This one might get filed under "another of Pete's crazy ideas" but...I've been doing a lot of late night sums using the Team Runamok electric hammer spreadsheet (http://runamok.tech/AskAaron/tools.html). I'm trying to see if its worth making a snail cam to try to give our planned hammer some more ooomph and maximise its grin factor.

While doing that I've been trying to work out gear ratios galore and I'm stuck in that loop of not wanting to buy anything yet until I'm 100% sure and ideally would like some options to play around with different ratios. This lead me to the https://woodgears.ca/ site and a crazy late night idea. Could we make our own gears out of 15mm HDPE? If so then we could make any ratio or mix we like and allow us to test them out.

Anyone think HDPE would be strong enough for a featherweight axe? I know chain is the normal way to go but this might be an alternative and as a bonus I can make them with my boy on the bandsaw or CNC router so another chance to learn something for us both.