Beware the hammer
Taming the most brutal tool
Monday again. I hope you hammer through another good week. ~JRC
"If all you have is a hammer, it is tempting to treat everything as if it were a nail."
This oft-quoted assertion is attributed to Abraham Maslow (the American psychologist best known for his "hierarchy of needs"). But the idea has deeper origins in human history. A similar British expression that predates Maslow's use is "a Birmingham screwdriver," which alludes to a hammer (and suggesting a somewhat unpolished reputation for Brummies). Everyone from Mark Twain to Warren Buffett to Barack Obama has said their version of the phrase. But regardless of where it came from or in what variation it’s uttered, the meaning is simple: a narrow view of things leads to a narrow-minded approach. But it can be taken quite literally to mean a hammer.
And a hammer will make a mess of things if you aren't careful.
Oh, Hammer, you brute!
Sure, nothing works better than a hammer when the job calls for it. The aforementioned nail, for example. Hammer and nail go together like a screwdriver and screw. (Note to self: a subject for another essay?) But hammers are also excellent for demolition. They're made to tear down stuff. Give one to a three-year-old to see how intuitive this is.
Disintegrating something with a hammer is, without a doubt, child's play.
Few jobs are as specific to a hammer as the nail or as purposefully destructive as demolition. More often than not, we use this tool to do things in a more nuanced way.
Nudge a piece into place. Loosen a frozen part. Check for weaknesses in structure. We employ the hammer in these instances because using our hands alone will not suffice, and there's no other tool for the job. (Or, as common, we don't have a better tool handy.)
But to wield a hammer carelessly is to invite disaster. Using one takes finesse, a quality not often associated with the tool. Even when used for nailing, one of its primary jobs, things can quickly go sideways. There isn't a carpenter who hasn't whacked his thumb at least several dozen times with a hammer. So utilizing one for almost any reason can end in disaster.
Why are hammers so challenging? Somewhat ironically, it must owe to the simplicity of design. Hold a hammer and swing it. The action takes little to perform, and the result is instantaneous. It's so effective that a hammer is commonly used. And quickly abused.
With a hammer, we often start soft, almost threatening the object that refuses to budge. The beatings will increase until this thing comes off. But when it doesn't move, our demons take hold, cajoling us into doing it again and again. A little harder will be enough, we think - just a little more. Don't let this thing beat us - beat it instead!
Such pounding seldom ends well, and we are left to pick up the pieces.
If you've damaged something with a hammer and feel embarrassed, please don't. Anyone who makes, tinkers, or fixes things has overused a hammer a time or two (or many). I have. Too often to count. There's something compelling about a hammer that leads us to abuse its power. Indeed, it's an empowering tool, if there ever was one. So when faced with something that won't yield to our nudging, wrenching, or turning, a hammer seems like a logical means to regain control.
There’s a hammer for that
Up til now, I've been speaking of hammers as a single monolithic thing. The most common is a claw hammer explicitly designed for driving and removing nails in wood (but used for a multitude of things). It's the one in every homeowner's tool drawer. But it's far from the only kind of hammer.
Hundreds of hammer styles exist, fashioned in various forms and materials, from hardened steel to very soft rubber.
Ball-peen hammers are used in metalworking. Stone masons use brick hammers to shape and align rock and bricks. Welders employ welding hammers to work metal and remove slag while, you guessed it, welding. And many soft-faced hammers use rubber, wood, or plastic to limit how much the head mars, dents, or damages a surface.
Indeed, many uses for hammers have a specific hammer for each use. So a lot of the "indiscriminate banging" described earlier can be quite appropriately executed using a properly selected hammer species coupled with a degree of experience and care. But be forewarned - It takes caution to do things well with a hammer, no matter the application and no matter how specialized the hammer.
A case study in hammer use - my expensive bicycle
As a handy person, I enjoy doing all my own bike repairs and have accumulated many specialty tools for the job. So many that I now have a dedicated toolbox for these, including spoke wrench, chain tool, derailer alignment tool, cone wrenches, lockring tool, and many others. I won't go into detail on these specialty tools, as this is not the point. No, the point here is far blunter, far more common. It is, obviously, the hammer.
