Speed101_Weaver

One last comment - after all the techno-blab I did prior about the Ti properties and how they are likely to play favorably with the nail head impact shock wave/coupling within the hammer head... the HANDLE matters significantly too. The handle/handle-padding should be stiff enough so you can keep the head directed precisely to the nail and transfer the smooth acceleration of you wrist/arm to the head, but it should be like "mush" to the shock wave coming back from the head. In geek terms again the handle should be like a low-pass filter - passing the "low frequency" slow wave of your arm/hand, but rejecting the "high frequency" ring/shock front from the nail impact. There are various viscoelastic rubbers that are significantly better at this than other rubbers. The Ti properties as noted before are very likely to put more into the nail for the same amount of kinetic energy in the head - which means less work, or a lighter head at the same head velocity and so on, but the handle should not be ignored either. OH - and the placement of the grip relative to the nodes/antinodes of the natural ringing "modes" of the handle - that aspect of the handle is big too! Think of a tuning fork - portions oscillate and others sit still - you want your hand located on a handle where it "sits still" more. That has to do with mass distribution, stiffness distribution and a bunch of stuff easier to just model on a computer directly now.

Oh, By the way - in clarification further of my first comment moments ago - it has nothing to do with the "weight" of the hammer head - in fact I was assuming equal-weight hammer heads. The three differences in material properties in steel versus Ti are significant and point in the direction of Ti probably tranferring noticably better. Also, the lower stiffness (Young's modulus)has nothing to do with how "dampening" the Ti is - both steel and Ti are very efficient "springs" and "dampening" is not the issue. The issue is does the shock from the impact at the nail head "couple" better with the distributed volume/mass of the hammer head rather than travel down the handle and to your arm. Ti fits. And mind you, I'm totally unmoved by "high tech" materials - I've worked with them all so much I don't care if something is Ti, Carbon fiber, Al, Steel - unless there are real-world merits to the differences in the particular application. As for former USSR wanting to dump Ti - yes - it is dirt cheap, and USSR has been wanting to promote use of the stuff strongly for over 10 years - not a new thing. As for mass of hammer head - it is true that "speed trumps mass" - as to kinetic energy - but you may/may not see the speed depending on how fast your muscles are and how long the hammer handle is - you really have to match the head to the user's arm (and handle) - try a few and you may eventually find what works best for your physical structure - again, real differences there.

This 97% Ti / 70% Steel assertion fascinates me. Easy to dismiss as marketing hype given the "precision" of such claims, and I have no first-hand experience, BUT - I can see a possible "HYPOTHESIS" - Tell me what you think. I think you may be fascinated too.

Steel is roughly (just shy of) 2X the "stiffness" and 2X the density of Titanium. By "stiffness" I mean "young's modulus" in engineering terms - 30 million PSI for the likely steel alloy versus 16.5 million PSI for the likely Ti alloy (6Al4V). Steel also has a lower Poisson ratio (0.25-0.30 for steel versus a rather high 0.342 for titanium). What does this all mean/how to translate? For a given load pressure, titanium squishes inward (like a spring) nearly 2x as much as steel, and bulges sideward from the impact axis more too than steel (look up poisson ratio). The hammer head mass - which carries the kinetic energy that gets transferred to the nail head at impact - is more "spread out" due to the lower density. So... when a nail hits a hammer head - a sonic/shock wave of sorts propogates through the spring/mass. The issue is how much of that shock wave transfers to the hammer head and how much makes it out to the handle and your arm. I'll assert the lower stiffness, density, and higher Poisson of the Ti all work in favor of transferring the kinetic energy of the head to the nail and less of the shock out the head and "lost" to our "lossy" viscoelastic arm/hand. Ever drive bumper cars with good bumper versus bumb bumper? Somewhat similar idea. At this point, I think I want a Ti hammer - at the right price, that is!