Steel vs Titanium framing hammer

[ohiofarmer 3,432]

    I have been around nailing with hammers all my life. After baling hay and cutting tobbacco  in junior high and that kind of sweaty work, My brother and I were asked to work for a contractor my freshman year in high school. It was so long ago that the lumber was thicker and wider by 1/8th inch.   All the nails came in fifty pound boxes and worse than that was having to pound lead head nails through roofing. If the nail slipped off the rib of the metal your thumb looked like a war zone.  Then we built a 300x40 chicken house and had to nail coated ceilings on that thing.  It was a baptisim of pain but still better than baling hay. The weapon of choice was a plumb sixteen ounce wood handle curve claw.  Hammers then were pretty much plumb and Estwing plus whichever company made them for Sears. We drove six inch pole barn spikes with them but I did borrow a hatchet from Dad once or twice.

   Now we come to today. We see stilleto, Milwaukee, pittsburg and doyle from Harbor freight Klein and on and on. then I see the experts telling us all about swinging a 28 ounce estwing as his first hammer and now swinging another big headed hammer except that its titanium and weighs half as much. The funny thing is, most of these guys are choking up on the handle and have no more power in their swing than I do with a little sixteen. They choke up and have to grip it tightly to keep it from slipping while I sort of snap my wrist and let the bell end of the hammer rotate.  My hands are painful from many things  but hammer work is not one of them . I did buy a 24 ounce Pittsburg on deep discount for under ten dollars and immediately set to work on it cutting off the meat tenderizer waffle end. If you square your body up to the nail so it hits squarely there just is no need for those ugly marks left by the rough  face.. 

     Three hundred dollars plus is not leaving my pocket for some hammer recommended by some guy who has already wrecked his elbow and wrist by showing his buddies that his is longer and fatter than theirs. Hammers are sold by the ounces the head weighs. Add a heavy steel or fiberglass handle and my question is , Did you guys ever think that you are lifting it back up for the next swing? Also has anyone else ever stood behind a nail gun? i see three uses for the nail hammer . Setting sheathing nails on a plywood deck, Setting the first nail on a wall stud , and for the big heavy Estwing, doing form work and swinging from the waist like Larry Haun using that beast like a golf club . Setting rafters and trusses up high is pretty much the always better with just a hammer.

      Those just happen to be my opinions and I am sure that there is the rare exception of a guy who can handle the big stuff as easily as I handle a sixteen or a twenty ounce. I am thinking about a Klein square face but mostly just because i need a new twenty ounce and i am sure that it will be modified to suit my style.

     There's my rant and i would be interested to your opinions. FYI, the Doyle titanium 14 ounce will go on saleJjune the first at 30% off the normal price of eighty dollars.I will probably pick one up just to examine it and beat on some oak and possibly return it . Doyle is harbor Freight

[Skwerl58 827]

Interesting topic. I have used a wood handled framing hammer that my Grandpa used when he made mirror boxes for a local company in the 60-70's. I bought a Kobalt framing hammer with a padded steel handle for my tool box about 5 years ago. Grandpa's is probably a 16 oz and the Kobalt is a little heavier. If I go to build something I grab the old one and throw it in my box with the newer one. One of the things I enjoy doing is re-handling tools so I pick them up at flea markets and yard sales.

[Beap52 2,283]

16 oz Estwing was my go-to 30 years of driving nails.  I'm not a big guy--150# most of my working years.  I bought a Stiletto upon recommendation of a fellow--never used it enough to get my monies worth.  The old man I learned the trade from starting in 1971, used a 13 oz hammer--I think fiberglass maybe wood handle. 

 

He also preferred wooden folding rule to retractable tape measurers.  He folding rule had a brass slide on each end--something that was pretty rare I suppose.  It's not that he didn't ever use  retractable tape measures, he just like the folding rule and believed that  retractable  rules were as accurate--because the hook on the end moved.  There was no use to try to convince him it was suppose to move. . Hand saws were also always on a job site.  His hand saws were sharpened to where they had points like key hole saws.  He made me cut all of the doors in a house (to clear carpet) with hand saw so I'd learn how to use one.  

