For every job there is a tool, and a method.
I am an outlier in an arcane art: hammering. Mostly nails, but I busted a lot of things with a hammer and have driven many stakes and fence posts. I can tap down the concave in Japanese chisels and plane blades. I can peen bolts to hold forever and set saddle rivets. I’ve driven a few nails in hooves and hammer-forged tools and implements in iron and steel.
I own dozens of hammers, from 10-pound mauls with 30-inch fiberglass handles to 200-year-old upholsterer’s tack hammers. Rig axes and 28-ounce waffle-faced framing hammers. Shake axes and dry-wall hatchets. Ball-peen hammers of all weights. Shot-filled, rubber, and wooden mallets. Steel-handled Estwings and a nifty Tim Allen with a wooden doe-foot handle. Curved claw and ripping claw. Shop sledges with jury-rigged pipe handles and a 22-ounce trim hammer on which I fit an 18-inch hatchet handle.
I have hammers with friction grooves, magnets, and spring-loaded ball-bearing gizmos designed to allow the mechanic to start the nail with an awkward reach. While I eschew novelty hammers, I’ve driven more than a few staples with the hammer on a fence tool.
Doing workbench projects, my grandfather taught me to drive nails in a front-moving, circular method that I’ve never seen anyone else use and that I use only as a trick.
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Doing workbench projects, my grandfather taught me to drive nails in a front-moving, circular method that I’ve never seen anyone else use and that I use only as a trick. When my mother decided to stop paying for split firewood, I taught myself to swing a sledge and a maul. I also became adept at putting new handles on these instruments of destruction.
I installed kitchens with nails before there were cheap electric screw guns and cheaper Phillips head screws. I’ve driven Jesus spikes on log cabins and pushed wire brads into picture frames.
I’ve set a million roofing nails in a million three-tab shingles. One tap each. The same goes for 8dHG’s on cedar-shake roofs, Masonite siding, and T111. I know how to shake roof barbs in a stripper, and I can bundle and align a handful of commons while lighting a cigarette. I know 6d on cedar-shingle siding and 4d on asbestos siding.
I’ve hammered the driver on flooring machines to cover an acre. I still feed nails with an odd under-hand hold that has my fingernails towards the work; less chance of busting a fingernail. (As an aside, I believe in and use the practice of melting through a fingernail with a red-hot nail to relieve a blood blister.)
When I started framing houses, California style, it was all about driving 3 ¼-inch, 16d (penny) cement coated box nails, box nails having a smaller shank than common nails, they drive easier. Like the big boys, I could soon knock them home with one vicious swipe of a 28oz. I invented a technique for simultaneously driving two framing nails to pull crowned boards into alignment. There are dozens of guys who would still think of me when using this trick—if anyone still used nails.
I drove thousands of pounds of finish nails into trim. Turning the point to cut and not split was second nature to me. I could drive a nail flush without leaving pecker tracks and bring a nail set into play without fumbling the nails in my hand. Someone taught me the trick of setting the head of a common nail on exterior work with the head of another nail held sideways, and I extended that technique to breaking the skin on hardboard siding. I figured out it’s more effective to clip the points off nails rather than try to blunt them for a board end where splitting is a concern. I’d like to think there are dozens of carpenters who still carry Klines after seeing that trick.
I often dumped a handful of wash soap into 50-pound boxes of framing and drywall nails to make them easier to set. I greased trim nails with soap, wax, and, in a pinch, by rubbing a 4d along the side of my nose or running an 8d through my hair. I now know this lubing significantly affects the nails’ holding power.
When I first hung drywall, blue ring shank nails were the only way to go. The first nails I drove into concrete were cut nails. I was partial to Plumb brand wooden-handled hammer—steel gave me tennis elbow.
Now 90 percent of nailing on a job of any size is done with tools using pneumatics, gas combustion, electric battery, powder, or screw-together assemblies. My pride in hammering is akin to what some old boy felt in 1911 because he was adept with a buggy whip.
—Photo credit: Gaffke Photography v2.8/Flickr
It ain’t just me
Tom Lipton of OxTools has
A Hammer Addiction
http://youtu.be/0oOXzUKnu_Q
Should have called this “Hammer Time” or “Getting Hammered”.
