If hammering a nail into wood were so easy, we wouldn’t have methods that do not involve a hammer and nail, like cordless drills, tape, construction glue, and electric nailers.  All in the service of attaching thing A to thing B.

While those other methods have their charms, hammering a nail into wood is fast, cheap, and it makes you feel totally bad-ass.  But there is a reason why cartoons always have characters hitting their thumbs with hammers, with lightning bolts shooting out of giant, softball-size thumbs.  This can happen.  More likely, your frustrations will involve bent nails, split wood, and work materials that do not stick together.

How to Do It

Choose the kind of hammer that you like:  traditional or framing.  If you happen to have a hammer laying around the house or you got one as part of a tool set, it is probably traditional.  The face of the hammer is smooth.  These light-weight hammers will work for most jobs around the house.

If you need to buy a hammer, you might like a framing hammer.  It’s longer and heavier and the gridded face helps prevent the hammer from sliding off the nail when you’re hammering.  But this grid will leave more marks than the traditional hammer will, as shown here:

Place Tip of Nail on Surface

Hold the nail with your non-dominant hand so that the nail is vertical and the tip is loosely resting on the work surface.  Make sure you are not trying to nail into a knot, because knots will not take nails.  They will either knock out of place or be so incredibly hard to nail into that you’ll have to move your nail to another place.

Tap Nail Into Place

Hold the hammer with your dominant hand.  Hold it with your hand close to the hammer head.  Very gently tap the head of the nail about 1/4″ into the wood.

Remove Hand, Shift Other Hand

The aim of the previous step, setting the nail in place, is so that you can move your nail-holding hand away to safety.  Also at this time, move your hammer-holding hand farther down the shaft of the hammer, about halfway down or two-thirds down.

Hammer All the Way Down

You’re on the home stretch, but don’t get too ambitious here.  This is where the mighty have fallen.  Continue hitting the nail all the way down.  Make sure that you are not hitting at an angle; otherwise, you will bend the nail (at which point you can unbend the nail with the hammer claw or remove it).

As the head of the nail approaches the work surface (about 1/4″ away), slow down your hammering and go more gentle again.  Make the last couple of taps very gentle and you can avoid marring the wood.