My design process was a bit “on the fly”. I knew the dimensions I wanted but the details were foggy when I started so there are some screw-ups and changes along the way. This picture shows my initial thoughts on laying out the two halves of the hammer head. The left group, with the triangle marked on it, is arranged properly with the 1X3’s perpendicular to the 1X3’s in the 3X3 piece – maximum strength. The right group has all the 1X3 sections aligned in the same direction – not as strong.

If you make a hammer along these lines try to change the grain direction when ever you can – think about what plywood looks like. As you’ll see in the next section I didn’t use all three 1X3’s initially and even changed the way the third layer was used.

Next up: First glue-up