Contractorss Choice 9-Pound Sledge Hammer

Mostly just your standard sledge hammer, but with one little improvement.

Remember the folk song, That 9-pound hammer, its just a little too heavy for my size, honey, for my size.Well, Im not as young as I used to be, but our 2-pound, short-handled hammer just wasnt good enough to break up a bunch of old cement blocks and the sledge we used to have just seems to be gone, gone, gone.(Who would take a sledge hammer?Really!)

So I had a great coupon to use at Lowes this fall and off I went.This is one of the things I came home with.The brand is Contractors Choice but its made by True-Temper (a brand of tools I've come to consider good quality over the years).And who knew there were so many choices for sledge hammers?Actually there are lots more, but Lowes had four.I knew a 20-pound hammer would be more than I could handle, so that cut the choices in half.

I settled on the 9-pound, wood-handled, long-handled, really traditional sledge hammer.It does have one nice addition, which is a plastic sleeve on the 6 inches just below the head.This will help control damage to that portion of the handle that you always seem to get from smacking it on whatever you are trying to break up. That sleeve covers the handle all the way through the hammer head, and actually covers the end too.So its like a plastic sock they put on the wood before inserting it into the head.I dont know if that will cause problems as the tool ages or not. This is the only reason I didnt give it a 5.If that sleeve gets really worn it could make the head loosen.

Anyway, I worked on the blocks a little bit this fall before the snow started.What else can I say... it works like a sledge hammer very dependent on the skill and strength of the person wielding it!

A little too heavy?Well, I cant take as many whacks in a row as I used to, but I did all right!