Hi Dave

Sore one mate...!!! You've reminded me of my most unpleasant ever experience with a hammer. "Cold Chiselling" 3" dia mild steel bar is not a task for the faint hearted and requires a particularly heavy hammer.....

If you've never tried this before it's an old established Fitting technique for quickly removing large amounts of steel...in the right hands probably nearly as quickly as machining.

The key point is that whatever your eye focusses on you will hit with the hammer, and if you hit your hand you will kill it stone dead, so it requires 100% concentration and awareness only of the chisel head. It must have been tiredness and my eyes only strayed once (I was 16 at the time - just a young lad).....I gave my hand the mightiest wallop ever...and killed it.....

It seems to kill both the nerves and the muscles so there's no chance that if you put the chisel back in your hand that you will ever retain it - it simply falls out of your grasp again. THe instructor assured me, "The feeling will come back in time....."...he didn't say how long though...

All the best my friend...................Bill.