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Yanis
30th December 2014, 10:44 AM
I Started wood turning when I was a young thing when my mum bought a small lathe when she started woodworking in her 50s. I still have the remainders but it had about a 5" swing with a short aluminium bed and a tiny sewing machine motor. I did some tool handles which you can see in my blog here http://hancockshardwarehouse.blogspot.com.au/2014/12/too-many-chisels.html but not much else. A few years ago I bought a new lathe but had not had much opportunity to use it but recently I have been getting into woodworking so I decided to take some fallen branches and do some experimenting with them.

My first endevour is a couple of wooden mallets.

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The wood is from a smallish mallee like tree of unidentified species. It is a dense resinous wood that dries extremely brittle. It is not a lot of fun to turn but is ideal for mallets due to it hardness. The larger one is about 600g and the smaller about 350g. I discovered that you have to be extremely careful turning smaller diameters since the larger one broke away as I was turning the end of the handle so I had to put the chuck on and finish it with the head in the chuck. But it meant that I was stuck with the head profile. I would have liked to taper it towards the handle. You can see some of the pieces I cut off the blank at the top of the photo.

I finished it by first applying a coat of shellac. I then rubbed in a couple of coats of wiping varnish using 800G wet 'n dry. I finally applied a coat of wax. I used the varnish to add durability to the wood, not that I think it needs it.

I am sort of pleased with the smaller one although I could have profiled the handle a bit more. The larger mallet was suffering from a largish split and I could have done more to profile the head and the handle is a trifle thick I think. I filled the split with epoxy and scraped it smooth before applying the finish.

I am thinking of trying again with a larger piece of green wood and cut a blank from one half of the log which should make it less prone to splitting. Also if I seal it it should not dry so fast and shrink to a slight oval, which would be fine I think. It should be easier to turn green as well, but I did make a dibber for the little woman from the same wood but green and that was also quite difficult to turn.

I would welcome any help and ideas, always willing to learn :).

KBs PensNmore
30th December 2014, 05:25 PM
Yanis, welcome to the forum, there is nothing to stop you from mounting it in a chuck again or between centres, to turn the taper toward the handle, and round over the head same as the other one. Nice work by the way. Where a bouts in Adelaide are you?
Kryn

Christos
30th December 2014, 05:54 PM
When making mallets I found that once in a while I would stop the lathe to see how it fits in my hands. As you have determined the taper would be better to be in the direction of the handle. Little less likely for the mallet to fly out of your grip.

I currently have three in the shed that get banged around (pun intended) :) and one is in pretty bad shape, splitting and bits coming off. I will just make another one out of scrap / free wood. It is great practice to turn between centers.

And great going on the ones you have made.

Yanis
31st December 2014, 04:18 PM
Yanis, welcome to the forum, there is nothing to stop you from mounting it in a chuck again or between centres, to turn the taper toward the handle, and round over the head same as the other one. Nice work by the way. Where a bouts in Adelaide are you?
Kryn

Yes - thought about refining it that way. I am in Willunga.