Wiha Electrician's Hammer

Brace yourself, it's JakesMakes. Today, I'm here in association with Tool Talk TV. Tool Talk TV is a great YouTube channel where you can find the latest reviews for tools by tradesmen and industry professionals. And today they've sent me the Wiha hammer. Well, the Wiha Electricians hammer. Decent. Okay, well, let's get it open and let's see what the first impressions are. Use safety goggles. Okay. So my initial thoughts are this seems pretty light, actually. I think it's definitely lighter than the hammer I'm currently using. Interesting.

Lucky for me on the back of the pocket, there's some useful instructions.

Increases your efficiency. Perfect balance thanks to the optimal weight distribution for effective handling. So it's about there. You think you've got... Yeah, all of this weighs the same as that. Does that matter, though? Does it really... When you're looking for a hammer, do you go, "Oh, I want one that's perfectly balanced." I've never once thought, "I need a well-balanced hammer." But, hey, what do I know? I'm not a hammer expert. Increases the quality of your work. The flat surface on the hammer handle ensures cables and dowels are fitted into the position without causing any damage.

So basically what it's saying is you can hammer in raw plugs or wooden dowels into a surface using the soft base of the hammer without causing any damage. In the terms of raw plugs, I've never once hit a wall plug into a plaster board or a plastered wall with such force that I've damaged it. As tradesmen, we're very accurate with our tools in the amount of power that we're giving to it, so... Because most of us have been doing this thing for years. So, I've never once gone, bang, into the plasterboard hitting a raw plug in and gone, "Oh, damn it, I've gone a bit too hard on that one." And left a hammer sized hole in the plasterboard. So once again, I don't massively see this as a strong point, but anyway, I go on. Simplifies your work. Flat claws allow you to remove nails and nail clamps easily. I think this calls for an experiment.

All right. So here we have two 10mm cable clips and I'm going to hammer them both into the wood. And then I'm going to use the Wiha hammer with the straightened flat claw to prize it off. And I'm also going to use my CK hammer with the traditional curved claw and see if there's any difference. So I think what I'm noticing is you don't have to pull it back too much to get the nail out. It seems like with the other hammer, I'm having to pull it back a lot further, whereas the Wiha hammer, you're only doing short small movement. Okay. So the next one. Improves access perfectly suited for use in confined working environments, thanks to the combination of a square and round head shape. Now this is going to be this hammer's most distinguishing feature, and that is the fact, look, the head isn't circular. In fact, the bottom part of it is circular as you'd expect with any other hammer, but at the top it's got corners. Corner a hammer. A hammer with corners. Oh my God.

I did think when I found out I was going to sent the Wiha hammer, what could be so different about this hammer? Why would Wiha go to the efforts of making a hammer when there's plenty of alternatives out there? And as far as I'm aware, I've never seen a hammer with corners in before. Now, this would be great. If you're in a confined space, you want to get a cable clip and you want to hammer it into the corner of the room. So I really like that design. And I think, that's definitely a big, big selling point. It's something different. You don't see it all the time. Now, one other thing that I wanted to check with this hammer is if it's insulated. The thing is, the packet has a little symbol at the bottom saying electrician perfect. But then underneath it says non-insulated. Now I'm just a bit confused about this because as many electricians will know a lot our tools are insulated to a thousand volts. So now it's got me thinking, well, is it insulated or not? How am I supposed to know this?

So there's only one way to find out, right? Oh yeah. Insulation resistance test. Cables. Right. So now I'm going to perform an installation resistance test on the metal part of the hammer and the insulated handle. Maybe we can make this a bit better. A bit more interesting. Let's put one clip on the claw and then one clip on my little finger. Oh God. Right, I've got to start it off 250 volts first. Okay. Nothing. Right. That's good. That's good. Come on, 500 volts. Nothing. Okay. 1000 volts. Okay, so insulation resistance test shows that it's insulated to a thousand volts. Now I'll be honest. I haven't got clue whether the 1000 volts that they test, all the screwdrivers and everything is different.

Maybe it's 1000 volts AC. The voltage on my Kewtech multifunction tester could only be DC... I don't know if that makes a difference. Not a clue. I just find it really weird that in the bottom right corner of the package, it says non-insulated. I mean, is it insulated or not? So next, I'm going to take the hammer out, I'm going to take it to jobs and see what it's like. My expectations, I think it will do good. I think think it's going to nail it.

My sincerest apologies to everyone that heard that. So I took the hammer to work and as you can see here, I'm ripping an old piece of conduit off the wall. It's done a pretty good job there. And this old back box. That flat edge of the hammerhead really coming into use there. As you can see here, I'm clipping in a cable clip into the mortar and the hammer's doing an all right job. I would like to point out though that on this job, the mortar was really soft. We did a job a couple of days after which I didn't record and the mortar was complete opposite and this hammer did struggle a little bit, just not having that additional weight really made it a bit hard to nail into the mortar.

And I made a slight mistake here and needed to pull a clip out and it's done it pretty easily. So, that's good. And I just want to point out that this hammer's great. Just like any other hammer for just making holes. If you need a hole in the ceiling or a wall and you need it fast, this is the type of thing that you want to be using. Nice hole. And we've got me just ripping more stuff off the wall. Doing the job well. Okay, so here we have the hammer being used to lift floorboards. And the issue here is because of the flat head, it's not getting enough leverage on that floorboard. So it's quite difficult. And then I'm just swapping to the curved head and you can just get so much more movement out of it, pushing more force on the board. So this hammer is also good at pulling nails out the wall. Great.

All right guys. So I've been using the Wiha Electricians hammer for the past week or so, and I've come to a conclusion. So the conclusion is it's an okay hammer. It's a nice, compact, small hammer. It struggled in some areas where I needed a hammer with a bit of weight, a bit of power, that I can smash bricks out of the way or pull up floorboards. I think one of the downsides about having a pretty flat top of the head is that the floorboards... You didn't get that leverage that you'd normally get with the floorboards with a curved head. So, there was downsides for that, but then an upside was, clawing at things and ripping them off the walls was really easy. Especially cable clips that had been put on by mistake and other things that you're just dismantling.

So I think it's got its pros and it's got its cons. At the end of the day, it's a small hammer. It's great if you're in a small confined space, you want something that's a bit more lightweight. You don't need it for the power. You don't need it to hit hard. So, it's definitely going to stick in my tool box and I'll use it from time to time. But essentially, a lot of my work is... I need something a bit heavier, a bit more durable. So that is it.

So thanks for watching guys. This has been my review of the Wiha Electricians hammer for Tool Talk TV. Now, if you want to check out more reviews by myself or another tradesmen, make sure you subscribe to Tool Talk TV's channel. They've also got some great competitions as I mentioned before. So you don't want to miss out. It's a great channel and it's definitely going to be a benefit to you if you are a tradesman or even if you're just interested in tools. Also feel free to check out my channel. It's JakesMakes. Just search JakesMakes on YouTube. I won't be doing any tool reviews on there, but I might be making a few tools. That's in the future though. But anyway, I've said too much. What, have I said too much? I've said too much. Boss is saying I've said too much. I'm joking, there's no one there. So make sure you hit subscribe to subscribe, obviously.