Hand Hammer
A hammer you swing yourself, in a crafting grid. It is a modular tool: a head on a handle. It's the first way to make plates, before you have any machines, and it teaches you the mod's main lesson the hard way.
Crafting
S S S
S T S
T
S is Cobblestone and T is a Stick. This gives the first hammer: a stone head on a wooden handle.
Making a better one
Shape a Hammer Head (four cells of ingots, blocks or cobblestone) at the Tool Table, then put it with a handle (stick, rod or bone) and assemble. The head's material sets two things. How well it carries a swing: a stone or iron head lands every swing in full, but a light or soft head (bone, copper) lands only a share of it, and the hammer's tooltip shows the St you actually get. How long it lasts: about 260 swings for stone and 330 for iron. An iron head is not a harder swing: your arm sets the blow, and steel stays out of reach by hand.
Using it
Put the hammer and one workpiece anywhere in a crafting grid. The output slot shows what that piece will be after one more blow. Take it, and that's one swing: the hammer loses a little durability and the piece takes one blow's worth of work.
Keep swinging and watch the result change. An ordinary swing lands 3 St, which is 3 Fu on copper: a copper ingot becomes a Copper Plate on the fifth swing, Copper Foil on the eighth, then Copper Scrap.
At the Tool Table
The Tool Table holds a hammer in a slot of its own and spends a point of it on nearly everything you do there: shaping a part, assembling, reworking, taking a tool apart. The hammer no longer opens a forging screen by itself; forging is played at the table.
How hard you swing
Hold the hammer, sneak and scroll to pick a swing. The hammer's tooltip says which one it's set to.
| Swing | Strength | Good for |
|---|---|---|
| Tap | 1 St | Finishing, and very soft metals like lead |
| Blow | 3 St | Copper, tin, zinc, gold (the default) |
| Heavy blow | 5 St | Brass and bronze |
| Mighty blow | 7 St | Iron. Only while you have the Strength effect; it drops back to a heavy blow when that wears off |
Harder isn't better. A heavy blow on copper is 5 Fu at a time, so it's easy to swing straight past the plate.
Every swing makes you a little hungrier, and harder swings more so: sixteen heavy blows cost about one hunger point.
Shift-clicking the output is the same as taking it: one swing, and the piece goes to your inventory. The hammer only works one piece at a time, so put it back to swing again. The risk is in not counting: nothing stops you swinging a plate into foil. See Metalworking.
What it can work
A swing only moves metal at least as soft as it is strong. An ordinary blow (3 St) shapes copper (1), tin (0.6), zinc (2), gold (0.5) and lead (0.3), and can hammer nuggets into bullets (see Ammunition). A heavy blow adds brass (4) and bronze (5); a mighty blow adds iron (6).
Nothing you can swing touches steel (15). The craft simply isn't offered. For that you need a Mechanical Hammer with the right gearing.
Very soft metals move a lot with each blow: 3 St on lead (0.3) is 10 Fu a swing. Tap lead.
Wear
Unlike machines, the hand hammer wears out from normal use, like any hand tool. A stone head is good for about 260 swings, around fifty copper plates; an iron one lasts longer. A worn-out hammer is broken: it lands nothing, but you can rework it at the Tool Table instead of throwing it away. A worn head also carries a swing a little less well, near the end.