Appreciation post: The old timer who told me my hammer strikes were too pretty

Guy at the scrap yard watched me forge a hook and said I was swinging like a painter, not a smith, so I stopped trying to make every hit look perfect and started focusing on speed and power, and now my drifts actually go through on the first pass instead of the fifth-anyone else get told they were doing something too carefully and it wrecked their flow?

2 comments

2 Comments

luna_craig587d ago

Hold up, I'm gonna push back on this. If your hammer strikes looked "too pretty," maybe you were actually landing them exactly where you meant to with the right face, which saves material and time fixing mistakes. I've seen too many smiths swing hard and sloppy then spend forever grinding out divots or re-flattening warped stock. Speed and power mean nothing if you're spending twice as long cleaning up the mess you made. Precision in the first place is what actually wrecked my flow, not the other way around.

gonzalez.vera6d agoMost Upvoted

My old welding teacher used to say the same thing about torch cuts, he'd rather see a slow clean line than a fast ragged one that needs grinding anyway. Guess some lessons carry straight over to the anvil too.