Rawhide hammer?

[bladegrinder]

All my tooling and stamping for years has been done with a small lightweight steel hammer, I'm finally ready to put it away and either get a mallet or maul.

I'm looking for recommendations from the fine folks here on what they have been using and what you suggest, rawhide or plastic mallet or poly maul. Thanks...

[jrdunn]

I'm for rawhide.  I've had an old Tandy rawhide hammer for years and got a heavier (2 lb.) rawhide maul about a year ago for the heavier stuff.

JM2C

[YinTx]

Jim Linnell uses an old Tandy rawhide, says it is the best for him because of the way it interacts with the tool - no bouncing, skating, etc.  I have a pile of them, never used them.  Used a cheap $15 round head poly maul for years, finally splurged and got a 32 oz Barry King and a 16 oz Wayne Jueschke maul.  Love to use them both, but really can't say they justify the 17-10x price.  Interestingly, now I have more than one Barry King.

YinTx

[AlamoJoe2002]

BladeGrinder, I use a multi head hammer. Poly on one side for tapping down glue and a brass head for stamps and hole punches. However, I needed more weight on the hammer head so I wrapped unsheathed copper wire then covered with black electrical tape. Works well for me and I can find screw on replacement heads easily online. 

I never tried a maul or deadblow hammer. 

-Joe

[battlemunky]

I have poly and rawhide mauls and rawhide mallets. Unfortunately, they each have their place so I can't give a recommendation for "one smashing device to rule them all". My rawhide maul is from Frog Jelly and it has been excellent. I'm not affiliated with them, it's just served me well over the last 5 years of near daily whackin' with little signs of stopping.

I have a cheap poly maul from Amazon that I don't recommend...it has chipped with what I'd consider normal use. It is cheap though. I have another poly maul that is excellent but I forget the mfg.

[doubleh]

I bought a couple of poly mauls, regular and round, awhile back and don't really care either of them. A little longer handle on the regular hammer type one might make it satisfactory but I don't want to go to the trouble of making one. Then my very old Tandy rawhide maul decided it was going to come apart in very small pieces. I replaced it with a Garland since I really didn't like the looks of the new Tandy ones. The Garland will outlast me.

[dikman]

I use mauls I made myself from melted plastic milk bottles. I also made a maul from rawhide and have a couple of rawhide mallets that were given to me, I find the milk bottle mauls work fine, the rawhide mallets don't have enough weight but that could just be my technique that's at fault.