Had a vicious particle I loved. Got it out one day to clean it and found that it had cracked around the complete circumference of the ball, starting on one side of the thumbhole and ending on the other.
Hammer told me that they WOULD NOT warrant it because it had FINGER inserts in it. That was NOWHERE NEAR the crack. I tried to explain that to them, to no avail.
Needless to say, no more hammer stuff around here, EVER! (except the old school urethane stuff)