The tool is identical to late 19th-century mining hammers, and the most likely explanation for its encasement in rock is that a deposit of highly soluble travertine formed and hardened around it within a relatively short time.

[1][2] The hammer was purportedly found by a local couple, Max Hahn and a female friend, while out walking along the course of the Red Creek near the town of London.

[2] The hammer began to attract wider attention after it was bought in 1983 by the creationist Carl Baugh, who claimed the artifact was a "monumental 'pre-Flood' discovery.

[7] Other observers have noted that the hammer is stylistically consistent with typical American tools manufactured in the region in the late 19th century.

One possible explanation for the rock containing the artifact is that the highly soluble minerals in the ancient limestone may have formed a concretion around the object via a common process (like that of a petrifying well) which often creates similar encrustations around fossils and other nuclei in a relatively short time.