The son of the son of a blacksmith.

 

My Dad was the son of a blacksmith.  

His dad was not a very big man, but he could hit things really, really hard with a hammer.   

Perhaps it was learning by observation, but there weren't too many things my Father couldn't fix with the use of a cold chisel and a decent whack, and to be fair quite a few of his repairs looked as though that methodology had been employed.

While I may have inherited a number of talents from them both, I tend to have a healthy aversion to whacking things really hard, particularly if one of my body parts has to hold the object being whacked.  I have been called "Lightning" in times gone by, by those observing my skill with a hammer, not because I'm so fast, but because I rarely strike twice in the same place.

It was therefore understandable that that methodology was not at the topmost of my mind when somewhere in the fourth hour of gently teasing out the broken bolt in the turning nutsert with a lack of enthusiasm that betrayed my frustration, that my forebears spoke rather loudly in unison.   "It's time!"

Thirty seconds was all it took with a tiny cold chisel and a big hammer, and the problem was solved and I was off looking for something else to whack with a bit of gusto.

The rest of the day may have been a little more productive in the sense of getting a bit done, but nothing came close in the satisfaction stakes to the way I felts as that nut fell neatly into two pieces.