Old timer at the scrapyard told me I was ruining my hammers

I was sorting through a pile of rusty junk at the yard last Saturday, looking for some decent salvage steel. This guy, must have been 80, walks over and watches me for a minute. He points at the hammer in my hand and says 'son, you're gonna kill your wrist swinging that thing if you don't dress the face right'. I had no clue what he meant. He showed me how the edges were all sharp and chipped, said I needed to round them off so the metal wouldn't spall. Spent the next hour listening to him explain how he's used the same ball pein since the 1960s. Made me feel like an idiot but also grateful. Anyone else run into an old timer who called you out on something basic like that?

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matthewross6d ago

Actually, spalling is when the metal flakes off, you just need to round the edges to avoid mushrooming.