The 18-inch handle is a little long, but I don’t mind the lightweight titanium head more than makes up for it. The Stiletto head is more hatchet than claw, perfect for the way I use a hammer.Īs a bonus, the hickory handle fits my hand so well it almost makes me want to go back to hand-nailing. I rarely pull nails with my hammer instead, I split, pry, and pierce with it, mostly during demolition. But this hammer also has a claw with a very gradual “fetch” to it. That turned out to be true, though it normally wouldn’t be enough reason for me to drop a ton of money on a new hammer. It occurred to me that an axe-handle could work as a sort of hook, making it easier to snag the loop. I wanted to try an axe-handle hammer in the first place because I was having trouble slamming my straight-handled hammer into my toolbelt’s hammer loop, which is located on my right hip behind my tool pouch. But it turns out that even for a deck builder, Stiletto’s 12-ounce, 18-inch framer’s hammer is pretty handy.
And even if we were, chances are good that we’d be using a nail gun instead of a hammer. Do deck builders really need axe-handle hammers? After all, we’re not framing walls, where a curved handle would enable us to swing around the end of the plate more efficiently.
