Worried about your RADIOACTIVE bolting/peg hammer?
JUST JOKING ABOUT THE RADIOACTIVITY!
BIG WALL HAMMERS
BUT SERIOUSLY, YOU notice that the wooden handle has some cracks in it within the head. Is this a reason for concern as after all this is not a hammer where you can simply lose a head mid pitch and this is going to be ok. Well rest assured, these heads are designed not to accidentally part company with the shaft for that very reason!
Firstly, let me explain how a bolting/peg hammer differs from your regular hardware hammer. (BTW we are talking about traditional bolting hammers which have a wooden shaft- natures composite!).
Unlike a regular ball peen hammer or carpenter's claw hammer, where the head is secured to the shaft, via at least one steel (or sometimes wooden) wedge smashed into the end of the shaft and hence spreading the shaft ever so much in order to provide a tight frictional fit (sometimes some sort of epoxy may also be utilized); a BOLTING PEG, PITON hammer, specifically designed to manually drill holes (via belting the daylights out of a SDS drill bit or self drilling anchors) into rock, usually but not always while one is suspended only by a 10mm or even less diameter rope, at height, these hammer heads can not fail due to obvious reasons; features a different design.
First, let me tell you a short story:
Some years back three of us were setting a new climbing route. This route required no bolts to be set during the entire climb, however at the summit if you like, there was, believe it or not, ZERO placements to be found and of the one possible (dodgy) placement required me to leave behind a newly purchased large Black Diamond Camelot!
I was not willing to do this (we nearly had an argument) and besides that, it was not enough protection for 3 adult males to be be rapping off a cliff face of more than 50m! Out with our bolting kit to save the day!
So, what did it comprise of? One hardware store, slightly modified ball peen hammer (it had it's handle drilled to accept a lanyard- no sense in dropping that hammer, and a small bag of Petzl self drilling anchors and of course the Petzl drill holder itself! Now as to the rock, it was of course some indestructible igneous stuff manufactured from the interior of the earth to resist weathering for the next several million years- in other words, damn hard stuff!
So after each one of us took turns to spend approximately 40 minutes per hole- that's right 40 minutes!, we placed three high tensile bolts into those perfectly flush anchors, tied sacrificial tape to them, via larks heads and ever so super carefully rapped off that cliff. Yes indeed the bolting kit saved maybe a day or more hiking in virgin Australian bush back to the car.
I guess those are the things you do when you are mad about finding and setting new climbing routes!
So what as wrong if anything with what we did? The type of hammer, was our weakest link because that sort of hammer is not meant for any task where failure in not an option. If for example, the head popped, then we would have been faced with a very very difficult bush bash (that's being nice) to get back to the car through almost non navigable terrain. Lesson which was learnt on that day was don't scab on a proper caving bolting pegging piton, whatever you want to call it hammer, as hardware hammers are not meant for these kinds of activities ( oh I forgot to mention canyoning as well- for new routes).
Now let's address any concerns you may have over the above hammer head fixture. We can see ( shown by green arrows) that there are 2 small cracks in the wood. Let me tell you that those cracks were present at the time of purchase and they have zero effect on the integrity of the actual head on the shaft. WHY? Because these types of heads are fixed via two right angled plates via a peened brass pin securing the head to the shaft which prevents the head from coming off the shaft no matter what. In the above image, one can clearly see where these "brackets" if you like fold over part of the hammer head (top and bottom of the image).
Now like many climbers and or people into extreme sports- I'll just talk about climbers here, there is some value I believe for psychological protection (not to be confused with any other sorts of "protection") and if you are one of those climbers (for the knife guys and gals, here it is equivalent to taking 2 knives out with you on adventures (just incase LOL!) then you can do the following to your hammer head if you have something similar:
Impregnate (for want of a better word) the shaft with either PVA**, ie wood glue, or more permanently but will make replacing the shaft in the really worst case scenario, use epoxy resin to do the same. If this makes you feel better. it's NOT necessary, LOL but I did it despite having belted the daylights out of this hammer with zero effect upon it's integrity.
This particular hammer, a KONG EAGLE, made in Italy (no longer in production*) and designed based upon the famous or Super hero of rock climbing JIM BRIDWELL.
What one doesn't want to do is to belt the following part of you hammer, which can damage it, because while it is indeed (this hammer) as tough as Thor's hammer, unlike Thor's hammer, is not quite indestructible! So don't use these hammers when you are tired because this will happen (when I lent it to a mate). (see image directly below).
Where they accidentally belted the top of the shaft (using wild uncontrolled blows) . It was remedied by my son asked him to return the hammer to be shown what not to do LOL. No bad blood was forthcoming.
The mighty (THOR)- just joking; KONG Big wall hammer (made in Italy- sadly no longer in production) , AKA the "KONG EAGLE", a heavy but not too heavy >800 gram hammer capable of almost ALL aid climbing, canyoning, and caving tasks. A design based upon Jim Bridwell. Also doubles as a super heavy duty bashing hammer for crazy geological adventures ie bashing cold chisels etc. (note it is NOT a substitute for a proper geology pick!)@BushCampingTools
* there are lighter hammers and ones also made from one piece of steel plus the good old battery powered drills for holes but a hammer is still needed for pacing pitons and bashies (malleable metal aid gear)
** PVA is NOT waterproof
and the consequences should be obvious. So of the hammer is to be used underground........ that PVA will be affected, again with this type of head design, it will have little bearing upon it's integrity on the shaft.
