Making handles for woodworking tools sounds easy, but if you want to make something a bit different, AND you don't have a lathe, you are left with making "square" or similar hammer handles. I wanted to make an 8 sided hammer handle and that's a bit more work.
I started off with the hardest wood I had in my collection which happened to be Arbutus of Madrona. Typical hammer handles are made from Hickory, but I didn't have that, and the Madrona will work just fine. Hickory has a Janka Hardness scale of 1860 and Madrona is 1460 so it is a tiny bit softer, but still much harder that Red Oak, my second option.
The process of making the 8 sided "blanks" is much easier to watch in the video than to have me try to describe it here, but I will fill in some of the questions (hopefully) that some of you might have.
The blanks I was working with were 1-1/4" square and 12" long.
In the 2 pictures below, you can see one of my "test" pieces in place with the 1/4" triangle part under the back bottom, this is where it would be temporarily double-sided taped to to help give more support when the other sides, also you will see the top of the riving knife, the purpose of the riving knife in this instance is only to give support, if needed toward the back of the cut, there are a couple of pictures of my "Trapping" Push Block, this tool is a super handy item I have been using for years and helps to elevate the safety of the cut, and of course last is the blade height, which I have been talking about in my videos for since 2008, and one of THE most important things to adhere to on the table saw.
Moving over to the reciprocating belt sander, if you don't have one of these, or a hand held belt sander (many can be adapted to stationary holding jigs) then you will probably need to do this job with another type of sander.
As you can see in the picture, I had a piece of wood clamped to the base of the belt sander. This required a special designed piece of wood under the base so that when I clamped the top piece on it wouldn't crack the plastic top.
This "stopper" worked perfectly in preventing the wood to be "grabbed and pulled" by the belt sander paper. I also allowed me to make a very nice transition from round to octagonal at the top of the handle.
You will note the dust collector adapter I have, this is an idea submitted from a subscriber, I tried it out and it works excellent, a great idea. I you go back and watch the video where I am sanding you can see the sawdust being drawn into the collector, can't say enough good about this modification.
You can also see that little half round piece of wood, that is what I used to push the wood against the belt, I had to make a few adjustments to get it to that shape, but that also works well and keep your hands away from the belt while still giving good pressure and control.
And below is what I meant by the elegant transition from round to octagonal.
And there is one of my handles, already for the next process of attaching it to a head of some sort. In a future video one of the handles I made will be used for a Veneer Hammer ... stay tuned for that.
Colin Knecht
