Big and dangerous machinery, loud environment, wild working heights, exhaust fumes from engines and the pile driver, numerous ways to get injured (hopefully not), crazy humor amongst co-workers... LOVE IT!! BIG RESPECT TO PILE DRIVERS!!!
@Nicole M Tell 'em how you really feel! LMAO! Pretty sure it takes AT LEAST 2 scabs - since you need one to rig up the pile and another to operate the machinery, no?
@Nicole M LOL you must not of seen the top of the pile break off at 13:50 and almost break the pile butt's arm. The latch rope magically pushes a so called button in that friction rig? Look i get that civil construction attracts numerous amounts of roughnecks, degenerates, and former inmates but what does that have to do with being in the union or not? A union job only means you do what your job description is and nothing more. As a bridge carpenter in the south I will vouch that we do work harder in the sense of having 50 different job descriptions for the 1 "carpenter" role and being a pile butt is included. I wish I had a crew of 6 guys that has stuck together over the years and cuts up like this with each other, instead I see guys come and go all the time because most people are to sensitive to cut up like this. The guys that work on crews like this spend more time at work then they do with their own families and has always resulted in them seeming "queer" to the outside world. People in the south have always hated on union journeymen and i find it comical. Also, keep in mind you don't have to work from the neck down to be considered a "hard" worker.
Happened across this, interesting rig. My late dad did this for 45 years then I followed him into it for 10 years. Former member of Operating Engineers local 901 Winnipeg, Canada. Thanks for bringing back some memories
Around 40 odd years ago I was downtown and anyone could hear a pile driver at work as the sound reverberated - well probably across the river and then some. I had been watching workmen building houses, building roads, digging trenches, working on cars from the age of four. Naturally I was drawn west to the vicinity of the college and a couple blocks from there I spotted the pile driver banging away. I stood next to the fence with a few other Looky-Lews for the better part of an hour. Fascinating stuff and loud as hell. Eventually there was a break in the action and I had a chance to ask how hard the piling was being hit. I was told that the hammer weighed 10,000 pounds. The driver was driven by diesel and at maximum it could deliver 40,000 pounds with each blow. The clean fellow who turned out to be the engineer explained that as long as the rope connected to fuel feed on the side of the exterior cylinder was kept tight, the diesel would continue to be drawn into the combustion chamber and the blows would continue. It was a two-stroke motor that was started by lifting the Hammer/piston up to a automatic latch disconnect which was high enough above the head of the cylinder that when the hammer/piston dropped the diesel-air mixture drawn into the cylinder by the raising of the piston would detonate - driving the piling down and the piston up. In that case, in that situation, on the soil, there was no pre-drilling of a pilot bore. Several times, as I got to watch 10 or 12 pilings get hammered in, the the first and second blows were into unconsolidated soil and there was not enough rebound to draw in a sufficient charge to sustain the pile driving combustion cycle. The operator would lower the automatic latch to the top of the piston, and since the ground crew were hauling down on the control rope, as the piston reach the disconnect at the peak of the rise the hammer dropped and the banging resumed. So simple. Just really cool to watch.
Archibald Tuttle Couldn’t of said it better myself.. 👏 It’s like a piston in the engine of your vehicle.. Just on a bigger scale .. the “kill rope” reroutes the fuel in the fuel pump so it doesn’t spay diesel into the barrel.. therefore killing the hammer.. The operator lowers the trip with the hammer as the pile drives..
I started my apprenticeship in Boston pile driving 2 weeks ago and have driven 14 piles at my first job (4 days long) and now 36/140 in 5 days at my second job. All H piles. I'm with the same company still and learning allot but mostly from watching and occasionally the foreman will explain something to me but it's tough to hear 😂 Tough to figure things out at first but starting to get into the groove of things this is a cool video
Have you guys ever driven 36 inch square 170 foot concrete pile from a brage with swinging leads just saying come out to bridge construction in florida.
First job out of college was with an engineering company over Raymond International drive 15,000 80 ft step taper piling on a power house job in Louisana. Raymond was a very professional company great workers
Here in Kentucky seems bridge designers are using a lot more concrete pile instead of steel H. They do tighten up faster and require less pile in the ground. Great video!
Please, please, please tell me you all are wearing hearing protection! I was a pile driver operator back before protection was mandatory and I suffer now from hearing loss!! You guys look like you’re doin a good job, though. Sure miss those days.
