1 Hour Handle Challenge

What's up, guys? We're gonna do something a little bit different. We are going to do the first Great Plains bow company challenge. What we have here is two hammerheads. These are our personalized cup that our good customer, David Santas. Thank you very much, David. And today the challenge is we put handles on these hammerheads, and we have to choose our wood. Got to choose the species. We got to put the hammer head on the handle. And whoever makes the best hammer, most aesthetically pleasing, most comfortable, durable, and strong, will win this challenge. We have one hour to do it. It is 2:26. And the time starts right now. May the best man win.

Where did I put that piece? We're going with oage. What's that?

Giraffe. Okay, let me see what I want. I want something that's really strong, but I don't want something that's. That's too hard to machine because I only have an hour. That guy's already cutting his.

Should I go?

Should I go diamond Lux? Nick, can I use your. Your piece? Nah.

I kind of like this one.

He's a meaner. Oh, Kingwood would make a nice handle, maybe. Am I getting behind yet?

Oh, yeah.

Well, you can. You can help me with mine if you get yours done. I know you're a good guy like that. What this stuff is. I don't think we use this.

Personally. This is one of the scariest machines that we have in the shop because it looks like it'll grab my hair and pull me right into it.

Yeah, I'm probably going to get in so much trouble for using this. Have I lost five minutes yet? Oh, here's another handle. Let's go just a little shorter than that. Let's go about 15 now. Let's go 16. All right. I'm almost at 10 minutes in. I don't even have my handle cut yet, and now I do. Hey, Nick, can you swap that belt out for me?

Just for that? I'm putting the old belt right back on after this.

Thanks, buddy. But you're a sugar bear.

There's just no grit left on that thing.

Well, this is dynamic. This is a piece called dynamic. Very, very strong. Should work pretty good. I'm going to orient the drain so that it runs in line with the hammer stroke. So that should create a stronger handle for the impact created by him. Now I just drew. I just drew my head location on there, and I'm trying to decide. I need to take off some material so I don't have to work so much. The best way to do that with a limited amount of time. I don't think I'm gonna make a shoulder on these things. I don't have that much time. I think I'm going to go ahead and take a little bit off both sides. I'm just going to remove the excess around where that circle is that I've drawn. I think Nick is hauling tail over there. But I have a good 40 minutes yet. Leaf not in trouble yet. Precision my guy. It's all about precision. This is a little bit of a slower way but it's going to ensure that my Hammerhead is fits a lot better. I'm gonna set that even deeper.

We're getting there.

Almost.

Oh yeah, we're gonna make that work.

I may have bit off more than I can chew with this hard material but it's coming off. It's taking shape. You can see there slowly. Meanwhile, that guy's almost done. Oh yeah. Why are you using all the power tools Nick?

Because it's faster.

Solid point. I'm stuck in the stone ages over here. I'm getting it. We want that, we want that handle to be a really nice tight fit. And what is surprising to myself and probably a lot of others, I haven't actually put a lot of handles on tools. This may be like my second one I've ever done.

Oh yeah, that's gonna work.

Hi buddy.

Hey.

What you doing? Don't ask. I'm getting. I'm working up a sweat.

Dymalox with a hand plane. That's a. That's a bold move there, Kai.

Yeah, no I, I know my choice was not it but you know it.

Could pay off yet cuz it was already handle shaped.

Yeah.

Also it's really, really hard wood and it carves extremely well. It's like butter on that sandpaper. That's the main reason oage is it's. It's hand shocky. So like it's going to. It's real dense and it's going to transfer quite a bit of shock into the hand. But I don't really use the hammer all that much. I'm not too concerned with it.

I'm a little worried at this point. But I chose this way. I'm committed. I'm not backing down. Can we stop the clock for a minute so I can catch up? Does that sound like a good idea guys? Nah.

Kind of like this lead I've got going.

I don't like it. This ten planer's smoking hot. Ooh Shane, you're almost down to the line, buddy.

Why Are you picking to go without power tools?

Why do I build bows in southwest Kansas?

Solid point.

I should be running a manure truck or something. We're farming corn. You want to really know why? Because I think you can get a better handle fit over a longer distance. Does that make sense? Makes sense in my head. Yeah. It's a lot of elbow grease.

Oh, yeah, that's way better.

Only got about 35 minutes left. 30 minutes? Nope, not yet. Now I'm really starting to get worried. Way too big. I think I got the basic shape, so I'm going to go to the take a little bit. You know what? No, no. I'm going to ruin it if I do that. Back to the plan. I really didn't think this would take that long.

What I'm doing right here is all of that in there. That's coming right off.

It's.

Oh, yeah. That's gonna be.

