Took me 6 months to realize I was screwing up my hammer swings

I was getting these weird divots in my work, not consistent strikes at all. I thought it was the steel quality or my anvil face being too hard. Then my neighbor Bob stopped by my garage shop and watched me for maybe 2 minutes. He said 'you're holding that hammer like it's a throwin' axe, not a tool.' I was gripping way too tight and swinging from my shoulder instead of using my elbow and wrist snap. Bob showed me on one piece of scrap how a loose grip and shorter arc gave way cleaner hits. That small fix cut my finishing time on a set of fireplace tongs from 3 hours down to maybe 1.5. Has anyone else had a basic mechanic like grip or stance mess them up way longer than it should have?

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tyler_hernandez3mo ago

Ha! @abby_kim55, sounds like our Bobs need to start a roadside hammer grip hotline.

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abby_kim553mo ago

And building off what you're saying with Bob's fix, the grip thing is huge and I think a lot of people don't realize how much tension they're carrying. In my experience, once I loosened my grip on the hammer, it also changed how I was standing at the anvil. My stance got more stable because I wasn't fighting the tool anymore, my whole body just kind of relaxed into the rhythm. That extra tension probably cost me months of bad work too, it's wild how one little thing like grip pressure can ripple through everything else you're doing.

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