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Tried a borrowed power hammer from an old timer in Dayton and it wrecked my rhythm completely

I spent 20 years doing all my heavy work by hand and figured I'd give a power hammer a shot on a batch of 10 railroad spike knives. Man, I was off on my timing and ended up with a bunch of deformed blanks that took twice as long to fix as just forging them normally. Has anyone else had a tough time switching from hand hammer to power tools for certain projects?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_dakota6d agoTop Commenter

...and ended up looking like I was having a seizure trying to time my strikes with the hammer! I feel you on this one, I borrowed a power hammer from a buddy and my first batch of leaves looked like they got hit by a drunk Mjolnir. It's like your brain knows what to do but your hands just refuse to cooperate. The worst part is how humbling it is when you've been telling yourself you're decent with a hammer for years. I went back to hand hammering for a week just to feel like I knew what I was doing again.

xenarobinson6d ago

The drunk Mjolnir comment got me good because that's exactly what happened with my first go at a power hammer. Borrowed one from a guy down in Springfield who swears by them, brought it home to try forging some bottle openers, and ended up with lumps of steel that looked like abstract art. Your brain really does know what to do but your hands are just flailing around like they forgot twenty years of muscle memory. The worst was trying to walk it back to the anvil and just standing there staring at my hammer for a solid minute like "you're supposed to help me feel normal again." I had to go back to hand work for two weeks before I stopped feeling like a total rookie.