For jobs that require a hammer with more heft and hardness than the usual claw hammer, try a ball peen hammer. Sometimes called an "engineer's hammer" or a "machinist's hammer", it's often the best hammer to use for metal. Use it to drive cold chisels, setting rivets, and shaping metal. The steel head of a ball peen hammer is harder than the head of a claw hammer, so it's less likely to chip on contact.

With use, a hammer's head will become smooth and may cause the hammer to slip off the heads of the nails. An easy fix is to rub the hammer head on a sheet of sandpaper to dull down the surface. This will allow for more traction between the hammer and nail.

It has been nearly 12 hours since the concrete was poured on the Punta Gorda, Florida, storm-ready house. The crew from Solid Wall Systems is on site to strip the forms, scrape them, and reoil them with a biodegradable form oil before taking them to the next job. Bob watches as a window buck is stripped away leaving a perfectly clean and square concrete opening in place. Hammers ring as the crew knocks off the wall clips that are specially designed to break away once the walls are set. Bob looks up to see the Simpson Strong Ties that were wet set after the pour protruding from the tops of the walls, waiting to tie down the roof trusses. Bob looks at the finish with Mark Newton of Solid Wall Systems and Jesse Gonzalez of Mercedes Homes. Newton explains that they will apply a skim coat over areas that show voids or imperfections. Gonzalez and the Mercedes crew will finish the walls after they have set for two weeks or so. They will power wash the exterior to remove any residual oil from the forms. Then they will apply a three-coat plaster job using a scratch coat, brown coat, and finish coat to create the look of traditional Florida plaster.

This wooden-handled hammer may look strong enough to pull any nail, but because the grain of the wood is wekaer in this direction, you can actually break the handle if you pull straight back too hard. Here are a couple of tips on pulling nails. Once you get the nail partly drawn, slip a piece of scrap wood under the head of the hammer for better leverage, or try pulling the handle to the side for a better angle on the nail.

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Owners of certain Skil circular saws should check their model numbers against saws included in a recent recall. About 811,000 Skil saws are being recalled due to problems with the trigger switch. A defect causes the trigger to lock on and remain functional after the trigger is released.