Working With Metal Continued

Here you can see the spring center tap guide keeping my tap wrench nice and straight. As you turn the tap wrench the spring center stays in contact the entire time. I also used a "stop" to locate each piece so I didn't have to find the center each time (arrow).
 

Here I've got a dead center on the left (in the chuck) and a live center on the other end. Now I can take a skim pass to just clean up those two larger diameters. This worked out pretty good but I still put an indicator on each part to confirm it was running true. After I turned these areas, I polished the entire head.
 

Now that all the pieces are made, it's time to put the hammers together. I'm going to use Loctite on all the threaded areas to make sure nothing comes loose. I'm also going to clean all the threads with lacquer thinner to remove any oil that might be on them.

I cut the heads off of some bolts and soaked the threaded pieces in some thinner.
 

I carefully chucked the handle in the lathe and took a clean-up cut on the end cap and handle. This was to make sure everything looked right (in case there was a concentricity issue) once it was fastened together.
 

Now it's time to assembly the rest of the pieces. I did some test fitting before I used any thread locker to make sure I had the thread length correct. A keen eye will notice that the threads on the handle are shorter now. This was by design and only took a few minutes to cut down and deburr.