Would have gotten much more traffic.
But thank you all for my 15 mins.
@Nick Pavlidis in re pulling crowned boards together… Grab 2 nails, overlap the heads, align as one and drive the high side unit at an angle into the low side board. Assume you are using a big boy hammer with a head big enough to cover both heads- a lot faster than the crimp & clinch. in re heads- just clip the point of with a pair of cutters, I’m a fan of Kline side cutters. With no point the nail acts more like a gimlet and doesn’t split the wood as often. A nail oriented so the long axis… Read more »
New sheathing and siding on my old New England farm house. They used whatever wood was around, a lot of it reclaimed barn beams and usually that was eastern white pine but for the sill they used 8×8 hickory timbers.
I thought of you today as I constructed a saltbox style chicken coop – decided to forego the pneumatic nailer and get out my 28oz framing hammer. Thanks for the motivation.
@Nick Pavlidis yeah well when you have arthritis in your hands….
as i do……
@Nick- I’d need to remove my shoes & socks to cipher like that.
A Ramset would drive into hickory- coming soon is another submission that features pilot holes.
What you call sinkers I call box nails.
I suppose “coated sinker” is a bit redundant, because to me a sinker is a coated box nail. But I’ve found that the redundancy is helpful, because if I just ask for sinkers I might get bright box nails. When I was a kid I had an older half-brother who brought home a shop-made steel drilling hammer made from a bolt of 318 stainless with the handle TIG-welded to the head. I’ll never forget the shock that reverberated through my body when I first tried using it, and from then on developed an appreciation for hickory handles. My steel driver… Read more »
Got a pic of all the hammers? Great story.
@Archy photo of some at the bottom of http://standup2p.wordpress.com/2011/07/31/hammer-2/.
Almost never photo hammers- actually the pic from above may be the only time I did.
Planes, arcane tools & drills I do photo. http://standup2p.wordpress.com/category/cat-skull-studio/
Part of my therapy into ending depression was cleaning up the family shed n doing various woodworking projects. It’s amazing the therapeutic effect, and a good feeling when your collection of tools grows. I really appreciate the pics, thank-you.
@Archy should the black dog revisit- my shop could use some attention….
Here’s is a slide show of some of the tools I rescued, from going to the mongo yard, for $25-
http://standup2p.wordpress.com/2012/05/20/20-may-2012-1602-2/
My next mega project is a homebuilt CNC router. If the black dog returns I think I’ll bury myself in that for quite some time. But that’ll be after I pay off my debts:P
Nice find with the tools. I still have to do more to setting up my lil workshop, I recently did some work on my car installing an audio system, making custom speaker baffles and that really helped boost my confidence. Love my shed <3
Yeah a router is sort of a separates the big boys from the kids tool. Do not fool around with the black dog- I know exercise works to alleviate the symptoms as well, but not as well as modern meds. In the 70s Stereos were a big deal and it escaped me- I can tell the differerence between a clock radio and a name brand boom box, but not the difference between a Sony turntable and a Bang & Olufson. Cars kind of got by me…… My brother pointed out years ago that maybe we aren’t As manly as we… Read more »
I like the audio and paintwork, rest of the car tends to bore me:P I don’t think men are defined by their like of a car. They’re too damn expensive to get too involved with, customizing n upgrading bits n pieces quickly adds up:( But the sense of pride in myself after fixing it all up was immense, that’s what I loved the most.
Boy do I identify with this story. And it reminds me how much I do miss my Estwing shake hatchet. But no hammer seems to be able to drive a 16d HDG into a 140 yo hickory beam. I’ve tried, and have a bucket of bent nails for my troubles. 20d and 30d seem to do the job, as do coated 16d sinkers. Maybe they just don’t make nails like they used to? ps. I hope this story is not literal. I mean, you should have driven 4 million nails into a million three-tab shingles, 6 million in high-wind areas.… Read more »
Best author bio ever.
Inspiring. It makes me want to read anything this guy wants to write. Instructions on the use of a Bluetooth headset, I would read from this guy.
Hah
Pshaw.