That hammer in from the Ed's shop demo changed my whole approach

I watched Ed Caffrey do a hammer-in demo at Quad-State back in September. He showed how he sets his anvil height by letting his arm hang loose, not by some rule. I had mine way too low for 6 years. Has anyone else had to completely reset their setup after seeing someone else work?

2 comments

2 Comments

ivan87312d agoMost Upvoted

Start by saying I think you're overthinking this. I've been using the same stump for 12 years, never measured my anvil height once. My arm hangs where it hangs, my back hurts sometimes, but I still make knives that sell. That whole "exact anvil height" thing is a crutch for people who want to blame their tools instead of their technique. Quad-State is great for ideas, but half those old timers have setups that would make a chiropractor cry. You probably wasted 6 years making decent stuff with your "wrong" height anyway, so what's the real problem? Change it if it feels good, but don't act like a demo from September rewrote the rules of blacksmithing for you.

robin77711d ago

Man, @ivan873 has a solid point there. Seriously, I've been at this for about 8 years and I only changed my anvil height once, after my friend's back gave out and I got paranoid. My first setup was a railroad track on a log with a flat spot, and I made plenty of decent wall hooks and bottle openers. Never measured anything, just stood there and swung. You don't need to reinvent the wheel from a single demo, just tweak it if your shoulder is barking at you after an hour.