Hammer control question

[Boo68W]

I am just learning about blacksmithing as well as internet forums so if this question has already been asked and I missed it I apologize. 

I have been doing a very large amount of reading as well as watching several videos on bladesmithing as well as blacksmiths and one thing I have noticed is that when someone is swinging the hammer their hand is choked high on the handle. Is this to find the point of control vs power? Or is it a personal preference? 

Also if there is anyone in the central or Southern tier of NY that wouldn't mind helping me I would greatly appreciate it.

Adam F. 

[Frosty]

Welcome aboard Adam, glad to have you.

How you hold your hammer can be the result of a number of things. Basically though choking up is more accurate but it also takes less strength. A lot of new guys think they need the heaviest hammer they can swing. They screw up a lot of work because they can't control it and sometimes injure themselves. I recommend a guy get nothing heavier than 32 oz. to start and a drill hammer is near perfect it's smooth faced and shorter handled weighing around 32 oz. It's heavy enough to do serious work but light enough to not tire you out quickly nor make mistakes permanent quickly.

Another hammering tip is do NOT hold your thumb on top of the handle! It makes a direct line up your skeleton to your shoulders so any recoil is conducted through joints to the top. Think tennis elbow, bersitus, etc.

Frosty The Lucky.

[Boo68W]

The thumb trick I have already learned from being a young dumb bull when I was younger working in plumbing. I have no grand illusions that my first time out I'm going to produce an amazing knife, some day yes, today no. Thank you for the reply and I am sure I will have more FNG questions.

[swedefiddle]

Good Morning, Boo

Welcome from the Left Coast of the Island some call North Hamerica.

Ideally the Hammer Handle is held between the thumb and side of the fore-finger. This allows the ability to whip the Handle in your hand and gain more momentum.

The true sign of a good Blacksmith, is not the quality of the finished product. The true indicator is the size of the rubbish Pile, or 'Lessons Learned Pile'. Do not be ashamed as the pile grows, it is a true sign of accomplishment.

Neil

[gote]

I think height of anvil is an important part of hammer technique. Read Glenn's sticky about it.

I also think that the attention should be directed to whatever you are hitting rather than on what you are hitting with. When it works well, the hammer head is just an extension of your limb just as your fist or forefinger would be. When you sock someone on the jaw you think only on hitting the jaw not on where your thumb is.

Trust your body. It knows unless it has been confused by bad advice. If you want power, you hold thumbs down far from the head. If you make small adjustments the hand will naturally choke up to the head and the thumb will creep up. That is OK (in that situation). Some of us use a heavier hammer because we can and some of us choke up because we want extra control but some of us use them because of ego and they will choke up because it is easier to lift it that way.

Sometimes a heavier hammer is a boon. If you hit with a light hammer, the deformation tends to be more on the surface whereas a heavier hammer will penetrate deeper. I normally use a 2.5 hammer. When necessary, I use a 4 but only a very short while since it is tiring and the going is slower. If you are tired you loose control. First missed hit: take a pause. Third missed hit: call it a day.

   

[yves]

After a while and I mean a while, you hand will slide to the point on the handle where you need it to be to send the hot iron where you want it to go and in the shape you want it to end.

Of course do what you do now, read, ask questions and then you will know. Knowing will permit you to avoid the caveats mentioned by the older folk here (Frosty). But most of all swing a hammer.  Spend the time, hours, as often as you can hammering hot iron. That time is the one necessary for the hammer to become part of your hand. And then, after a while, sometime, you will accelerate the mass called the hammer at the proper speed, direct it at the proper spot and send the hot iron where you want it to go. 

After a while, your hand, your whole body will integrate what your mind knows. After reading for a few hours, your mind will learn and know. After hammering for days and weeks, months, your body will know. There is no fixed period of time here. It is a process. The body is longer to learn than the mind. As we say in french, "C'est en forgeant qu'on devient forgeron". Roughly translated : "You become a blacksmith by blacksmithing". The process is never ending. I have been at it for 7 years and when people ask me what I do, thinking of all the guys here and some that I have met who have been at the game for hundreds of years, I answer "I forge" rather than say I am a blacksmith. 

[Glenn]

3 hours ago, gote said:

First missed hit: take a pause. Third missed hit: call it a day.

Three strikes and your out?  

Thanks Gote, I got to remember that !!

[Boo68W]

3 hours ago, gote said:

I think height of anvil is an important part of hammer technique. Read Glenn's sticky about it

 I found Glenn's sticky the other night and I'm glad I did because I hadn't given the hight of the anvil much thought other then waist hight and from my experience as a plumber that's what tends to be comfortable for me. 

