1045 is a standard mid-carbon steel. It also happens to be used in industrial applications such as crankshafts, and hydraulic rams. It is water hardening, and should be tempered to a “straw” colour for hammer making applications. These billets are cut with a bandsaw, and come with slightly rounded edges.

I cut these billets from various sizes of round bar in order to get an approximate billet ratio of 1:2 (dia. to length) depending on the weight. This will be appropriate for forging a well-proportioned classic rounding hammer, but it’s an appropriate sizing for most other hammer styles as well. If you’d like billets in a custom size or shape, I offer that service as well.

Also, these billets are cut slightly overweight to allow loss to scale and grinding so the finished hammer should end up closer to the desired weight, depending on how much forging or grinding you do on each billet. (You lose about 1% of the weight to scale per heat).

These billets come annealed, and not necessarily with a polished surface finish, they may be slightly rusty or have a hot roll finish depending on the batch I get.