Exeter Update (More Hammers Tomorrow)

I’ve made a few hundred chairs during the last 21 years, and I feel like I’m just getting the hang of it. So it should come as no surprise that we have tried about a dozen different ways to handle our Exeter hammers – and we are still refining the steps.

People ask: What is so hard about this simple process? You kerf the handle, knock on the head and wedge the kerf.

Sure, anyone can do that. But we’re trying to ensure that 100 percent of these hammers never get returned to us for any reason. The eye of our hammer head is an hourglass-shaped SOB. And that’s on purpose. A simple adze-eye shape is good, but an hourglass is better – like a good tapered leg joint in a chair.

But this eye shape is more difficult to wedge effectively.

Thanks to Machine Time (which assembles our lump and Warrington hammers), we got a head-start on the process. Some interesting things we’ve learned in the last 10 days.

1.        Inject glue into the kerf before assembly. This is huge. So huge that I am trying it on…