Just figured out my hammer angle was wrong for about a year

I was working on a leaf keychain, trying to get a clean taper on the stem. My buddy Frank, who runs the forge over in Millerton, stopped by to borrow some coal. He watched me for maybe two minutes and said, 'You're holding it like you're driving a nail.' I was keeping the hammer face almost flat to the anvil. He showed me how to tilt it just a bit, maybe 15 degrees, so the edge of the face does the work. The difference in control was instant. How many other basic things have I been doing wrong without knowing?

3 comments

Log in to join the discussion

Log In

3 Comments

william665mo ago

My cousin had that happen with a chisel. He was getting tear-out on every piece of pine for months, just figured the wood was cheap. A guy at the hardware store saw him testing a new chisel and asked if he ever sharpened the back. He'd only ever honed the bevel. Flattening the back changed everything overnight. Makes you wonder what else you're missing when you learn from a book and not a person, you know?

2

sage_lewis105mo ago

Books give you the basics to build on.

1

sethc123mo ago

Hilarious how that happens though. You spend months fighting your tools thinking you're just bad at it, and it ends up being some tiny thing nobody wrote down. @william66 that story about your cousin is basically every DIY mistake I've ever made boiled down into one chisel. At least books can't yell at you for being an idiot while you figure it out. Gotta love learning the hard way, right?

10