[Isaac's Grandpa]

I found this when I was cleaning out the barn getting the farm ready to sell. I don't know where Dad found it. I would have hated meeting the guy who lost it. Now I need to figure out how to rehandle it.

[theotherwaldo]

Google this phrase:

Primitive Technology: A Book of Earth Skills

-And click on the Google Book result. It's an on-line book that will have whole chapters on the care and feeding of stone hammers.

[bigfatdave]

Stone age technology is NEVER obsolete.
Sometimes you just need something to bonk with - that's called a rock, no matter how fancy your hammers get
Sometimes you need more reach for poking/pushing - that's called a stick

[PandaBearBG]

hahahahahaa

[bikerdoc]

And then came sharp rocks.

[Hans Esker]

And then came sharp-rocks-on-sticks.

Which begat sticks for throwing sharp-rocks-on-sticks,
and also sticks-and-strings for throwing sharp-rocks-on-sticks.

And so on.

[theotherwaldo]

One of the folks at the local children's hands-on museums has asked me to help them make a bunch of expendable stone-age reproductions. Ouch. This is a place where we have to import any kind of stone!

Luckily, one of our patrons just brought my sister a bucket full of tough sandy limestone nodes from Mexico. They should be good for making stone hammers and axes - much like the one shown above.

It'll give me something to do and get me back in practice. Hey, I just got a fresh gallon of undiluted vinegar. That'll do half of the work for me!

[SeekHer]

Nitpicking here...warhammers usually refer to steel or other metals hammer headed implements...

Stone club, possibly stone war club is what you have...

http://i143.photobucket.com/albums/r130/SeekHer/16thCenturyWarHammer2325in3-4lbs.jpg 16th C

http://i143.photobucket.com/albums/r130/SeekHer/17thCenturyWarHammer26in2-11lbs.jpg 17th C

http://i143.photobucket.com/albums/r130/SeekHer/StoneClub.jpg Eastern Club

[Heavy Metal Hero]

How do you know it just isn't an oddly shaped rock?

[HoosierQ]

Pretty sure that is a typical North American stone axe head. They were made by the millions over the millenium (from 13,000BC until the advent of the steel trade tomahawk). They are a common artifact all over North America where streams and glaciers provide stones the right size and shape to easily convert into a axe. North American axe heads are somewhat of a misnomer as they were often not sharp enough to chop wood with. They were used to crush bark, break open bones, fight, and basically do what people do with hammers and hatchets today. More carefully crafted, sharp stone heads are much more rare than these rough utility models. Stone axes with a hole for a handle are rarer still in North America and are most often found in Europe. Often these rough ones were easy enough to make that they would take them and lay them up in the forks of small trees and leave them there for years and allow the tree to grow around it, making a very tight fit. More often, wood was bent around to form a crude haft.

[theotherwaldo]

The photo presented by Isaac's Grandpa shows an Archaic era stone axe. These were probably used most for breaking ice, crushing the bases of small trees to the point where they could be broken, and similar tasks.

War axes and war hammers would be much smaller, proportionally similar to the one shown in the last picture from SeekHer. War axes were often sharp, as flesh is easily cut compared to wood or ice.

[Heavy Metal Hero]

Ok...

How do you know it just isn't an oddly shaped rock?

[General Geoff]

Because water doesn't naturally erode specific channels circumferentially around a stone.