I did manage to scrounge a brake drum last night from the local DPW so if it stops raining at some point I am going to build my stand and forge. 

[Charles R. Stevens]

For most folks I would advocate against a brake drum as to the PITA of sourcing 2" pipe fittings to build a tuyere, but for you that shouldn't be an issue. But I will still go on to say, a 2 into 8" bell reducer makes a far better fire pot. Bend a peice of 1/2" square into a "S" that droped in the bottom and sets on the top of the 2" nipple. Bend a peice of 1/4x1 flat the hard way to make a flange so it dosnt fall threw and then find a peice of steel atleast 2' across (1/8" in plenty thick) an old Steel desk, 55 gallon drum cut to Anvil hight ect will work. 

Mine of the Saltfork Craftsmen members has a jem of a forge built like that, he forged a rim from 1x2 angle, and forges and riveted legs and fitted a wind shield. Peaple swear it's a 100 years old. 

 

Any way, I still think brake drums are best left on cars. 

Now all this is said assuming you are burning coal, if you plan on using charcoal, save yourself the headache and build a side blast. 

[JHCC]

When you're hitting with a hammer, the two most immediate objectives are accuracy and force. Accuracy is self-explanatory: the hammer goes where you want it to go to move the metal in the direction you want.

Force is (in simplest terms) how hard you hit -- in other words, how much you will move the metal in the chosen direction. It is a combination of how heavy your hammer is and how fast you swing it. A heavier hammer moving at a slower speed can hit with roughly the same force as a lighter hammer moving at a faster speed, although the momentum of the heavier weight will tend to transfer its force more readily to the center of a larger workpiece. A heavier hammer moving fast will produce the hardest blow, but will be harder to control and may distort your workpiece beyond your desired metal-movement. At the same time, a longer handle will produce greater leverage and greater head speed (and thus more force), but magnifies small side-to-side movements of the hammer hand (thus reducing accuracy).

Now, effective hammering comes from a balance of accuracy and force. If your hammer is heavier than you can control, you lose accuracy. If it is super-light, it's super easy to control, but less likely to be effective when working on heavier pieces. What you have to do is balance the size of the hammer to the size of the workpiece, to produce the effect you want (i.e., the amount of metal moved and the direction of that movement), within the range of your individual combination of strength and skill. This is one reason that we smiths have so many hammers (apart from sheer acquisitiveness!): the appropriate hammer for small detailed work might be totally different from the hand sledge for heavy-duty drawing out or upsetting. There's also the matter of prior training and individual taste: some people like the feel of a whippy 2-2.5 lb cross peen, while others swear by a 3.5-4 lb rounding hammer.

So why choke up on the hammer? In a nutshell, to increase accuracy. Sure, you lose some leverage and head speed, but the loss in force can be more than compensated for by increasing the weight of the hammer. Indeed, a really heavy hand hammer (something in the 6 to 8 lb range) practically requires choking almost all the way up to the head, but it can (in skilled hands) move some metal right quick.

[Boo68W]

Thank you all for the information. I definitely am getting excited about starting the process. 

[tdaleh]

Had someone tell me to lean hammer control go buy 4 pounds of 16 penny nails and a 4x4 and drive them in with a rounding hammer . You bend quite a few  to start with but it teaches hammer control .

[Michael Cochran]

18 hours ago, Boo68W said:

The thumb trick I have already learned from being a young dumb bull when I was younger working in plumbing. I have no grand illusions that my first time out I'm going to produce an amazing knife, some day yes, today no. Thank you for the reply and I am sure I will have more FNG questions.

I don't think anyone else noticed but I couldn't help but notice. Your abbreviation in your last sentence could potentially get you in trouble. We strive to maintain a 'G' rating on this forum, please keep that in mind as you post. 

As far as your question goes, practice is a big thing. I was accustomed to swinging a hammer before I started smithing due to being a carpenter. I would definitely agree with he suggestion tdaleh made. Drive enough nails and you'll learn how to aim a hammer.  

[duckcreekforge]

If you really want to learn to swing a hammer, learn to pound back previously bent nails from 2 X 4's. You'll swing the hammer in every direction to get the nails to cooperate, plus you'll be doing someone a favor cleaning up, and no one will get a nail in their foot..

[Boo68W]

I have a lot of experience with a hammer in my hand just in a different capacity then blacksmithig. Before I found the career field I am in now I was a plumber for 10 years. I understand the basics of a swing I just hav very little exposure to someone choking so high. 

