The finest screwdrivers in my toolbox are from the German company, Wiha. I was going through Amazon store looking for a second set to buy and ran into this:
What do you think this costs? Go ahead and guess!
Let me help you with the description:
Wiha 80299 Dead Blow Sledge Hammer, Medium Hard Face, Recoilless, Polyurethane Face, Hickory Handle, 3.9" Face, 43.2" Overall Length
This is how much it costs:
http://www.amazon.com/Wiha-Recoille...9?s=industrial&ie=UTF8&qid=1407648852&sr=1-39
Price: $308.26
I guess if we can by little cables for thousands of dollars, why not a hammer that costs $300?
The tool mentioned in the original posting weighs 15.1 lbs., and while a fine tool is not a representative example of the Wiha dead blow mallet line.
The Wiha dead blow mallets are not hammers intended to drive nails. They are essentially demolition or disassembly tools, capable of precisely delivering kinetic energy with minimal recoil to a well-defined target. The interiors of the heads are filled with oil and with steel (not lead) shot. I do not own many tools, but oddly enough, I have three different sizes of these outstanding dead blow mallets.
I found out about the Wiha dead blow mallets when an American-made dead blow mallet had the coating on its handle turn to goo, then dry out, crack, and fall off. The resulting grip was not acceptable.
Early in the summer of 2005, I found myself having to move under trying circumstances. The landlord for the apartment in which I had lived for more than a decade was very gracious, and let me out of my lease. We had an agreement that I would be out of my apartment by a particular date in July. The move was going quite well, but on the last day on which I could get help from a friend, I found myself unable to disassemble the MetroWire shelving I had bought for my closet. It had been in the closet for years, with heavy loads on the shelves. Dozens of blows from a beechwood cabinetmaker’s mallet had no effect on the shelves. They would not budge. The wooden mallet bounced off the corners of the shelves.
Quite frustrated, I finally recalled that I had bought a Wiha 802/40 dead blow mallet (overall length 12 inches, 1.2 lbs), to replace the failed American tool, “just in case I need it some day” (not a recommended criterion for the purchase of tools). It took nearly a hundred blows, but the Wiha dead blow mallet finally succeeded in loosening one corner of the shelves, and then the rest were freed quickly and easily. An 802/50 (overall length 14 inches, 3.0 lbs, $63.74 in December 2013 from wihatools.com) would have succeeded with fewer blows.