this has happened to me, I had a hammer face chip off and the chip went into my finger. i have the scar to prove it and the hammer.

That's probably one of those "One in a million" defective hammers. A small abberation in the metal at the time of manufacture could cause something like that.

It appeared to me that the show proved the hammers would not do what yours did if it did not have a defect.

The same thing happened to my husband, while hitting the hammer end of an axe with another hammer. The metal fragment is still imbedded in his calf.

I had a similar experience. A buddy of mine and I foolishly hit hammers together and a small shard of metal went into my hand. I also have a scar to prove it.

what if the hammer is hit in an angled surface? Will that do any more damage?

Ok, just saw the myths revisited episode where they slammed the hammer into an anvil. I'm a blacksmith, so when I saw how they conducted that particular experiment, I literally threw stuff at my TV. On the first hit, the hammer cracked visibly. Now, instead of realizing they were on to something, the mythterns simply cranked up the power and hit it once more. Ooooh, myth busted eh? I don't know about you, but when I use a hammer I don't hit once, then check the hammer over, then hit again and call it a day. That hammer would be used over and over again, which would enlarge the crack they caused on the first hit, and eventually cause catastrophic failure of said hammer. It's not going to do it in a single hit. Stress fractures will occur and remain unnoticed. As the hammer is used, those fractures will increase in size and finally split the head.

That was honestly one of the shoddiest experiments I've ever seen on this show. Guess that one shouldn't have been left to the interns.

I feel that you still have not did this one right. I think you need to have the hammers strike each other lightly over a long period of time, and not at full striking strength. I still think this is very possible. I would like to see you revisit this one more time.

While installing U-joints, I made the mistake of hitting the ball end of a ball-peen hammer with the face of another similar hammer. The result was a nice scar on my side from the ball end shattering the face of the other hammer.

The Mythbusters also haven't tried sandwitching a hammer in between an anvil and another hammer striking it, you know, like you would get if you wedged a hammer against a stationary object and used another hammer to hit it. Maybe with the way they're testing it, the force of the hit isn't going into the hammer, but through it instead, which is causing the neck to fail instead of the head to explode.

I work for morton buildings, and when we have to "reroof" a building we have to pull nails in coraggated steel. We use two hammers striking the face together hurdreds even thousands of times. We leave one hammer stationary and the other we swing. The hammer heads do chip and fly into your arm, leg and face with ever way the fly. We use everyday "estwing" hammers. I have probaly a half dozon of these hammers to prove that this does acurre. I believe it is the number of times you strike it, not how hard!

ok i know for sure that a maul and a wedge may explode i was at a friends house and he was splitting wood with with a maul and wedge a small chunk of the wedge broke off and hit me in the arm a have a scar from it i wasnt sure what happened at first but it burning my skin then i knew what it was i have been shot before but that felt like i have been i have the guy that was swinging the mall the guys father and another guy that was there to prove it and a scar

i dont think metal chips are considered an "Explosion" now if somthing explosive or flammable got on one of the hammers it would explode. i think maybe it happened and mabe thats how.

sorry have not been shot before but that is exactly what i thought it would feel like

i am a carpenter of al the stories on your board the only one i belive is the one i wrote you i have use the same hammer striking other hammers and nails for the past 5 years so i dont believe that is the amount of strikes you make i believe it is the force maybe with two regular hammers in is not possible but with with two mauls the weight and ther striking punch it may be possible
myth buster you rock i have seen every episode atleast 10 times later

if you use super human strength think of it as pounding a hammer as many as xxx times you use 2 times as many strength is hitting the hammer 2 times

There are certain key elements that you have to be missing. I know because i have the metal still in my arm to prove it.

Around 1970 i was building a house in Hawai'i. I was using standard case hardened hammers to remove the bands from a stack of roof trusses, using one hammer to hit the head of the other to force the claw under the band to where we could break it off. (These hammers were not antique, in fact they were not really very old.) The first clue that something was wrong was bloood spurting from my left arm. I felt like i had been shot and found later that i had severed a vein. I was taken to a medical clinic, where they decided to leave the fragment in my arm rather than risk nerve damage in trying to remove it. Later when i went back and looked at the hammer, it had a piece missing from one edge close to the size of a 22 slug.

