Why does nobody talk about hammer eye alignment in beginner videos

I spent my first two years as a blacksmith buying cheap hammers with poorly drifted eyes, thinking my handles kept loosening because I was bad at wedging. A guy at a hammer-in popped the handle out of mine and showed me the eye was slightly hourglass shaped, which meant the wedge had no shoulder to grab. Anybody else run into this issue with budget tools, or am I just unlucky with my local supplier?

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the_sarah1d ago

Right? That hourglass shape is the tool equivalent of a fedora tipping its brim at you while the handle just nopes out. Cheap hammers really out here gaslighting us into thinking we can't wedge right.