A Bramblebush Workshop Project

Pneumatic Planishing Hammer

A shop built hammer constructed by Wray Schelin

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Here's some photos of my pneumatic air planishing hammer that I made.  Also included are some photos of my small bench post dolly and hand dolly, all of which use the same tooling as the pneumatic hammer. In addition there are three slappers, made from car rear leaf springs ( Model T for the narrow one, and the other two are made from a J Duesenburg. Most any car leaf spring will do but I think mine are special because of their heritage).
First the air hammer: The power head of this air hammer is from a Chicago Pneumatic Fender Iron. This was a common bodyshop tool in the 30s through the 50s, they went out of favor when Bondo ( polyester resin and talc) was introduced as a labor saver in the bodywork trade. Usually every bodyshop would have had several of these hammers smoothing out wrinkled fenders.
This was done using several sizes of portable lightweight C tube frames with the hammer mounted on one end of the C, and the anvil tooling on the other end. The operater would squeeze a lever which brings the hammer tooling together and also the more you squeeze the faster the BPM ( blows per minute). I believe these hammers put out about 4500 BPM, but the blows are very light. The hammer will stretch metal as well as smooth, and inexperienced bodymen would often create more work for themselves by raising crowns that weren't there in the first place. BRAMBLEBUSH INDEX       NEXT PAGE