I occasionally use a hammer while fixing my bicycle. Yes, my bike. It's a daunting affair, given my ride is one of those modern, carbon fiber-framed mountain bikes.
Carbon fiber is a wonderfully strange material that is exceedingly light yet miraculously strong. It withstands flexing and related stress far more than similarly used materials like aluminum and steel and can drop significant weight without sacrificing strength. But there is a drawback - it doesn't dent like metals. It will break if you hit a carbon fiber frame with blunt force - such as with a hammer.
On modern bikes, several elements are press-fit. These most often include bearing rings wedged into components and frames where moving parts articulate or spin (the wheels, bottom bracket (the crank, by the petals), and occasionally the head tube where the handlebars connect to the head tube and front fork). The preferred way to get these in is with a bearing press and extracted with an appropriate bearing extractor. Alternatively, and often in concert with the press or extractor, one can use a hammer - if they know what they are doing.
Did I mention the frame is carbon fiber, and carbon fiber does not play well with hammers?
My first experience with pairing the two unlikely partners was removing the bottom bracket. In mine, it's a bearing cassette press-fit into the carbon fiber frame. To get one out, there is a specialized tool known as a press-fit bottom bracket bearing removal tool (not exactly a clever name, but it is a clever tool). This thing doesn't do the job alone, however. You actually need a hammer too. But not a special one, just a strong heavy thwacker (I like my papaw’s ball peen my pop handed down to me).
Basically, this metal shaft has a splayed end that can be contracted to insert the tool through one side of the bearing cassette, after which the splines spread back out to contact a raised lip inside. The user then proceeds to hit - with a hammer - the blunt end of the inserted tool until the cassette comes free. To do so requires a lot of force, as in a lot of force.
Whacking a bicycle with that much power feels counterintuitive. It feels dangerous. It feels like a very bad idea.
A good bike is a finely tuned machine; repairing one requires patience and exactitude, not unabashed strength. Many bicycle parts are tightened using a torque wrench to avoid overdoing it. And tuning the intricate drive train is a master class in restraint. So when a job legitimately calls for a hammer, one takes notice.
Thankfully, I didn't have to start blindly hitting my bike with a hammer. As is always advised, I visited "YouTube University" for a quick lesson in bottom bracket removal. (I suggest watching one of these videos to see how hard you hit the thing to pop it out.) The force required is impressive. Like backswing plus full-on hitting hard. So once I saw how it was done and gained confidence, I went at it myself.
I'm happy to share that my bike survived, and I extracted the old bearings and inserted the new ones with no problem.
Concluding remarks (a.k.a., hammering the door shut on this one)
Since my foray into hammer-fueled bike repair, I've completed similar work, like extracting wheel bearings and reinstalling them. And comparable jobs on other machines I now feel far more confident in tackling. Learning how hard to hit these things with a hammer, and in the right way, with the right hammer, has made all the difference.
As it turns out, the hammer is versatile. There's nothing like one for nailing and tearing down, for sure. But so, too, with many tasks, large and small, the hammer is ideal. Learn to finesse it and the tool can be tamed. It will be your true friend in the shop when you use it wisely. But wisely means never letting your guard down. One wrong move, one whack too hard, and disaster awaits.
Use it. Don’t abuse it. Always beware the hammer.
Until next time.
JRC
Hammers are a fine tool for just about any handy person to have in their tool collection. Mine favorite hammers are my Slide hammer used for removing large dents in metal and my 16 pound Sledge hammer. The old saying " If it don't fit use a bigger hammer " in this case the 16 lb. sledge works just fine.
Great piece. You hammered that nail home.
There is an expression in Central America (I first heard it in Nicaragua) that translated goes "If it doesn't go in as a screw, it goes in as a nail," a brutal way to deal with poor quality screws that lose their heads to too much force by a screwdriver or not enough preparation of the wood to meet a screw. I've seen people use this "rough" carpentry method and it is hilarious in a cringy sort of way.
The most basic but elegant type of hammer I've seen is the woodcarver's wooden mallet, a tool that is also used by fine woodworkers to gently fit pieces of wood in furniture building. I'd love to learn to use one someday.
Cheers!
CdlR