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The Hammer

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The Myth

THIS MYTH WAS FEATURED IN...
Episode Title: Episode 67: Firearms Folklore, The Hammer

Original air date: 11/29/2006
Myth Title: ----


Myth Description: ----


MythBusters on the bust: ----


Hypothesis: ----


Procedure/Experimental Design: ----


Results: ----


Conclusion: ----


Busted or Not Busted: Busted
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Highlights of the bust:






Best quotes by the MythBusters:

  • Grant - "I'll be like Kablamo!"




Your Scientific Method

Did the MythBusters get it right? How would you have busted this myth differently? Share your experiment design for how you would prove/disprove this myth:

  • My scientific method, is that I actually have a piece of a hammer head in my knee. It's not the single blow of one hammer to another, it's the repeated blows that cause mushrooming- if that's a word. My step dad was using one hammer to strike another, in order to break the bead between a tire and wheel, when a piece of one of the hammers flew off and lodged itself in my leg. After a few attempts to remove the steel from my leg, with me kicking and screaming, it was left there forever. By the way, I was 10 yrs old. Not just 1 strike, but many, cause the hammer to disintegrate.


  • You might try consulting a metallurgist, who can teach you about things like work hardening and crack propagation. The team's explanation of case hardening was about as wrong as their methodology. If they had used some forced air to get the fire hotter (You need to get the metal hot enough that a magnet no longer sticks) and had a bigger heat sink for the quench, they might well have been able to fully harden the hammer heads. Even then, getting them to break with only one blow might be difficult. A more realistic setup would be this:
  1. Fix target hammer to ridgid bench.
  2. Pivot hammer #2 at end of its handle so that it falls face to face on the target. Align the pivot so the strike is off-center.
  3. Rig a cam and motor to the handle of hammer #2 so it is repeatedly raised and allowed to drop freely to the target. Think "trip hammer" in designing this. (Feel free to use your pneumatic valve actuators instead, or add a spring assist to the drop for a little more striking force.)
  4. Let the motor run for a while. Check the hammer faces every couple hundred cycles. Continue until something breaks...


    • For one thing, they only soaked the heads of the hammers. I think that if they carbonated the whole hammer, it's probability of breaking would be higher.


    • This all also assumes that the quality of steel is better than pig iron... Not guaranteed with all brands... ( the world contains many companies that never seen safety equipment, never used 20th century technology for manufacture, etc... )
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