Framing hammers, used for framing wooden houses, are heavy duty rip hammer

Hammer

A hammer is a tool meant to deliver an impact to an object. The most common uses are for driving nails, fitting parts, forging metal and breaking up objects. Hammers are often designed for a specific purpose, and vary widely in their shape and structure. The usual features are a handle and a head,...

s with a straight claw. The hammer heads typically weigh from 20 to 32 ounce

Ounce

The ounce is a unit of mass with several definitions, the most commonly used of which are equal to approximately 28 grams. The ounce is used in a number of different systems, including various systems of mass that form part of the imperial and United States customary systems...

s (567 to 907 gram

Gram

The gram is a metric system unit of mass....

s) for steel heads, and 12 to 16 ounce

Ounce

The ounce is a unit of mass with several definitions, the most commonly used of which are equal to approximately 28 grams. The ounce is used in a number of different systems, including various systems of mass that form part of the imperial and United States customary systems...

s (340 to 454 gram

Gram

The gram is a metric system unit of mass....

s) for titanium heads. Heavy heads, longer handles and milled faces allow for driving large nails

Nail (engineering)

In woodworking and construction, a nail is a pin-shaped, sharp object of hard metal or alloy used as a fastener. Formerly wrought iron, today's nails are typically made of steel, often dipped or coated to prevent corrosion in harsh conditions or improve adhesion...

 quickly into dimensional lumber.

Typically the head will be made of steel

Steel

Steel is an alloy that consists mostly of iron and has a carbon content between 0.2% and 2.1% by weight, depending on the grade. Carbon is the most common alloying material for iron, but various other alloying elements are used, such as manganese, chromium, vanadium, and tungsten...

 and the handle of wood

Wood

Wood is a hard, fibrous tissue found in many trees. It has been used for hundreds of thousands of years for both fuel and as a construction material. It is an organic material, a natural composite of cellulose fibers embedded in a matrix of lignin which resists compression...

. Light weight titanium heads with longer handles allow for increased velocity, resulting in greater energy delivery, while decreasing arm fatigue and risk of carpal tunnel syndrome

Carpal tunnel syndrome

Carpal Tunnel Syndrome is an entrapment idiopathic median neuropathy, causing paresthesia, pain, and other symptoms in the distribution of the median nerve due to its compression at the wrist in the carpal tunnel. The pathophysiology is not completely understood but can be considered compression...

 . The milled face of the head consists of a waffle-like grid of small four sided pyramids. Nails typically used for framing have a grid of intersecting raised metal lines on the head of the nail. The raised marks on the head of the hammer grip this grid, which helps to prevent the hammer from sliding off the nail head when striking a nail. Since the frame typically will not be seen on the finished house, the inevitable marring of wood surfaces by the milled hammer face is not an issue. A hammer with a smooth striking surface is known as a finishing hammer and is used where marring of the wood is to be avoided for cosmetic reasons. Some framing hammers have a magnetized slot along the top edge of the striking surface to hold a nail. This allows the nail to be placed and driven quickly with just one hand.

The straight claw serves the dual purpose of removing nails and acting as a crow bar to pry apart (rip) lumber. It does not have as much leverage for removing nails as a curved claw hammer when using the face of the claw as the fulcrum, but the handle can be pulled to the side to greatly increase leverage by using a very short fulcrum.

Wooden handles are usually made of hickory

Hickory

Trees in the genus Carya are commonly known as hickory, derived from the Powhatan language of Virginia. The genus includes 17–19 species of deciduous trees with pinnately compound leaves and big nuts...

, an extremely tough wood, but can be readily broken if one misses the nail and hits the handle instead. Broken wooden handles can often be replaced. Single piece steel hammers are available and are the most durable, but typically do not absorb the shock of the hammer blows well. Fiberglass

Fiberglass

Glass fiber is a material consisting of numerous extremely fine fibers of glass.Glassmakers throughout history have experimented with glass fibers, but mass manufacture of glass fiber was only made possible with the invention of finer machine tooling...

 is becoming a common handle material due to its increased durability and shock and vibration absorbing capabilities. Steel and fiberglass handles generally have rubber or rubber-like grips for increased comfort and better grip. Wooden hammers have relatively little grip, which can allow the hammer to slide from the hand. Some carpenters and other users prefer this, as they can begin a stroke by gripping the hammer towards the center of the handle, and allow the handle to slide through their hand as they swing. This allows greater control during the beginning of the stroke, but increased leverage and more power when the hammer actually strikes the nail.

Framing hammers have increasingly been replaced by nail gun

Nail gun

A nail gun, nailgun or nailer is a type of tool used to drive nails into wood or some other kind of material. It is usually driven by electromagnetism, compressed air , highly flammable gases such as butane or propane, or, for powder-actuated tools, a small explosive charge...

s for the majority of nails driven on a wood framed house.

Fictional portrayals and references in popular culture

A framing hammer is a central plot element in the fourth season of the popular American television series Dexter

Dexter (TV series)

Dexter is an American television drama series, which debuted on Showtime on October 1, 2006. The sixth season premiered on October 2, 2011. The series centers on Dexter Morgan , a bloodstain pattern analyst for the Miami Metro Police Department who moonlights as a serial killer...

.

Norman Spaulding

Norman Spaulding

Norman W. Spaulding III is a professor of federal civil procedure and professional ethics at Stanford Law School.-Education:Spaulding graduated from Williams College in 1993, where he majored in political science...

 has treated the framing hammer as a discursive metaphor for the Erie doctrine

Erie doctrine

In United States law, the Erie doctrine is a fundamental legal doctrine of civil procedure mandating that a federal court in diversity jurisdiction must apply state substantive law....

's dramatic reversal of Swift v. Tyson

Swift v. Tyson

Swift v. Tyson, , was a case brought in diversity in the Circuit Court for the Southern District of New York on a bill of Exchange accepted in New York in which the Supreme Court of the United States determined that United States federal courts hearing cases brought under their diversity...

. See Norman Spaulding, The Framing Hammer of Justice, 28 Colo. L. Rev. 352 (2007).

In July 2011 Florida teenager Tyler Hadley, 17, was alleged by authorities to have bludgeoned his parents to death with a framing hammer before holding a raucous house party with friends.