Resting your hammer toward the heel of the anvil will limit the amount of heat that it develops, improving your efficiency and avoiding the removal of moisture from the handle.
When forging or modifying shoes, where do you rest your hammer on the anvil?
Where you set it down could influence your efficiency and be detrimental to your tool, says Drummond, Wis., farrier Roy Bloom of Bloom Forge.
“When you’ve been working for a little while, the anvil develops heat,” explains the Hall Of Fame farrier. “The hammerhead develops heat in it. If you rest your hammer so that the head is in the middle of the anvil, it will continue to suck all that heat that you’ve been working on.”
When the hammerhead gathers heat, you’ll find that your handle will undergo changes.
“The heat that’s being developed is sucking the moisture out of your hammer handle,” Bloom says. “Eventually, with that moisture being taken out of there, the hammer will loosen up.”
So where should you rest your hammer?
“It gets cooler out toward the heel,” he says. “You can rest it back there and it’ll stay a little cooler.”
This tip and many others can be found by watching the 14-part educational video series featuring Bloom demonstrating various tool maintenance and forging techniques at americanfarriers.com.
Do you have a helpful tip that could benefit other farriers? Send them to Jeff Cota at jcota@lessitermedia.com.
