HA810X = Fretz New Hammers (NH) **Choose Style or Set**

Fretz NH Short Jeweler's Hammers
A great hammer should feel less like something you're holding and more like an extension of your hand.

The Fretz NH Short Series takes the familiar shapes of traditional jeweler's forming hammers and puts them into a compact design made for close, controlled bench work. The shorter handle brings your hand closer to the work, giving you excellent control over each strike when forming, planishing, raising, or adding texture to small jewelry pieces.

The polished heads are made from hardened 420 stainless steel, while the beautifully shaped Padauk wood handles rest comfortably in the hand. But one of our favorite features is hidden inside: the hammer head incorporates a steel stem with a bolt running through the wooden handle. If the head should ever loosen with use, it can simply be tightened again rather than becoming one more loose-headed hammer rattling around your bench.

They're substantial enough to move metal, but compact enough for the kind of precise hammer work jewelers actually do.

Choose Your Hammer

NH-1S = Short Planishing Hammer
The everyday workhorse of the group. One flat and one slightly domed polished face let you smooth and refine hammer marks, planish surfaces, form bezels and perform general metal forming against stakes and mandrels. If you're only adding one hammer from the series to your bench, this is an awfully useful place to start.
* face sizes = flat 0.78" (20mm); domed 0.78" (20mm)
* head length = 2.9" (74mm)
* head weight = 132 grams
* dimensions = 7.28"L (185mm)

NH-2S = Short Wide Cross Pein Hammer
The broader cross-pein faces spread metal efficiently and are especially useful for raising, forming and working concave or anticlastic shapes over stakes. The wider faces move more metal with each blow while producing broad linear textures when used decoratively.
* face sizes = 0.71" x 0.35" (18 x 9mm); 0.71" x 0.24" (18 x 6mm)
* head length = 2.8" (71mm)
* head weight = 109 grams
* dimensions = 7.28"L (185mm)

NH-3S = Short Narrow Cross Pein Hammer
When the NH-2S is simply too broad, reach for the NH-3S. Its narrow cross-pein faces concentrate each blow into a smaller area, making it particularly useful for forming tight concave shapes, fluting and creating fine, dramatic linear textures.
* face sizes = 0.78" x 0.18" (20 x 4.5mm); 0.78" x 0.24" (20 x 6mm)
* head length = 2.8" (71mm)
* head weight = 107 grams
* dimensions = 7.28"L (185mm)

NH-4S = Short Large Embossing Hammer
Two polished domed faces make the NH-4S ideal for doming, dishing and embossing metal into a forming block or sandbag. The rounded faces can also be used intentionally on the outside of your work to create bold, overlapping hammered textures.
* face sizes = 0.6" (14mm); 0.5" (12mm)
* head length = 2.9" (73mm)
* head weigh =, 98 grams
* dimensions = 7.28"L (185mm)

NH-5S = Short Small Embossing Hammer
Think of this as the more delicate sibling of the NH-4S. Its smaller domed faces are excellent for forming small raised areas, delicate embossing and creating fine dimpled textures. The small faces give you excellent control over exactly where each hammer mark lands.
* face sizes = 0.3" (8mm); 0.1" (3mm)
* head length = 2.8" (72mm)
* head weight = 98 grams
* dimensions = 7.28"L (185mm)

Set of 5
Can't pick just one? Neither could we.
The complete NH Short Hammer Set includes all five shapes, giving you a compact collection for planishing, raising, forming, embossing and texturing. Each hammer serves a distinctly different purpose, so this isn't a set where two of the five tools spend the rest of their lives wondering why you never use them.

Set includes: NH-1S Planishing, NH-2S Wide Cross Pein, NH-3S Narrow Cross Pein, NH-4S Large Embossing and NH-5S Small Embossing hammers.

FDJ Tip: Don't think of the polished faces only as forming tools. Every face is also a potential texture. Try your hammers on scrap copper or brass and make yourself a small set of samples.  You may discover that your favorite "texture hammer" wasn't sold as a texture hammer at all. Fretz himself recommends keeping sample pieces showing the textures produced by different hammer faces.