Too much material to take. It's. Oh, yeah. It's not there yet. It. All right. Oh, yeah. There we go. Quit saying words of affirmation to yourself. I am so screwed at this point. All right. Go on there, boy. Go to your home, buddy. Go to your home. Okay. Go to your home. Go to your home. You want to go home? You're tired. Maybe Nick will break his handle yet.

That's what I'm getting nervous about.

What? All right, we're going to some bigger sanders.

All right, let's try that.

Did you. Oh.

What?

I thought you took my hammer. Oh, no. You wouldn't do that.

I wouldn't do something like that.

You wouldn't. He would listen to what it is. That's gotta be getting close. Gotta be getting close. We're past the point of trying to get it right. We get. We're just hogging material off. That's gonna go on there. Guarantee it. Okay. I know that's gonna go on there. All right, time to make it look somewhat pretty. Just going to go in here. Okay. All right, time to go grind.

So I screwed up a little bit, but that's okay. We're going to make it work. I did. I tapered it a little too much. It's tight over. So how that hammer. The inside of the hammerhead is kind of like an hourglass almost. Well on this one anyway. And so fits through the center there.

And it's a. Expand it out.

It's just not perfect.

But we're gonna make it work.

Now we're going to make this into another wedge and try to wedge that just a little more.

I really Regret choosing diamond locks. It's too hard. Too hard a mater.

It's not perfect by any means. I really wish we had one of those round wedges that expands in all directions, but we don't. I don't think so anyway. You think he'd miss one of these sockets? Yeah, he probably. Yeah, probably couldn't go doing that.

Somewhere.

I've got a pair of needle nose pliers and gotta cut that off. We'll pretend like that's a good enough step wedge. We'll see if that even drives in.

Nope. You know what?

Second best option here? That didn't work even close to how I wanted it to.

Where'd my hammerhead go? Okay.

Oh, I'm about to get absolutely ripped on this challenge.

We don't have time to make a fancy wedge. We're just gonna put us a wedge in there. Call it. Good. Here. I took your hammer. Thank you. Have to get me a different hamm. No time. Hey, Nick, you got a phone call. Really? Nick, you got a phone call. Really?

Now?

Yeah. You better take it. It's your girlfriend. She's breaking up with you. Four minutes. Four minutes.

We're gonna do something with the shame that you don't have enough time to do. We're gonna put a finish on this thing.

Three minutes. How'd you decide to do this?

This was your call, dude.

Don't mind me.

Just CS casting whole area.

Okay. That's the sign. Two minutes.

How much time do we have left?

Two minutes. I know there's some butcher block oil. One minute. It's enough time.

I got a bubble in the finish.

Only one minute now. That's 30 seconds. 15 seconds. I'm sweating. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Time. I really thought an hour would be plenty of time.

Oh, yeah.

I was like, we're not even gonna use the whole hour. And then I'm over here with my hand playing.

I still don't see why you went to the hand plane.

That probably was. Wasn't a very smart idea. I thought maybe I could get it the shaft better. But anyway, here's. Here's the hammers. And this is mine. Dymalux. I. I wedged it with Osaga. Osage orange. Actually, it's got a butcher block oil finish on it. Looks like he got Osage orange here. Did a great job of fitting it underneath there. Actually used black ca for the top. It looks pretty cool. Feels good. Let's see. I'm gonna be really careful because this is a big hammer and a tiny nail. Careful, careful, careful. No it went in wrong kind of.

Nail for the huge hammerhead.

Also, we're trying to go into end grain. That one's gonna bend, I'm telling you right now.

Yeah, I'm with you on that one.

Hey, they work.

They work.

So that was one hour challenge. Not really sure who the winner is of this because this hammer, it feels great. It looks like a pretty good fit. This one is a little different. I just. I didn't use the black ca. Which. That would look pretty cool. Mine has more ergonomics than this one. This is definitely indexing because you got your oval. So I think we're gonna have to have the guys that watch the video choose the winner on this one. Tell you what, we'll just let you say in the comments which one you like better. The red one, which is Shane's, or the yellow one, which is Nick's. It's a pretty close challenge, I feel like. So that's it. The first Great Plains one hour challenge. What are we doing next?

Arrows.

Maybe our. Maybe our watchers can tell us what the next challenge is going to be. We're going to make broadheads out of. Out of saw blades. Thank you all for supporting us and subscribing and watching our channel.

We should have switched because these aren't the same size. This handle should be on this one and this handle should be on this one.

Yeah, but you can't switch them because if you guy. You know, technically I should have made a bigger handle and you should have made a smaller handle. Yeah, I don't think I would have chose Diamond Lux to do it again.

Yeah, no, that was insane.

That's. That stuff is hard. They're both functional hammers.

Yeah. The real test is going to be how long do they survive in the shop.

Yeah. Let's see what I could. What could I hammer? Put your finger on there.