I know what you mean. I retired from moving oil rigs - also loud as hell, great fun and well paying. I miss the work. I miss the dudes. I miss the machinery and equipment. I used to describe it as a bunch of big kids on a big dirt pile with big toy trucks and a huge erector set playing in the dirt!
Shit I got hearing loss from Landscaping! Chainsaws, mowers, blowers, chippers, and vibratory compactors ect. I'm an idiot to not of been on my game with PPE across the board!
Just kidding man I love seeing any footage of any driving and I've watched a few of your vids and you seem legit seem like a good group of guys do I just prefer the water work myself
@@jermaineporter1101 Hey Jermaine, hats off to the boys at Kiewit, watched them build the oroville dam spillways rebuild. Men of steel!! they were working 24-7
Love this ,it's got wrythm,had one across the street junttan h26 sounded like ' ikka boom ikka boom ,boom boom boom boom continues haha everyday at 7 am that was my alarm clock 😀
Sweet vidja man, she hitting bedrock? What are you guys workin in, hard pan or hard clay? Lookin at a map, I doubt the ground freezes that far south 😂 but it takes a few whacks to drive a locating spike.
around the 8 minute mark appears they put a wooden? block inbetween where the ram and the pile would be. would imagine this takes the most aggressive shock out of it to a level that's not going to damage the piles.
The piles/piling are pounded into unstable ground usually to bedrock. They will sometimes place hundreds of these for a foundation of a building (or bridge, etc), which this looks like what they are working on here. If you poured a concrete foundation for a building in bad soil without piles, you would have major issues once the building went up. The weight of the building would settle and could cause failure. These piles stabilize the structure.
@@iFulixzer Our local HS gym settled so much it pulled slightly away from the main building. The tore it down and rebuilt it a few years ago. I'm not sure if piles would have been the issue, more likely the ground was not compacted enough before construction.
Brings back memories of Foundation crews back in the day. Doesn't seem like much has changed - lots of angries and shit def flowed downhill fast. But great video - shows just how it is to be a pile butt. Never understood why anyone wanted the job. Doesn't pay much more than other trades.
Love the sound of these pile drivers... always want to see one, but unfortunately it’s concrete cast piles that get put in the ground.... so no drivers like these up here in Canada as far as I know.... at least in Ontario.
Beezy King I’ve never seen concrete piles here in Ontario. Only reason I watched the video was because it was concrete piles. I would never have thought concrete could stand up to the pounding without failing. I learned something without trying today.
All the god damn time, normally we reach a refusal criteria then refer back to designers and say this is solid, do you want to persevere or shorten the pile. Perseverance can mean drilling around the pile or a bigger hammer 👍🏻
I have seen wooden piles getting driven a few times over the years(I'm in the roofing trade). One of those was soft sandy soil near a river, there was 2 piles that would not drive past halfway. They would just bounce back up. The contractor said it was probably a tree trunk that got buried by the river sediment. They were going to have to drill through it & drive an extra pile alongside the ones that couldn't be driven all the way. The same area also has deep gullies, parts of which have been filled in with soil & debris from roading & construction projects. When someone wants to build on one of these areas, it can be a real pain for the piling co. when the fill included concrete slabs, old road kerb sections etc.
as a pile driver myself there is a bunch of safety stuff not happening like being 20 + ft away from hammer and while hammer is working you dont get on it
1- foundations...they keep heavy structures/buildings from sinking into the ground. 2- it varies, mostly depending on type of piling, length, and soil conditions.
P Because when you’re as cool 😎 as they are the sun ☀️ shines on them 24 hours a day. Or they’re totally effed up on drugs and trying to hide their eyes. You pick.
That one dude saying I expect you to listen is a real scumbag hater who thinks he's a man when in reality he's a homosexual I seen his kind even in my line of work real scumbag hater keep doing you bro they just hating
@@oscarguner1704 - No we like to keep people working and not slaving!! If thats the case why don't you just have one guy? He jump of and on the crane ?? Grease and drive forklift and layout since you people are so eager to be a slave !! oopps i mean work??
Those are baby concretes just sayin you wanna drive real concretes come to Washington get on some 200 footers on the water then you can call yourself a driver
Big and dangerous machinery, loud environment, wild working heights, exhaust fumes from engines and the pile driver, numerous ways to get injured (hopefully not), crazy humor amongst co-workers... LOVE IT!!