[Kozzy]

Unless I missed it, I don't think anyone has mentioned having a "death grip" on a hammer yet.  Really bad mistake that most people make early on is to have that death grip to compensate for experience and muscle memory.  It'll not only fatigue you, it can do damage to your body and hand.  And..the death grip actually reduces control rather than enhances it.

I've mentioned a movie line before because it tends to fit here also:  In the movie a young guy was being taught to draw and shoot a pistol in the old west.  The instructions were to draw and shoot without touching the gun.  It was meant as a bit of a joke in the movie but is a good representation on hammer control in smithing.  You are almost not holding the hammer--you are guiding it after throwing it at the work.  It takes very little grip, you have lots of control, and it doesn't rip up your body.  Hard thing to describe but once you start to feel it yourself you will notice that you are almost hammering without touching the hammer like the movie line says.

Frosty mentioned a drilling hammer--Good starting hammer and not expensive.  I second his advice.

[Frank Turley]

...and have a fairly loose grip so the hammer rocks slightly in the hand. Think about the work-holding hand. As a beginner, I would try to forge a square cross section, and I often got a parallelogram section. I thought it was my hammer hand error, but it was my holding hand not turning the work 90 degrees.

A guy told me that when he was learning house building, his mentor charged him 50 cents for each owl eye left around a driven nail (meaning a hammer mark on the wood). He quit leaving marks after one day.

[Boo68W]

38 minutes ago, Kozzy said:

Unless I missed it, I don't think anyone has mentioned having a "death grip" on a hammer yet.  

Already learned that one. Nothing like losing feeling in your entire arm and shoulder lol. 

[Judson Yaggy]

Hammer control comes with practice.  Forge a thousand tapers, use all the above advice to not damage your arm while doing it, but practice, practice, practice.  I'm not kidding about a thousand tapers.  Precision comes with both good technique and muscle memory and there is only one way to get muscle memory.  

[Boo68W]

When I first started in the trades I had an old timer tell me something that didn't stick for a few years until I notice my shoulders always hurt. " Just because you can hit something hard enough to get the job done in two blows now doesn't mean a xxxx thing years from now when some doctor says thanks because of you I can go to the Bahamas for three weeks instead of two."  I am noticing in a lot of the comments and a lot of my reading the same principles are applying to a lot of this craft. 

[Boo68W]

Well it isn't pretty by any means but today wasn't bad. I didn't get burnt, I learned how not to start a fire and I was able to make a hideous plant holder. 

[Frosty]

The only problem I see is trying to think of a reason you'd want to hold hideous plants. Wait, it's to keep them from sneaking into the house and stealing your cookies!

That's not a bad start and it'll be good practice explaining to folk how many years it took to learn to produce something just like that! It's no coincidence BlackSmithing and Bull Shooting are abbreviated the same you know.

There are some good learning projects in the beginner project section on IFI.

Frosty The Lucky.

[Boo68W]

9 hours ago, Frosty said:

The only problem I see is trying to think of a reason you'd want to hold hideous plants. Wait, it's to keep them from sneaking into the house and stealing your cookies!

That's not a bad start and it'll be good practice explaining to folk how many years it took to learn to produce something just like that! It's no coincidence BlackSmithing and Bull Shooting are abbreviated the same you know.

There are some good learning projects in the beginner project section on IFI.

Frosty The Lucky.

Wait... Someone has cookies???????

I learned a lot in the short amount of time I had to play around and I didn't burn myself or set anything on fire and I was able to sort of make what I was aiming for.

I can not thank you all enough for the advise it really did help and as soon as I started moving the hammer a lot of the advise made sense.

[Frosty]

You're out of cookies!? That hideous plant's name isn't Audrey is it? Start forging BIGGER hideous plant holders!

Be patient, you'll burn yourself but please try to not burn things down.

Most of this stuff is common sense but not until you have a set of references for the craft. The most important tip I have today is, have fun.

Frosty The Lucky.

[rockstar.esq]

Another reason for choking up on the hammer is to reduce weird bounces when you're using the corner of the hammer face as a fuller.  That's probably covered in the "more control" answers above, but it's important to understand that blacksmiths don't always land a square blow like a carpenter driving a nail.

Some blacksmiths use square sided hammer heads like cross and straight peins by striking with the corner formed by the face and the head.  Others use rounding hammers with squashed ball profiles to get a variable radius on their point of impact by tipping the head in relation to the work.  Look for videos on the Habermann (sp?), Hofi, Clark, etc techniques for examples of the former, and Brian Brazeal, Techinus Joe, Young International Smiths, etc. for the latter.

Some of the heavy rounding hammers have a square sided flat face, and a round sided ball face to get the best of both techniques.