Thread: Small hammers?
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Default Small hammers?

On 7 Apr 2006 21:36:52 -0700, "Mike S."
wrote:

Are there (claw) hammers that are specially designed for people with
small hands? I've been using my uncles hammers and they are way too big
for me to work with. I can barely wrap my hands around the grip or even
in the middle of the hammer and they feel like they weigh a ton when
I'm trying to hammer nails. I feel like if I had a smaller hammer that
actually fit my hand and weighed 16 oz (or less) instead of 22 oz then


Apparently you are using too big a hammer for most purposes, and you
probably won't feel this way with the right hammer. But I continue
below.

maybe it would make things easier. But I can't seem to find any small
hammers anywhere. Maybe I'm looking in the wrong stores or something.

Do smaller sized hammers exist? Am I going to have to look somewhere
special for them?


I can see getting a narrower handle, but at least in some situations,
it is actually easier with a standard weight hammer, or even heavier.

First the head is larger so you have a better chance of hitting the
nail. Don't laugh, anyone.

Second, with a light hammer, you have to use your arm muscles to get
enough force to push nails into hard wood etc. Undoubtedly in toto,
you use as much effort or more for each swing with a heavier hammer,
but it doesn't feel that way. The effort is greater lifting the
hammer, but that is spread out over a couple seconds, and on the
downswing, gravity contributes more and with the same amount of
muscle, the hammer hits the nail with a real whack.

The same is true about using little force or medium force when
hammering. Some nails will go in easily, but some don't. With the
second kind, one can keep hitting the nail weakly, and it won't move
or will barely move, and one can wear himself out lifting the hammer
over and over and over and over. But make an effort to use some
force, and 2 or 3 hits is all one will need usually, and it's actually
much less total effort that way.

For some uses they sell a little sledge hammer, with a head maybe 2 or
3 times the size and weight of a hammer head, with a handle about the
same size as or a little bigger than a hammer's. Now it would seem
like this would really be a lot of work to use, and it is heavy to
just carry it around for a while. But when something rather big has
to go into something rather hard, it is remarkably easy to do this
with a little sledge, 2 or 3 hits, while one might have to pound and
pound and pound with a hammer.