For my dad's birthday, we got my mom the present of cleaning out his garage. While sorting through stuff to get rid of we found an old sledgehammer with a very loose head. It looks like he replaced the handle and didn't install it well. It was going to get thrown out to appease my mom, but I said I'd take it because I figured I could rehaft it. I could tell he wasn't thrilled to get rid of it, but he was playing her game at that point and he couldn't justify hanging on to a broken tool.
When I got it home I realized the head was a nice, vintage 6 pound Plumb so I changed my mind and decided after I fixed it up I would give it back to him. I was just going to buy a new handle, but while helping to clean out the attic of my late grandpa's workshop a couple weeks ago I found an old spare handle in perfect condition stashed away. It still has part of a "Montgomery Ward" sticker on it. I figure using a handle that has family roots adds something.
After removing the poorly fitted handle, I used Evaporust to derust the head and wedge. Then I painted it a dark red, made a custom wooden wedge from a part of the old handle, reused the steel wedge and did a pretty solid job of remounting the head. The contrast of the darker hickory from the old handle crossed with the steel wedge looks pretty cool. Not nearly as decorative as some wedge patterns I've seen, but plenty good for this kind of restoration. I still have to grind the paint off the hammer faces, but it is looking pretty good. I know a painted head isn't original, and black would have been more true to the brand, but red looked good.
I was thinking about trying to protect the Montgomery Ward sticker - maybe a clearcoat or something to preserve a neat part of the artifact. Or maybe I'll just leave it. My dad is getting to be past the time in his life that he's likely to use a sledgehammer very much anyway.
