Re-handling Mr Lumpy

Mr Lumpy is my lump hammer. I have had Mr Lumpy a long time, and I’m not even sure where he came from. He is the perfect tool for delivering hard blows, and I particularly favour him for hitting my name stamp. But Mr Lumpy had a big problem. The head was loose. Not about to fly off, but you could wiggle it back and forth quite a bit, which makes it hard to really deliver a solid strike.

What follows is economically insane. It would have been far cheaper and quicker to simply buy a new lump hammer. But Mr Lumpy has been around for a while. I’m fond of him.

I started off just intending to re-handle, which would have been sane. But once I had the handle off, I thought… maybe Mr Lumpy could do with a bit of a clean-up. So I would up smoothing and polishing the faces and repainting him. The can of spray paint alone probably would have paid for a new lump hammer.

If you want to see how I re-handled and cleaned him up. Check out the photos below.

Here we see Mr Lumpy with his old handle removed. The head probably came loose in the hands of a previous owner, as it was wedged with 5 different nails. Probably the result of repeated attempts to tighten it, as every nail was different.

I had to dig out the wood with a chisel so I could lever the old nails out.

After a wire wheeling to get rid of rust and loose paint.

Sadly I did not think to get photos, but I did a lot of work on the faces. I start off filing, then switched to sand paper. The faces were badly cratered. Eventually I used my Worksharp and a CBN wheel to smooth them out. Then back to sand paper and up the grits. And finally a polish, first with Autosol and then chrome oxide. Its not a mirror finish, given it will pick up scratches in use quickly there is no point. But its a lot prettier than the starting point.

Then time for a new handle. I grabbed a chunk of beech, and went to work on it. I bought a Gramercy spoon makers drawknife over the summer, and this was the perfect chance to put it to work. Its a small mini draw knife. It comes usably sharp out of the box. Its nimble, its perfect for work like this when you want relatively few huge deep cuts. I found it a pleasure to carve out my handle with it.

Once I was happy with the size and shape, I refined it a little with scrapers and sand paper. Gave it some oil, then shellac and a little wax. And given the name stamp started all of this, I stamped it too.

The head got masked off and repainted with Rustoleum spray paint. 2 coats did a great job, and I think the hammered finish looks good.

Time to put the head on the new handle. One big problem. While showing the work in progress to Andy brown one evening. He pointed out that I had the head on the handle upside down… Not the end of the world, buts its not a straight or symmetrical hole in there. Now the tenon was a lot smaller than the head. One way to fix that. More wedges… Lots more wedges. I sawed 4 kerfs into the tenon. One horizontal, One vertical, and then two more on either side. The first horizontal wedge goes in normally, then take a chisel and open it up to allow the second to make it into its kerf. Then repeat for the next two. The wedges had a little PVA glue on them. And the two side wedges did not make it in very deep before breaking, but the tenon spread nicely which is the important thing. Given I had just painted the head, I masked everything off before removing the excess.

In with the flush cut saw to trim the excess

And now it looks quite neat. I little cleaning up with a chisel and some sandpaper.

A little oil and shellac

Now it looks pretty, and it is solid as a rock, no more wiggle.

Mr Lump is now a much prettier tool, and after some experimental walloping, I can confirm he is a much more useful tool too.