BIG RESPECT TO PILE DRIVERS!!!
LOL!!😂😂😂.
Close. Actually I’m an transportation economist who admires big machinery and appreciates hard work and the people who do this kind of work.
@Nicole M Tell 'em how you really feel! LMAO! Pretty sure it takes AT LEAST 2 scabs - since you need one to rig up the pile and another to operate the machinery, no?
@Nicole M Is there something wrong with being gay?
Everyone always talks about how this job is hard. Lmao the fukn machine is doing all the work
@Nicole M LOL you must not of seen the top of the pile break off at 13:50 and almost break the pile butt's arm. The latch rope magically pushes a so called button in that friction rig? Look i get that civil construction attracts numerous amounts of roughnecks, degenerates, and former inmates but what does that have to do with being in the union or not? A union job only means you do what your job description is and nothing more. As a bridge carpenter in the south I will vouch that we do work harder in the sense of having 50 different job descriptions for the 1 "carpenter" role and being a pile butt is included. I wish I had a crew of 6 guys that has stuck together over the years and cuts up like this with each other, instead I see guys come and go all the time because most people are to sensitive to cut up like this. The guys that work on crews like this spend more time at work then they do with their own families and has always resulted in them seeming "queer" to the outside world. People in the south have always hated on union journeymen and i find it comical. Also, keep in mind you don't have to work from the neck down to be considered a "hard" worker.
Used to live around a construction site and watched them drive piles every so often, was one of my favourite things to watch, thank you for the video!
Pilebuck from local 196 checking in, nothing but respect and love for my brothers down in the bay!!
Happened across this, interesting rig. My late dad did this for 45 years then I followed him into it for 10 years. Former member of Operating Engineers local 901 Winnipeg, Canada. Thanks for bringing back some memories
Around 40 odd years ago I was downtown and anyone could hear a pile driver at work as the sound reverberated - well probably across the river and then some.
I had been watching workmen building houses, building roads, digging trenches, working on cars from the age of four. Naturally I was drawn west to the vicinity of the college and a couple blocks from there I spotted the pile driver banging away. I stood next to the fence with a few other Looky-Lews for the better part of an hour. Fascinating stuff and loud as hell. Eventually there was a break in the action and I had a chance to ask how hard the piling was being hit.
I was told that the hammer weighed 10,000 pounds. The driver was driven by diesel and at maximum it could deliver 40,000 pounds with each blow.
The clean fellow who turned out to be the engineer explained that as long as the rope connected to fuel feed on the side of the exterior cylinder was kept tight, the diesel would continue to be drawn into the combustion chamber and the blows would continue.
It was a two-stroke motor that was started by lifting the Hammer/piston up to a automatic latch disconnect which was high enough above the head of the cylinder that when the hammer/piston dropped the diesel-air mixture drawn into the cylinder by the raising of the piston would detonate - driving the piling down and the piston up.
In that case, in that situation, on the soil, there was no pre-drilling of a pilot bore. Several times, as I got to watch 10 or 12 pilings get hammered in, the the first and second blows were into unconsolidated soil and there was not enough rebound to draw in a sufficient charge to sustain the pile driving combustion cycle.
The operator would lower the automatic latch to the top of the piston, and since the ground crew were hauling down on the control rope, as the piston reach the disconnect at the peak of the rise the hammer dropped and the banging resumed. So simple. Just really cool to watch.
fascinating
I've always wondered how they worked
Thanks for the very clear description & anecdote! :)
Archibald Tuttle
Couldn’t of said it better myself.. 👏
It’s like a piston in the engine of your vehicle.. Just on a bigger scale .. the “kill rope” reroutes the fuel in the fuel pump so it doesn’t spay diesel into the barrel.. therefore killing the hammer.. The operator lowers the trip with the hammer as the pile drives..
I had a real bad hangover this morning and had to pause the video and come back to watch it later in the day hahaha!!!
I started my apprenticeship in Boston pile driving 2 weeks ago and have driven 14 piles at my first job (4 days long) and now 36/140 in 5 days at my second job. All H piles. I'm with the same company still and learning allot but mostly from watching and occasionally the foreman will explain something to me but it's tough to hear 😂 Tough to figure things out at first but starting to get into the groove of things this is a cool video
I will start in a couple months, any tips at all?
