By PHIL PATTON "Everybody wants to be Norm," said Don Lamond, designer of Oxo's new Good Grips hammer, referring to This Old House's Norm Abrams. With sheetrock sales soaring and Home Depot parking lots filled to overflow, it was bound to happen: the designer hammer has arrived aimed at the nouveau renovator. Oxo introduced its hammer earlier this year as an extension of its line of Good Grips tools, the recipient of many design awards. Hammer, pliers and screw drivers now complement Oxo's familiar kitchen and its garden tools. With black rubber handles in shapes as soft and affable as Tim Allen, the Good Grips tools are sold not in Home Depot, however, but in such home oriented stores as Linen and Things, not far from the Good Grips spatulas and pasta tools. The hammer comes in a light model -- just 10 ounces, for $24. The 16 ounce model lists for $25. Later this fall, the sleek, futuristic Heavy Hitter hammer will go on sale at such mass outlets as Wal-Mart. With a colored rubber handle and head worthy of a astrogeologist's hammer, it was designed by Bob Brunner of Pentagram Design's San Francisco office. Mr. Brunner, who is better known for shaping computers for Toshiba and was previously head of design at Apple, was hired by Taiwanese entrepreneur John Chin to design the Heavy Hitter. "It's designed to suggest a piece of high end sporting equipment rather than a construction professionals tool" Mr. Brunner said. Once, a hammer seemed one of the most generic of products -- without style, untouched by fashion, as timeless as a folksong. There were many kinds of hammers, of course, for many purposes -- roofing hammers, tack hammers, ball peen hammers. Karl Marx himself marvelled at the power of capitalism to produce a dizzing array of hammers in the factories of Birmingham, England. Some hammers have been prized for style, but not high style. The Estwing Company, in Rockford, Illinois for decades turned out a hammer whose grip was composed of rings of leather. The old Estwing looked like boy Scout ax or K-bar Bowie knife. But a few years ago cost considerations led Estwing to substitute a blue rubber punched with holes for the leather. Now, Mr. Lamond said, low cost Asian producers have driven down the price of hammers and, some say, their quality. A a basic hammer goes for six or seven dollars in New York neighborhood hardware stores. Mr. Chin's firm was one of those Asian manufacturers. When Mr. Chin came to see him, Mr. Brunner recalls, that he began by outlining the competition and market and beginning to sell the importance of design. Mr. Chin interrupted him. "We want a Pentagram hammer." Mr. Chin wanted to rise above the hammer price wars. Mr. Brunner's approach was to conceive of a hammer in the mode of sporting goods. " It's designed to suggest a piece of high end sporting equipment more than a construction professionals tool," Mr. Brunner said. Despite its name, the Heavy Hitter was designed for "light use" by apartment dweller and its look is less macho than its name suggests. It is sleek, with a sweeping curve joining head and handle and suggesting speed and grace. It could be a rock climber's ax -- a product from the Patagonia catalog. Three holes punched through the handle, like holes drilled in race car brakes, make for lightness and imply the high technology. Five raised rubber knobs on the top protect walls when pulling nails; they look like the sole of a J. P. Tod driving shoe. The Heavy Hitter is a piece of equipment at once as precise and serious as a climbing carabinier and as soft and festive as a Nike trail running shoe. This approach is appropriate. Weekend renovation and repair, after all, have become quasi recreation, a refreshingly physical and tactile change of pace for the person who spends weekdays at the desk and computer dealing with abstractions. It's a suburban sport, like cooking out. It's no accident that Oxo introduced barbecue tools as a kind of bridge between its kitchen tools, whose softer shapes were originally conceived by Smart Design in Manhattan, and home repair tools. To design its hammer, Oxo hired Human Factors design, whose offices are in Edgewater, New Jersey. The idea was to apply the universal design approach of the Good Grips handles to home repair tools. The resulting hammer -- along with screwdrivers and pliers -- has a large, soft rubber handle and a magnetized tip to hold nails. Mr. Lamond, its designer, comes from a family of contractors. In shaping a hammer for the do it yourselfer, he said, he tried to build in the skills of a professional. "We knew we were targeting a lower skill level," he said. Professionals have tricks. "For instance," he said, "to avoid marring walls when they pull a nail they'll pick up a stub of soft wood an set it beneath the head of the hammer. We incorporated that idea as rubberized tip on the head." It is trademarked Marguard; the rubber knobs on the rival Heavy Hitter perform a similar service. So what is left for the professional? Perhaps stung by the implications of the new hammers and world of television and film that anyone can do repairs or build a house, some pros have retreated into a tough independent attitude -- they see themselves as unsung heroes, individualists--cowboys or roughnecks. This attitude is reflected in and perhaps catered to the Death Stick hammer. "Don't' just drive it, kill it!" is the slogan used to advertise the rough, hefty hammer, whose nineteen inch black hickory handle bears a skull and crossbones logo worthy of a biker's tattoo or a pirate's flag. The tool appears to have been commissioned by some new Goth local of the carpenter's union. Although the Death Stick seems worlds away in personality from Mr. Brunner's Heavy Hitter, they shared an inspiration: like the Heavy Hitter, the Death Stick took its model from sporting goods. Marty Fortier sold Death Stick golf clubs for the "grunge golf" market without much success. Three years ago he met current partner Donnie Deford, who knew hardware and established Dead On tools. The Death Stick, MR. Fortier said, is aimed at the building pro who frames houses."Instead of approaching the hammer market from a strictly technological aspect," he said, "we added a lifestyle appeal. We understand the mentality of the framer/contractor. He's a rugged individual who wants his tools to match his lifestyle and why not?" The "hang tag" on the Death Stick sounds like propaganda from the National Rifle Association or World Wrestling Federation. "Dead On tools stand for personal freedom," it proclaims, "and they salute you, the individual, for refusing to accept the status quo. " But the practicalities are not forgotten either. The $35 Death Stick is complemented by the company's "Exhumer" nail puller, which comes with two thoughtful details: a saw blade wrench of the sort framers always lose and a built in bottle opener. The Death Stick was an immediate hit. In three years, the pair went from stamping out hammers by hand to shipping 20,000 a month from a plant in Huntington Beach. Looking at the tools side by side, it's hard not to feel that the Death Stick brings the pro more than heft and style. If the Heavy Hitter and Good Grips make the home hammer user feel he has a serious tool in his hand, the Death Stick seems designed to show there's still a difference between the stock broker hammering for fun and the contractor hammering for a living. And while Mr. Brunner said that Heavy Hitter is considering a model specifically for women -- Oxo already offers them a light, 10 oz hammer -- few buyers of the Death Stick are likely to imagine that the lady might also be a carpenter. But increasingly, she is.
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