Homemade cam hooks

Just out of curiosity is it possible to make your own cam hooks?

Conceptually, a cam hook is a piece of 4140 flat stock that's bent over a radius and then heat treated. You could do this at home with basic hand tools and a torch.

Realistically, I'm pretty sure the actual shape of cam hooks has been tuned enough that you're going to have a lot of trial and error.

Piggybacking on this topic, does anyone have experience making your own beaks? I’m sure they’re stamped, and probably impractical to make/forge at home, but am just curious.

sure, you can make your own, it's just a bent piece of metal. Given that you only need a handful of cam hooks, it is very unlikely that this is a cost-effective approach compared to buying them. 

If you decide to buy them- pretty good deal on them here:
Grandwall Equipment

I got their hook set too.. seems good 

Manderson198 wrote: Piggybacking on this topic, does anyone have experience making your own beaks? I’m sure they’re stamped, and probably impractical to make/forge at home, but am just curious.

To my barely trained eye, the Moses Tomahawks are water jet cut with the beak taper milled.

I've made custom beaks with a slightly concave blades similar those old lucky curved knifeblads and SMC shallow angles. they were my expando slayers.
When I made them I tosses out efficiency of material usage in favor of using the metals grain to complement the design I was aiming for.  
***to elaborate I wanted the grain of the metal running parallel to the blade of the piton, in all reality I am not sure how much difference this really makes, if you buff down production BD peckers you will notice the grain going in all sorts of ways.
I shaped some of these with hacksaws and files, others with a diamond bandsaw and and assortment of wheels. I annealed the metal I was using first to make the job easier and then finished it all off by doing my heat treatments the old school way.. stuff like loss of magnetism when red hot and color/shades of metal. I played with several quenching solutions like brine and old motor oil. I pretty much just referenced an old tool making book throughout the entire process.

perhaps some real blacksmiths will chime in. 

I really need to make another set of them along with some large hooks, when I do so I will post up the process for those who are interested.

Everett wrote:

To my barely trained eye, the Moses Tomahawks are water jet cut with the beak taper milled.

Honestly, I'd love to hear about someone making their own with a hacksaw and a file. That'd be almost as awesome as Mr. Moses himself giving the poop on the manufacturing processes.

Update: Well! https://mosesclimbing.us/home/tomahawks/ : "Heat-treated 4130 chrome-moly steel .. Laser-cut shape"

Right on! Good call on the laser cutting.

Kristoffer wrote:  ...

I really need to make another set of them along with some large hooks, when I do so I will post up the process for those who are interested.

That’s cool about your previous experience. I would think the only time the direction of grain matters is with the taper, where you might be more concerned with durability of the tip.

I’d love to read the follow up if you get to making some more. Making something like a pika or some wider cam hooks seem fairly straight forward, at least more so than a beak.

in my experience the left and right are nice in corners, but not exactly critical. I opt for straight ones because they are more versatile. Moses' beaks are so heavy that I would rather just have a jack off all trades version that I can use not matter the orientation.. buts thats just me.     

Right on re. the left/right. I would think they would be most beneficial if you are hammering/cleaning. At least with hand placing, in my experience, I get a bit of cam action from tight corner placements, if nothing else from the wire/webbing displacing the bottom.

haha good catch Nolan. I guess its all so relevant, beaks are also known as peckers. 

Yeah, oil is going to be sufficient (and less violent) for chromoly steels. If you have confidence in the material you have and you're ever curious about heat treat, lots of manufacturers publish instructions. You have to adapt them to home use, but info like quenching medium and tempering time/temperature are really good to have.

I'd love to see some test results from forged versus machined beaks, but I'm sure as hell not good enough with a hammer to find out.

I made a set of my own cam hooks out of some scrap tool steel. I cold forged them over a 1" radius. Slung them with some 1/2" tubular and the honestly they work great. I probably should heat treat them but they've made it through a number of placements on a couple walls and I'm satisfied with the shape and size of them. I can post some pics if there's any interest. 

Canadian Alpine Tools is a small shop selling handmade pins/hammers/etc.
https://www.instagram.com/canadianalpinetools/?hl=en

TJH wrote: I made a set of my own cam hooks out of some scrap tool steel. I cold forged them over a 1" radius. Slung them with some 1/2" tubular and the honestly they work great. I probably should heat treat them but they've made it through a number of placements on a couple walls and I'm satisfied with the shape and size of them. I can post some pics if there's any interest. 

Would definitely like to see those pics, I’ve been thinking of trying this recently.