Have you guys ever driven 36 inch square 170 foot concrete pile from a brage with swinging leads just saying come out to bridge construction in florida.
First job out of college was with an engineering company over Raymond International drive 15,000 80 ft step taper piling on a power house job in Louisana. Raymond was a very professional company great workers
"Was" lol.
Here in Kentucky seems bridge designers are using a lot more concrete pile instead of steel H. They do tighten up faster and require less pile in the ground. Great video!
I was amazed how fast your crew can drive a piling into the ground, good job. You all make it look easy but I’m sure it’s not.
The ground there is soft and wet. Rarely goes that fast. Also. Im not a pilebutt so what do i know
@@austin2466 uh in uh
I hope you guys know that your crane operator he is one of the best around keep up the good work Sod-Buster
Well aware brother.. That's my boy!
Sod is definitely one of the best.
Very successful documentary, excellent work
Imagine going to that job with a hangover
All the time
Steel piles are worse. Get three or four rigs running on a site and the ringing becomes endless.
🤣🤣this is what we do lmao
Did it for years.
All the time 🤣
Old diesel hammer that spits glob of grease everywhere.. Retired local 56 Boston, Mass!
Who did you work for?
@@23phaynes Donaldson, Then Hayward Bakker, Cashman, Testa. Aetna Bridge etc
@@23phaynes Any reason why you asked? You a dock builder as well?
Please, please, please tell me you all are wearing hearing protection! I was a pile driver operator back before protection was mandatory and I suffer now from hearing loss!! You guys look like you’re doin a good job, though. Sure miss those days.
I know what you mean. I retired from moving oil rigs - also loud as hell, great fun and well paying. I miss the work. I miss the dudes. I miss the machinery and equipment. I used to describe it as a bunch of big kids on a big dirt pile with big toy trucks and a huge erector set playing in the dirt!
Shit I got hearing loss from Landscaping! Chainsaws, mowers, blowers, chippers, and vibratory compactors ect. I'm an idiot to not of been on my game with PPE across the board!
What's up Sod-Buster I miss you brother good to see you're still running crane...
Excellent job guys !!!
Just kidding man I love seeing any footage of any driving and I've watched a few of your vids and you seem legit seem like a good group of guys do I just prefer the water work myself
maxx luebeck
To each their own brother
I'm from Dublin Ireland and I worked on a Rig for a bit did not like it so I went back to the Concrete Pumping game.🏆🏆🏆🏁🏁
Our piledrivers here in michigan are with the carpentry union, starting my pre apprenticeship soon excited to get in the trade 💪
Looks like you doing all the work and the other guys are standing around.
That's called an journeyman lol
Out Fucking Standing!!!!!
Couldn't have done it better myself!
awesome work. work for kiewit and we got 4 driving rigs and our subcontractor got 3 and we giving 90" long piles.
Jermaine Porter
Wow. 90 inch piles. So you mean fence posts. 🤣😂🤣😂
Yes. I know you mean 90 foot but that’s 90’ not 90”.
Wayne Crews apologies lol I didn’t proof read when I was writing this but yea . We doing 90’ concrete poles and 120’ pipe piles
@@jermaineporter1101 Hey Jermaine, hats off to the boys at Kiewit, watched them build the oroville dam spillways rebuild. Men of steel!! they were working 24-7
Larry Bonato tell me about it lol I’m on the LNG job in Louisiana and that’s what we’re doing
Love this ,it's got wrythm,had one across the street junttan h26 sounded like ' ikka boom ikka boom ,boom boom boom boom continues haha everyday at 7 am that was my alarm clock 😀
That sounds like money to me
Love what you do, it seems to be interesting 👍
Impressive. What is the reason for the rope that you keep winding and unwinding?
barefootski one rope is for the trip (that grabs the piston) one rope to kill the hammer (reroutes the fuel)
@@piledaddytv Thanks of getting back to me. Yes, that all makes sense.
Awesome. Local 420 checking in..
Wow! That's just amazing.
nice rig. I used to drive wood never seen concrete. #1 hammer?
Sweet vidja man, she hitting bedrock? What are you guys workin in, hard pan or hard clay? Lookin at a map, I doubt the ground freezes that far south 😂 but it takes a few whacks to drive a locating spike.
