The London Hammer: It's Real but It's Not Fantastic

Every year or so a wave of social media posts hit FB groups, X and Instagram sharing the mystery of the "London hammer" or "London artifact." It's happened again the past month and I captured some examples of posts showing how this mystery is portrayed by both creationists and UFO/Ancient aliens enthusiasts as evidence of ancient technology.
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Joel Duff (aka Dr. Duff or The Natural Historian) resources:
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[Matoyak]

I'd not heard of this hammer before, so I was curious what YEC shenanigans were at play here and then the reveal of Carl Baugh being a key player in it literally made me laugh out loud, spooking my dog and cat in the process.

[wcdeich]

This hammer, the cup in coal & the man-tracks were what kept me trapped in YEC until Glenn Kuban taught me why they've been misunderstood

[ageofrocks]

As soon as I saw this image, my first thought was "Oh look, someone left a hammer near some limestone." 😅The discoloring of the surface is typical in secondary carbonates where iron/sulfides are abundant.

That the hammer was never 'encased' in rock, in the sense of being buried like a fossil, is obvious from the dry degradation and splintering of the wood, which I'm sure would yield a 19th-century radiocarbon age.

[corringhamdepot]

I would suggest that a 19th century worker operating a Lime Kiln may haver lost the hammer he was was using to break up limestone to make slaked lime. Then 100 odd years of rain leached lime out of the kiln site and deposited it in a hollow the hammer was sitting in. I would like to investigate if there were similar limey nodules formed on other sites, It would be more convincing if it wasn't a tool associated with the processing limestone,

[LanceHall]

Was the hammer ever mentioned before 1982?

[paradigmbuster]

The sedimentary rock already had daughter elements in them before the fossil was cast. Therefore a recently entoumed object can be encased in old materials.

[LearningaboutMovies]

I cracked up at "the blacksmith shop of Tubal-Cain!"

[steveg]

Geological Society of America - Geologic Time Scale (version 6.0, Oct. 2022):

Cretaceous Period: ~145 million to 66 million years ago

[katielewis]

I've seen people argue for it being proof of time travel.

[addish]

According to Ian Juby, he argues the London Hammer’s source rock is Cretaceous sandstone of the Hensell formation. The concretion argument doesn’t make sense as it isn’t made of limestone as far as I’m aware.

[drone-]

Why can’t they use carbon data on the hammer to get answers

[howardf]

From in person viewing the concretion appears to be siderite.

[StarlightedWanderer]

Love i! If Science ever goes out of style, you've got a future in either music or adorable dog videos!

[jeffpurins]

Try turning this i to a podcast series where you bring critical thinking and common sense to these oddball blown out of proportion stories.. you can make some money.