I Made An Antler Tapping Hammer

It’s October. Halloween is coming up. I don’t celebrate demonic holidays, but if you want to get the creeps I recommend that you peruse through some old dental tool catalogs. For example, this 1881 dental catalog. In addition to 63 different kinds of pliers for extracting teeth, they have chisels, files, nerve extractors, stump pullers, lancets, and even a nifty tongue holder.

After looking through those catalogs I felt mighty grateful for modern dentistry, and I was inspired to make a hammer.

As noted in the image above, dentists used to use small buffalo horn hammers for “swaging over the margins.” I didn’t know what dental swaging was, so I looked it up. Here is the answer…

A dental swaging hammer (historically referred to as a dental mallet or dental hammer) was primarily used in traditional restorative dentistry to condense, shape, and pack direct-filling materials like gold foil or silver amalgam into a prepared tooth cavity. By delivering controlled, rapid, light taps, the hammer "swaged" (plastically deformed and compacted) the metal directly into the microscopic contours of the tooth to create a tight, durable, and hermetic seal.

I go to one of the best dentists in America. He has been my dentist for many years. I asked him if he had a horn hammer and he told me he does not. I think I should be thankful for that.

I looked online for a buffalo horn. They are available. Then I thought, why not make a small antler-head hammer? Which now brings me to the subject of deer antler vs. buffalo horn. There is a material difference.

Antlers are made of solid bone, and are shed yearly. Horns have some interior bone with an exterior of thick keratin (fingernails are made of keratin), and horns are a permanent fixture on the animal they adorn.

Antlers have the high compressive strength of bone. On the other hand, horn, with its keratin outer layer, is softer—so it has better shock absorbing properties than antler. Therefore, if a dentist is pounding gold into your cavity, you will be more comfortable with the procedure if he uses a horn hammer. Open wide...

Nevertheless, I can feature scenarios where an antler hammer might be just the right tool for light tapping. A machinist, a watchmaker, or a jeweler might find a small antler hammer to be very useful. 

As for myself, I just wanted to make an antler hammer because I thought it was a neat idea. 

This dog don’t hunt, so I bought a package of 10 Natural Dakota Deer Antler Crafting Points on Amazon ($17.99). You can get 10 deer antler tips for about the same price as one good buffalo horn!

For the wood handle I split some straight-grain pieces out of a nice chunk of black walnut firewood. It just doesn't seem right to burn nice chunks of black walnut.

I shaped the wood with a block plane, knife, and rasp. Then I drilled a hole in the antler. I further shaped the end of the handle to fit tight in the hole. Once I had a good fit, I made a saw kerf for a wood wedge to fit into. The wedge is pine. I glued it and pounded it place, then gave the handle a couple coats of Sam Maloof varnish. I am pleased with how it turned out.

The head is 3" long. Total length is 8.5". Total weight is .7 ounces.

I've listed my unique little hammer on Ebay for $34.76. If it sells, I’ll make another one. If it doesn’t sell, I’ll just keep it. After all, one never knows when one might need a small antler tapping hammer.