cut into the steel and the pan is prone to tear when you smooth the groove out. The punch is inside a latex rubber sleeve which makes it easier to hold.
I use a 24oz ballpeen hammer for grooving, with the handle cut down.
Metal Prep Hammers
I mostly use two small ball-peen hammers when I am prepping pans. These are useful for getting around the back of notes near the rim, for example, or for smoothing out steel in between notes in the middle of the pan.
The faces of these hammers take some time to prepare - its not possible to just use them "off the shelf". I frequently have the ends wrapped in masking tape to ensure that I don't get grit in the faces of the hammers and mess up the shapes.
Plastic Hammers
I'm a big fan of the Vaughn/Thor/Thorex nylon hammers. I have them in various sizes from the 1" up to the 3". I use the larger ones for tuning basses and cellos.
I've left the handles full length on the bigger ones since I need to reach all the way down into bass pans sometimes when I'm tuning them.
I use the 1 1/2" one extensively for smoothing/prepping pans. I made an adapter for my air hammers so that I can use this tip on the smaller air hammers for shaping and initial prep work.
I've removed the handle from one of them as it is useful to use the 1" hammer as a tool for defining the boundary of a note like a punch or wedge.
The tips for these hammers can be replaced; and they generally don't need much work done on them when you buy them - you can use them pretty much right out the gate.
I purchase these from Hammer Source (https://hammersource.com/)
(Note - I don't have any kind of deal with these guys. They're just a reliable source of hammers for me)