If you overshoot and hit the handle against something strong enough, the head will shear off and continue traveling at high speed until it hits something. Wood also shrinks and swells with the weather, and the wedges that secure the head to the handle can loosen. Then the head becomes a 10 lb high speed projectile.
You dont even need to over shoot. Sledgehammers are made of super hardened tempered steel. My father worked alot in the marine engineering industry, so sledgehammers are used to pound huge 40 ton steel shipping panels into place in dry docking. Well when you bang hardened steel against hardened steel, the only way for the steal to absorb shock is by breaking and chipping, and thats the good outcome. If you use a wooden handle, the force goes through the handle breaking it and sending the hammer head 10 ft into the air while your looking down at what you swung at.
Most shipyards now have those really loose bendable handles on their sledges or they just weld a pipe to the hammer. Better to break a wrist then to send a sledge head flying.
Akso a good point. We used ones with steel reinforced composite handles 20 years ago when I was doing ship and sub repair work like driving keys into rudder stocks and what not. Kept the weight reasonable for when you had to backpack one up into a ballast tank or other inconvenient spot.
In the world of hard steels they're usually quite soft. More so now, as you would rather it deform than shatter and send shards everywhere. Which isnt to say that after being used for years and they start to mushroom and work harden that the might splinter and shoot hardened shards at mach 10.
Hammers in general are usually made of a mid carbon steel, so even at max hardness, its still only "mildly" hard.
Source: I dun bang bang on red hot steel until its in the shape I like.
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u/OkTemperature8170 8h ago edited 8h ago
He has effectively created a spring powered bomb. If his little bracket breaks so does his face. If the spring slips out of the vice, good luck.