Dead blow hammers or mallets are an essential at your bench. These hammers have lead or steel pellets inside the head which move back and forth as you hit with the tool. This gives you a lot of added force behind each blow without any additional effort on the part of the user. The hammer has an actual head weight of 1/2 pound but a striking force of 2 1/2 pounds. The handle length is 8" so it is still small enough for you to hold but the head size is 1 1/4" so you have plenty of range to strike most of your jewelry pieces. Once you use a dead-blow hammer you will wonder why you struggled so long with other hammer tools.