Wasted $200 on a fancy power hammer jig I never used

Honestly, I thought buying that fancy jig for my power hammer would save me hours of setup time. Dropped $200 on it last spring from a guy on the east coast who swore it worked for all kinds of scroll work. Spent a whole weekend trying to fit it to my hammer and it just didn't line up right. The instructions were terrible, like half in Chinese or something, and the bolt holes were off by a quarter inch. Ended up tossing it in the corner and going back to my old hand-made setup that cost me $10 in scrap steel. Has anyone else had luck with aftermarket jigs or am I just cursed with bad luck?

2 comments

2 Comments

kaid591mo ago

Yo have you tried just making your own jig from scratch? That $10 scrap steel setup you mentioned probably works way better than most overpriced stuff because you tuned it to your exact hammer. I bought one of those universal a few years ago for my little 25lb Nazel and same thing, it was junk. The bolt patterns never matched anything standard. So one weekend I just welded up a simple arms out of some flat bar and a piece of schedule 40 pipe for the pivot. Took maybe two hours total and I can switch between scrolls and leaf work in under a minute now. The key is keeping it simple with just a few adjustable stops instead of all those moving parts.

william_henderson1mo ago

Wait, hold up. You seriously dropped two hundred bucks on a jig without checking the bolt pattern first? Man, that's rough. I did the same thing like three years ago with a "universal" vise attachment for my Little Giant. The thing was supposed to fit any model from 25 to 50 pounds. Got it in the mail, unboxed it, and the main mounting bracket was so warped I could see daylight between it and the anvil. I tried shimming it with washers and still couldn't get the thing to sit square. Ended up using the scrap steel from the bracket to make a simple bending fork. That chinese instruction booklet was like reading a menu from a restaurant I've never been to.