Hammer

For the sport, see Hammer throw

A hammer is a tool meant to deliver blows to a target, causing it to move or deform. The most common uses are for driving nails, fitting parts, and breaking up objects. Hammers are often designed for a specific purpose, and so their design varies quite a lot. Usual features are a handle and a head, with the balance firmly in the head. The head is composed of a flat, striking surface on one end, and a peen on the other. The peen can be shaped like a claw or wedge to pull nails, or like a ball as in the ball-peen hammer. The hammer is used in many professions, and is one of the most basic tools along with the knife.

Like the knife (and almost all tools), the hammer is also a weapon. The concept of putting a handle on a weight to make it more convenient to use may well have led to the very first tools or weapons ever invented.

The use of a hammer to fix broken machinery is jokingly referred to as percussive maintenance.

Well-known forms include:

• Carpenter's hammer, including framing hammer and claw hammer
• Upholsterer's hammer
• Construction hammer, including sledgehammer
• Ball-peen hammer
• Mallet
• Maul
• Mechanic's hammer, including ball-peen hammer
• Steam hammer
• Stonemason's or club hammer
• Firearm hammer
• Gavel used by judges and presiding authorities in general
• The medieval weapon called the war hammer

A common adage states:

When all you've got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

See also: Club, Chisel, hammer throw (field sport), War hammer

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A hammer is a small padded stick or cane used in pairs to play the hammered dulcimer. Dulcimer hammers are made of a variety of materials, most frequently wood with a hammer head covered with a strip of leather or felt.

Also in music, hammers are felt-padded objects within a piano and similar instruments, which, when triggered by depressing a key, strike the instrument's strings.

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Hammer is an informal term for the malleus bone of the ear.

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Hammer is the short form name for the Valve Hammer Editor (VHE) which is the construct program for the Half-Life series of games.

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Hammer is also the shortened name used by 90s pop-rap artist M.C. Hammer later in his career.

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Hammer is a common shorthand reference to Hammer Films, a British film company famous for its line of horror films.