John K. and Billman: Years ago I was part of a volunteer crew of carpenters who re-roofed the headquarters home on a really remote huge ranch in NE New Mexico after a freak windstorm. Riding home in the back of the project's "bus" after spending a day driving most of a box of 16d commons into rafting, an elder gentleman watched me massaging my right elbow and piped up, "Your problem's that steel-handled hammer. Don't you own a wooden-handled hammer?" "Only a 28 oz. rig axe," I replied, as I kept on massaging. "Use that tomorrow and you won't have that joint pain," he said. "Steel and fiberglass handles don't soak up the shock like wood."
The next day I did just that and ran about a box-and-a-half of 16d commons. At the end of the day I was amazed that my elbow didn't hurt at all, and the pain from the previous day was gone too. I relegated that Estwing to knocking off concrete that'd overflowed forms or breaking out rocks that were "in the way" and have used nothing but than wooden handled hammers for everything else ever since. Oh, I do use my mother's Estwing rock hammer for breaking out things like fossils, but that's it as far as other-than-wood-handled hammers go PS: I also enjoy the sound as well as the "feel."