Great job guys
Nice grease gun work. Timing was on point. What a muck fuck day to slam.
I've only seen this once,with much shorter piles, why dont the concrete pile just shatter under the impact of the driver head ?
around the 8 minute mark appears they put a wooden? block inbetween where the ram and the pile would be. would imagine this takes the most aggressive shock out of it to a level that's not going to damage the piles.
Yea we use cousin blocks..
Yet you can still beak the the pile if the hammer is not plumb with the pile
They go to a 'refusal' point. That's some really organic looking stuff.
Not going to lie. There is much worse then being above ground watching a machine drive piles in all day.
Only if you are am inspector that has to count each blow
Dayumn Gina, wonder if they use that device making that noise at Gitmo
A little context would have added value for those of us not in the industry, but interested.
The piles/piling are pounded into unstable ground usually to bedrock. They will sometimes place hundreds of these for a foundation of a building (or bridge, etc), which this looks like what they are working on here. If you poured a concrete foundation for a building in bad soil without piles, you would have major issues once the building went up. The weight of the building would settle and could cause failure. These piles stabilize the structure.
cdouglas1942 I thought about that too thanks for the feedback
The building would sink and settle in the ground, not much but it would make it crooked and make doors hard to open and many other issues.
@@iFulixzer Our local HS gym settled so much it pulled slightly away from the main building. The tore it down and rebuilt it a few years ago. I'm not sure if piles would have been the issue, more likely the ground was not compacted enough before construction.
@g bonita Yes. The idea with piles is that they have to support a load. If they stop moving they've likely hit bedrock...far enough.
I was in the local 35 pile drivers and we kicked ass.
Easiest job I ever had right here
What's the most physically demanding part of the job?
Brings back memories of Foundation crews back in the day. Doesn't seem like much has changed - lots of angries and shit def flowed downhill fast.
But great video - shows just how it is to be a pile butt. Never understood why anyone wanted the job. Doesn't pay much more than other trades.
Keeps in tune
Thanks guys.
That an old cat front loader in the beginning of the video?
Love the sound of these pile drivers... always want to see one, but unfortunately it’s concrete cast piles that get put in the ground.... so no drivers like these up here in Canada as far as I know.... at least in Ontario.
Beezy King
I’ve never seen concrete piles here in Ontario.
Only reason I watched the video was because it was concrete piles.
I would never have thought concrete could stand up to the pounding without failing.
I learned something without trying today.
I wanna be a pile driver when i finish school because it pays well in Australia. Do you think its good work to get into straight after school?
You ever do any augercast or do you just to driven piles?
Justin Coe I do it all Bay bee! 💯
a lot of experts here, just shut up and let the man work.
Jeff gordon
Realest shit I’ve heard 💯
We will we will we will rock you !!!
You guys don’t get paid enough. Dangerous work
Haha very nice so many on the ground🤣🤣🤣 maybe get a new crane aswell🤣🤣
Has there been a time when driving that there's been something very hard that couldn't be gone through
Calichi is a bitch, it's pretty much concrete for dirt. Takes a 45min job to 3 hours plus of hell
All the god damn time, normally we reach a refusal criteria then refer back to designers and say this is solid, do you want to persevere or shorten the pile. Perseverance can mean drilling around the pile or a bigger hammer 👍🏻
I have seen wooden piles getting driven a few times over the years(I'm in the roofing trade). One of those was soft sandy soil near a river, there was 2 piles that would not drive past halfway. They would just bounce back up. The contractor said it was probably a tree trunk that got buried by the river sediment. They were going to have to drill through it & drive an extra pile alongside the ones that couldn't be driven all the way. The same area also has deep gullies, parts of which have been filled in with soil & debris from roading & construction projects. When someone wants to build on one of these areas, it can be a real pain for the piling co. when the fill included concrete slabs, old road kerb sections etc.
Real life demonstration of what a migraine or tooth ache is like.
haha that's funny
This might be the location on google maps:
37°42'39.2"N 122°11'42.4"W
as a pile driver myself there is a bunch of safety stuff not happening like being 20 + ft away from hammer and while hammer is working you dont get on it
Rules are written in blood and you're one of the issues. Yeah "common sense" isn't so common anymore.