 

We laid wood shingles in the early '70's on the upscale homes the old man was building .  Our roofing hatchets were light weight compared to the roofing hatchets I've seen in past years.  I actually had two roofing hatchets.  One had a hatchet so a person could trim wood shingles to fit and the other had the replaceable hook blade for asphalt roofing.   We were never allowed to use air nailers on roofs.  The Densil, the old man, claimed you didn't have the control of setting the nail right in a shingle with nail guns.  So we hand nailed.  The waffling on the roofing hammer faces is all worn smooth on my hammers.

 

 

[rjg854 13,067]

The only hammer I ever used in all my years as a carpenter was my dad's 20 oz. Estwing.  He had complete sets of the leather handled ones and the plastic/rubber types. I still have many of them but divided some up with the brothers after dad died.

[ohiofarmer 3,432]

On 5/27/2026 at 9:53 AM, rjg854 said:

The only hammer I ever used in all my years as a carpenter was my dad's 20 oz. Estwing.  He had complete sets of the leather handled ones and the plastic/rubber types. I still have many of them but divided some up with the brothers after dad died.

 

     I really liked my leather handled 16 ounce curved claw. it felt a good bit lighter than my other sixteens.  It got lost or grew legs..  

[ohiofarmer 3,432]

I bought a really nice hammer at Menards and here is why. 

1. The handle makes the hammer. A tightly hung hammer will not let the head loosen and the one I bought to modify at Harbor freight is loose on the bottom of the hammer eye. its gonna take some Jb weld to tighten it up. The Menards hammer has a proper axe style handle with properly oriented grain in the hickory 17.5 inches and at 21 ounces still a good balance between weight and speed.

2.  The science of the Titanium hammer claims is bunk for one of the claims made until they can prove it by experiment IMHO. They claim that the titanium springs some unknown power into the nail and yet the power does not return to your hand and elbow. Titanium hs more give than steel  I recognize . However thats not where the equivalent nail driving power comes from.  Lets say that i swing a sixteen ounce to the same velocity as a twenty four ounce. the twenty four ounce will put out 1.5 the amount of energy. We will just call the the energy of four foot pounds for the sixteen ounce and six foot pounds for the twenty four ounce.  Now lets go again and swig the little hammer twice as fast. The output in energy is not double , but is squared . We go from four pounds to sixteen pounds.. 

 3. does anybody show an experiment comparing nail driving capability of titanium vs steel with equal weight heads and speed of swing?  Of course not.

  4.So my conclusion is a faster hit can make up a lot for the weight of the hammer.  i have watched a few of the videos comparing the two and its obvious a lot of the opinion makers do not have good technique. The handle is too long for their experience level.and they put a death grip on it.  You need to be at the end of the handle to snap the wrist and gain speed.  i hold a small hammer with the end actually in my palm sort of letting it slide in there to pick up the power of the swing. My elbow joint does not move very far as most of the speed comes from the wrist. 

   5 Having seen young guys come to jobs with huge hammers and the old hands out producing them with smaller gear is par for the course. I saw one supervisor get out the saw and offer to cut the handle down because the new kid chocked up so far.. I didn' t know a lot of this until I taught at vocational school . The students kept moving their hammer to the work instead of squaring up for a consistent swing. Cross the body swinging was prohibited and caused a cut in grade .. I showed them that I could drive a nail blindfolded because of proper body position. 

i know they made fun of some of my methods behind my back , but that's just part of construction, 

[Beap52 2,283]

35 minutes ago, ohiofarmer said:

i hold a small hammer with the end actually in my palm sort of letting it slide in there to pick up the power of the swing.  

Good write up. 

 

In my hey day, when building walls, I could set a 16d nail with one strike and (usually) drive it home on the second with 16 oz  curved claw Estwing.  Exception being knots and unusual grain.  For me, the curved claw was better balanced than straight claw.

 

I rather enjoyed driving nails.  There's something satisfying about walking to one's car after a day's work and know that building will be here long after one is gone.