I am only guessing but i think that where you are missing the potential to see this happen in your tests is you repeated efforts to strike the two hammer heads straight on, which is very likely to distribute the force of the strike as evenly as possible. In real applications such as mine, while we would try to hit as solidly as possible, the odds of striking a glancing blow of center to edge or edge to edge are highly likely.

I have to admit that you did acknowledge the chance of chips coming off, but i feel it was done in such an after-the-fact joking way, that the serious danger is lost. If people don't believe that hammer strikes can break off chips or shards and propel them at dangerously high velocity, they should X-ray my arm.

Just posted Subject: revisited myths...

Yep those swinging hammers were a joke the first time and still a joke the second time around. 33 years in heavy construction has taught me about chipping metal from hammers and chisels.

The way they tried to heat treat the hammer head also was a joke. Was the bucket full of cold water ? ? You need to leave it in the bucket till the hammer is cool, to cool it rapidly. The speed in which it is cooled determines how hard the carbon steel will be. If additives are added to the water, the temper is changed. To make a usable temper you polish a small spot to bare metal and heat it till it turns blue and quench again. The final temper depends on what temperatures you heat the metal to and its carbon content.

Hey guys use the internet, Google would help.

Still have metal in me too.

bdpf

@talisman77
"That's probably one of those "One in a million" defective hammers. A small abberation in the metal at the time of manufacture could cause something like that.

It appeared to me that the show proved the hammers would not do what yours did if it did not have a defect."

I have to disagree with you, very strongly. Maybe you should talk to someone who got a metal chip from a hammer in their eye.
Look at the safety warnings on the hammers.
"Wear eye protecti0on!"

Gee I wonder why they put the warning on the hammer? ??? <Grin>
One question talisman77, how long have you used a hammer in a heavy construction job?

Please know what you talking about when you post. <Tinny Flame>

ok I have seen and heard alot about this one. I witnessed a event the caused a hammer to chip and have been able to duplicate the event. The Hammers in question were being used to dismantle a pallet. One of the hammers was a regular hammer the other was a framing hammer with the checker face you know the one that leaves little dents in the wood. The small protrusions were bent almost flat and then one chipped off and to this day is inbeded in my coworkers face. It is kinda cool that he can now move his face with a magnet.

There are a few problems with the rigs they used the first time, and except for the last rig this second time, there were problems with the rigs this time. When using a hammer, the entire driving force is in the head of the hammer, not behind the handle. It is the momentum of the head that drives a nail. In theory, no matter how hard you swing the hammer, the handle should not break, because the little amount of force in the handle is absorbed by the bending of the wrist.
The rig used in the show puts force behind the handles, which makes the maximum force on the head of the hammer the same as the breaking or bending point of the handle. To alleviate this, they need a rig in which the hammers are independant from the pneumatic arms, such as being attached to hinges at the end of the arms. As the arms swing, the hammerheads gain momentum. Then, near the meeting point, something should stop the arms. The hammer then continue swinging, thank to the hinges, and the only driving force is the momentum of the heads. When they contact, it is their own driving momentum, and the force of the impact will be much greater than before as it is not limited by the breaking point of the handle.
Another factor is the way in which the hammers hit. While the mythbusters are going for a perfectly flush and even face to face hit, that isnt' going to happen in real life. The less contact is made, the higher the chance of the hammer chipping or shattering.


As a side note, while some friends and I were resurfacing a deck, my friend Brendan was hitting the two hammer faces together to get the claw under a nail. The two faces hit unevenly, the easiest was to describe it would be like a venn diagram, the circles being like the hammer faces. When the hammers hit, one of them broke into three pieces, one very large piece, almost the entire area of impact, and two smaller shards. One of the shards was embedded into Brendan's bicep, and actually required minor surgery to remove. The hammers were also NOT old hammers, they were most likely purchased more recently than 1995.