🤣
Good video
is the power driver powered by hydraulic oil diesel power
Diesel
Somebody is looking out for y'all. You get a paid holiday for Boxing day! Lol
forty two wtf that supposed to mean?? Get off my comments weirdo
@@piledaddytv It means, dumb ass, that the day after Christmas is a paid holiday. And, gladly
forty two
Boxing Day is a Canadian holiday not an American holiday.
The 26th is just another work day for many in the USA.
Question why do they put these in the ground and how many can they do in a 8 hour shift.
1- foundations...they keep heavy structures/buildings from sinking into the ground.
2- it varies, mostly depending on type of piling, length, and soil conditions.
I didn't know they pre augered holes before actual piling.
i drove pile at olympic stadium in "95 with local 225
Grease it! Ok, no, now, while it's on. Go. 🤣
What's the purpose of those?
Leo's Landscape & Lawn
Stabilizes tall buildings and bridges to the foundation
Those probably aren’t made from bags of Quikrete.
😂
i don't have experience, but I'm betting they have some serious steel in there
1456 here nyc
Hanging n Banging !!
IF U AINT UNION
YOU AINT HUMAN !!
Stay safe.Carp.Lu 255.
Amazing
Pile driving asmr
Y'all the ones that cause the earthquakes!! Lol
How calendering they got each pile ?
Über veraltet Baumaschinen?
You should monetize and get paid!
two guys (plus the operator) working, two guys basically watching! So it goes------
why not use a vibratory hammer?
Why they wear sunglasses when its total cloudy?
P
Because when you’re as cool 😎 as they are the sun ☀️ shines on them 24 hours a day.
Or they’re totally effed up on drugs and trying to hide their eyes.
You pick.
I wear sunglasses before the sun completely come up and after it goes down 😎
P gotta have eye protection
Could have been an informational video if the camera wasn't jumping around so much, Cheers, Billy in Canada
Billy Proctor he’s wearing a go pro on his hard hat, do you think he’s using a fucking stabilizer? No he’s not dumb comment.
Yea sorry bro I’m a pilebutt not a photographer
There must be a lot of accidents?
Nice Day naw bro not even
Hello Kid,
What section and length are these piles? and how much do they do per day?
Francisco Villar 80’ piles bout $50/hr
I have an interview to get into the pile driving union. any advice on what i should expect for the interview?
francisco franco couldn’t tell you bro
Aif?
porque se hace pilotaje
Good honest work...but pretty boring work...I would find me something else just a little more interesting And a little more challenging
Sweet
The house shook
Let me guess. The foreman's boss didn't like you going between the framework to hook the zerk fitting.
forty two lemme guess..
You don’t have any idea wtf is going on....
Matthew Fogarty I know exactly what’s going on
That one dude saying I expect you to listen is a real scumbag hater who thinks he's a man when in reality he's a homosexual I seen his kind even in my line of work real scumbag hater keep doing you bro they just hating
Wow, driving that in there with no Vaseline. I'm sure mother earth doesn't like it.
Ingeniería de la edad de piedra.todo afuerza .cuando acabas de ponerlo ya lo estrellas te.primero drill
also , when predrilling, why not knock the dirt back into the hole
Jermaine Porter why would you do that 😂
Jermaine Porter cuz the pile has to go in it
i'm now carsick
Does a lot of gay sex happen on the job site?
Yeri çekmiş makina vuruşunu çekseydin
Why are you so many groundsmen? Here in sweden one drive the crane and one groundsman. Seems like waste of staff to be that many.
Its union thats why
yea good for you, if you need some help the crane operator has to stop genios
Jeff🤣🤣 u americans have so much to learn🤣🤣
Oscar Guner Or vice versa....
@@oscarguner1704 - No we like to keep people working and not slaving!! If thats the case why don't you just have one guy? He jump of and on the crane ?? Grease and drive forklift and layout since you people are so eager to be a slave !! oopps i mean work??
As an operator why in the fuck are you guys getting under the leads, don’t trust the equipment you will live longer
get some box iron make a h to suit piles instead of hugging that pile otherwise good vid
This is really dangerous the way you work.
all was one who don't want to work
Really dumb too grease the hammer while its running
Those are baby concretes just sayin you wanna drive real concretes come to Washington get on some 200 footers on the water then you can call yourself a driver
Same process just longer
You aint "driving"shit, the hammer is