IPH Dead Blow Hammers – Engineering Review & Destruction Test

Photo source: www.youtube.com/@ImpactPolyHammers.

On the outside, all dead blow hammers look alike. That is until you put them to a real test, as Stercorarius, a well known member of the garage journal, claims and experimented when he gave his hammer the first real swing.

You could spend an eternity doing woodworking with a cheap dead blow hammer or using it to set up work in your mill vise and won’t notice major signs of tear and wear. But what if you encounter a job where you must repeatedly wack the heck out of something? We guarantee you that most dead blow hammers will fail.

Impact Poly Hammers has considered several design and manufacturing details to craft one of the most versatile and robust dead blow hammers to tackle mild and serious heavy-duty tasks.

We’ll review the features that make them stand out from popular competitors and the mindblowing results of a destruction test.

Let’s jump into the performance comparison and, toward the end of the post, review the features that differentiate the Impact Poly Hammer (IPH) products.

We compared an IPH dead blow hammer to others from popular brands. The test involved hammering a steel shaft several times to check the wear on the hammer’s face and shaft.

The tests varied in hit numbers, starting with 250 and increasing by an additional 250 hits every time until they reached 1,500 hits.

The interesting thing about this test is that we only used one IPH dead blow hammer throughout all rounds.

Here are the results:

Photo sources: www.reddit.com & www.garagejournal.com.

To understand the outcome of the destruction test results, let’s compare the design of the IPH dead blow hammers with what we found in the interior of the above competitors.

Photo source: www.youtube.com/@ImpactPolyHammers.

With each blow of the hammer, an unbonded urethane shifts from the frame. The wrap quickly cracks and tears, exposing the metal head.

Photo source: www.youtube.com/@ImpactPolyHammers.

Also, a poorly controlled urethane casting process can lead to too many air pockets (inner bubbles), reducing the overall density and strength. The hammer will quickly break into chunks, which is precisely what happened to this senior member of the Heavy Equipment Forum when a piece of the hammer came off and hit him square in the mouth.

The urethane hot cast process of the IPH hammers includes sandblasting the mold internals to eliminate most contaminants and a unique chemical that provides a much better bonding than that between urethane and bare metal. Should you puncture the polyurethane, it won’t peel off the rest of the hammer.

However, even with a controlled casting process, there’s still one challenge that several dead blow hammers fail: withstand extremely low temperatures.

The polyurethane of most dead blow hammers becomes so brittle that they literally blow themself up. We found similar testimonials from members of three different forum sites that have blown up their hammers in cold weather:

• Dave_376 from Arborist Site.
• Hootsmcgoots from Heavy Equipment Forums.
• Dr_clyde from The Garage Journal.

Impact Poly Hammers formulated polyurethane withstand tough winters better than our competitors. We’ve seen warning labels on competitors’ hammers not to use at -10 °C (-14 °F) while the IPH low temp range is -30 °C (-30 °F).

Photo source: www.youtube.com/@ImpactPolyHammers.

The IPH hammers have a frame twice the thickness of most competitors, and their head end caps are fully welded. The robust design contributes to a flat hammering surface and no cap and head connection deformation.

Most hammers’ heads have pressed-on caps and a thinner metal frame. Combining those variables causes the caps to cave in and pry the edge of the hammer’s head, leading to premature wear of the urethane and, in some cases, steel shot leaks due to the cap getting off the head.

Photo source: www.youtube.com/@ImpactPolyHammers.

What we found most critical from the test was the handle designs of some hammers because, in addition to wasting time and money, a broken handle could be a risk hazard.

According to the testimonial of this member from Reddit, a co-worker broke the handle of a dead blow hammer while hammering something above his head. The head bounced off and smashed his face.

Luckily, no significant injuries, just some cursing and a lesson on using high-quality tools.

Photo source: www.youtube.com/@ImpactPolyHammers.

Unlike the IPH hammer, which has a solid steel handle fully welded to the head (should you accidentally hit the neck of the hammer, you’re less likely to have a breakage there), some competitors have a hollow handle, small tack welds, or a fiberglass handle simply snapped on a neck tube.

Photo source: www.youtube.com/@ImpactPolyHammers.

Like the IPH dead-blow hammers, some of the hammers we tested feature a free-flow head design. This design allows the steel shot to move unimpeded, maximizing the “dead blow” effect.

However, there are two head designs you should avoid, and we will explain why.

Photo source: www.gardenersedge.com.

Right off the bat, when the handle goes through the hammer’s head, it blocks the free flow of the steel shot, which is the core mechanism of dead blow hammers.

On top of that, these hammers feature tack welds. When the top weld fails, the head oscillates around the handle penetration hole with each blow and eventually elongates, leaving enough space for the shot to leak.

Photo source: www.youtube.com/@ImpactPolyHammers.

The flaw with this design is the combination of thin steel plates for the head frame and the rod guiding the washers. The rod transfers a good amount of blow force directly to the center of the opposite end cap, which is the spot of less inertia.

As the thin head deforms, the washers won’t be able to move as freely as they should.

We don’t intend to trash our competitors. However, testing and comparing the IPH hammers with similar tools was the best way to prove their efficiency.

Will you be the next person to post on a forum that your dead blow hammer fell apart in less than a week or that the soft face only lasted a few weeks before splitting?

Or would you instead tell others? “I have used the hell out of them since then, and I have zero regrets. They still look brand new and have never left me wanting.”

The ball is on your court.