I bet I win nerdiest project of the week with this one

I have been struggling by using a cross peen tack hammer to peen rivets, and I finally remembered to go hammer shopping today.
To my utter astonishment and dismay, not one of the hardware stores had a small ball peen hammer in stock!
The smallest one I could find was an 8oz one, and it seemed way too heavy.

I returned home disappointed and looked at my 2oz tack hammer, then looked over at my bench grinder.
Not really expecting to have much success, I gave it a go anyway, and was pleasantly surprised at how easy I found it to grind a ball head onto my flat faced hammer. Flushed with success, i also ground off the redundant cross peen side of the head to lighten the hammer still further.

Some quick work with a stone and then sandpaper polished the head and the 'stump' very nicely. I shortened the handle too. It looks a bit goofy, but it works really well. I can't get over how much easier it is to make pins using a polished ball faced hammer rather than a flat one. I wish I had done it weeks ago.

Congratulations! You are quite correct, you probably do win nerdiest project of the week. Perhaps of the month, though it is a little early to tell.

I'm quietly confident.
Someone would have to do something spectacularly nerdy to outnerd me on this one.....

Thats pretty nerdy.

You could have just gone to Sears. Thats where I got mine.

Although it looks a bit heavy, I think it's amazing! Regrind the dome back at the base of the head and it'll be perfect. And you are 100% correct about a polished head working the best for pinning. Even if you leave it as it is, you did a good job...

It involved using power tools to make a custom tool for repairing the manliest thing ever. It's not that nerdy.

I use a spoon.
It works well enough for now, at least till I break down and get something better.

Fnord5 said:

I use a spoon.
It works well enough for now, at least till I break down and get something better.

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I tried spoons, could never get it to work for me.

leighton said:

I tried spoons, could never get it to work for me.

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Staniless steel serving spoon maybe? They are pretty heavy.

leighton said:

Thats pretty nerdy.

You could have just gone to Sears. Thats where I got mine.

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My nearest Sears is about 3,500 miles away.....
Seriously, I tried loads of places. They either didn't stock them or had run out

BillEllis said:

Although it looks a bit heavy, I think it's amazing! Regrind the dome back at the base of the head and it'll be perfect. And you are 100% correct about a polished head working the best for pinning. Even if you leave it as it is, you did a good job...

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I think the appearance is deceptive, maybe because I shortened the handle. It's actually only a 2oz hammer.
I did think of grinding it further back, but to be honest it would have been a lot of material for my small bench grinder to remove so I didn't bother.
I'm still astonished that i managed to do it, it looks like half a ball bearing.
And a compliment from the master himself! That alone was worth the effort

Dubbya said:

It involved using power tools to make a custom tool for repairing the manliest thing ever. It's not that nerdy.

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You know, I thought that too, but when I showed my girlfriend, she rolled her eyes and called me a nerd.
Apparently she's always right, so I guess I must be a nerd

jamesbeat said:

My nearest Sears is about 3,50 miles away.....
Seriously, I tried loads of places. They either didn't stock them or had run out

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3 1/2 miles away? Or 35 miles away?

leighton said:

3 1/2 miles away? Or 35 miles away?

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That was a typo, I meant to say 3,500 miles
I don't think we have Sears in the UK, or at least I've never seen one.
It's not just Sears, we don't have anything good here, I live in England's second city and I can't even find a ball peen hammer.
We haven't even got IHOP
Once my K1 visa is processed, I am so outta here

I am coding an HTML calculation sheet to help me at work, that converts vitamin and minerals from mg to international units and from the compound weight to elemental weights.

For example mg of Thiamine Hydrochloride to Thiamine; and from Thiamine to Thiamine HCl.

Or from Calcium Carbonate to elemental Calcium; but also elemental calcium to the equivalent of Calcium carbonate.

I'm doing this with all vitamins (and their respective forms) and all the minerals and their respective forms.

Do I win the Nerdiest project award?

Nope, that was actually pretty interesting I'm afraid.

I didn't want to do this but you leave me no choice. I have my nerd trump card quite literally up my sleeve.
I have a glass tag implanted under the skin in my right wrist, containing a microchip. RFID EM4102 125kHz Manchester encoding.
I have a reader hooked up to the lock on my front door so I can unlock it by swiping my arm.

jamesbeat said:

Nope, that was actually pretty interesting I'm afraid.

I didn't want to do this but you leave me no choice. I have my nerd trump card quite literally up my sleeve.
I have a glass tag implanted under the skin in my right wrist, containing a microchip. RFID EM4102 125kHz Manchester encoding.
I have a reader hooked up to the lock on my front door so I can unlock it by swiping my arm.

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There's a fine line between nerdy and freaky.... I'm trying to decide which side of the line you are on.

Well my implant means that technically I'm a cyborg, so Robocop is probably my cousin or something.
I'll set him on you if you call me a freak

herbnerd said:

I am coding an HTML calculation sheet to help me at work, that converts vitamin and minerals from mg to international units and from the compound weight to elemental weights.

For example mg of Thiamine Hydrochloride to Thiamine; and from Thiamine to Thiamine HCl.

Or from Calcium Carbonate to elemental Calcium; but also elemental calcium to the equivalent of Calcium carbonate.

I'm doing this with all vitamins (and their respective forms) and all the minerals and their respective forms.

Do I win the Nerdiest project award?

Click to expand...

It's for work. That disqualifies your application for nerdiest ever.

jamesbeat said:

Nope, that was actually pretty interesting I'm afraid.

I didn't want to do this but you leave me no choice. I have my nerd trump card quite literally up my sleeve.
I have a glass tag implanted under the skin in my right wrist, containing a microchip. RFID EM4102 125kHz Manchester encoding.
I have a reader hooked up to the lock on my front door so I can unlock it by swiping my arm.

Click to expand...

You might win this one.

Dubbya said:

It's for work. That disqualifies your application for nerdiest ever.

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It's more of a hobby really - just something to make my work quicker and easier. I'm just doing it for fun really.