Thread: Mortising hammers

I use a Japanese style genno hammer - specially made for chiselling.

They come in range of weight from 200g to 800g.

I have a 400g and it works well - allot of power when you need it but with lots of control.

The core is soft and absorbs shocks and the end are hardened so they are durable.

If cost is a factor you can get one from ebay second hand at a good price.

square_head_genno_japanese_hammer_group_2.jpg

I prefer to use the traditional wooden mallet; I have a pair of English “Thor” branded ones of two different weights that make excellent all-roundthumpometers.

I mostly use a nylon/rubber hammer but also have a selection of home made wooden mallets in various weights if I need something heavier but its not often I do big mortices. Last time was my bench. Most of our aussie woods are quite heavy so the raw material is in the offcuts or firewood pile.
Regards
John

I recently made a batch of wooden mallets. The heads are Tasmanian Oak and Jarrah which weigh around 500-550g iirc, and the handle brings the overall weight up to about 700g. They are fantastic. Enough weight to drive the chisels deep into the material without being so damn heavy that my arm wants fall off after 30 secs of using them. They give a very definite hammer blow which is easily controlled by the user.
IMG_20201212_104315.jpg

I've always hated using a deadblow hammer for chiseling work. It just feels soooo wrong. I lose control because I can't just give the chisel a light 'tap tap tap' without a lot of conscious effort on my part, it ends up being a 'thud thud thud' due to the dead blow effect. Also, it doesn't bounce back up which forces my arm to lift it back up

This is what I use: Veritas Cabinetmakers Mallet | Carbatec

I like it.

Originally Posted by markharrison

This is what I use: Veritas Cabinetmakers Mallet | Carbatec

I like it.

That looks like a nice hammer and reasonably priced. But the weight is pretty similar to the Thorex. What I'm really after is something that's properly heavy, not a general purpose item.

The Thorex does come in a larger size 12-716N model weighing in at 1.2kg (the model I'm using is half that) but it's expensive in Australia for what it is.

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Perhaps you need to reevaluate the problem. The lump hammer sounds exactly the tool you want to strike with, it's the chisels you are using that are wrong. Instead of fine cabinet maker's chisels using a cabinet maker's mallet, maybe grind some cold chisels into a usable profile and not worry about the heads mushrooming over with the lump hammer.

Dunno if they are still available but I had an all steel chisel.
Probably for for plumbers etc on site work.
The early Stanley chisels had steel thru the handle, not in mortise pattern from memory.
Personally I just use a heavy enough wooden mallet.
Interested re the 2nd hand Jap stuff on eBay, do you search in English or use a translation.
H.

Here in the U.S., you can get hammers with replaceable heads by a company called Garland: Split-Head Hammer Garland Manufacturing They're the cat's nightwear for heavy driving of something you don't want to break, but they're not cheap new. Mine are from yard sales, and the faces are available on That Auction Site.

It's really a matter of what you get used to & what you prefer and how obsessive you are about causing minimal wear/damage to your chisel handles. You could successfully use a chisel with just about any hard object of sufficient weight after a little practice. I've watched woodworkers in Asia do pretty fine work using a bit of wood that had been shaped with a hatchet into a rough sort of mallet. They didn't look particularly comfortable to use, but obviously did the job! A sharp, well-directed blow from anything hard is what does the trick. A steel hammer concentrates the momentum in a small package, and as long as you hit accurately, you'll get a pretty satisfying bang for your buck. A wooden mallet is a little more difficult to control and it probably takes a little more practice & persistence to get consistently accurate strikes.

My dad, like many (most?) chippies of his era, used the side of his claw-hammer on chisels. Despite the top hoops, his handles were in pretty rough shape after a few years of use - I suspect they would have needed replacing a couple of times before the blades were used up had he not left the building business & gone farming. He insisted we boys only hit chisels with the side of a hammer - hitting it with the 'proper' part would do too much damage, he said. At the time, I could not see the difference, & my scepticism was increased when I learned about force & momentum in junior high-school, but I couldn't convince the old pot that his logic was flawed.

Early in my 'serious' woodworking life I read about how carvers' mallets allowed you to strike the handle accurately & intuitively while you watched the pointy end do its thing. Having recently acquired my first lathe, I made myself one & lo & behold, I did find it easy to use, so that became my go-to walloper for mortising or dovetailing for about the next 20 years. After fiddling about with different woods & different sizes, I settled on this design, with an all-up weight of 400~450g for everyday use on D/Ts and similar. Ironbark & Olive carvers mallets.jpg

I always kept a hefty mallet or two around, for heavy-duty walloping (like this 2-hander I made for straightening out the deck of the mower ): Mallets cf.jpg

One day, I decided to make a batch of mallets as 'giveaways' from a pile of hardwood scraps rather than consign them to the fire. I tested them out & one, with a head about 400g (a bit over 14 ounces in old money) felt particularly good for light/medium striking: Buloak hdle.jpg

I found myself using it more & more, and probably haven't picked up a carvers' mallet more than a few times in the last 20 years, so I've had a complete conversion.

Mallets are so easy to make, and we have an over-abundance of woods suitable for heads in this country. You can raid someone's firewood pile, scrounge a bit of pallet wood or go to a demolition yard if desperate. For nothing, or next-to-nothing you could get enough heads to keep you going for life unless you are particularly rough on your mallets (a crime I'm occasionally guilty of ), but they are so easy to make you can consider them as 'consumables'. It's a fun weekend project to cobble up a few mallets of different sizes which you can play about with & see what suits you best.

You could become a convert to custom-made mallets....

Cheers,

When morticing with a mallet/hammer, the chisel is going to be hooped and have a steeper bevel (generally 30-35 degrees). Ideally, a mortice chisel.

When hitting any chisel, I will use the mallet/hammer that suits it best. Some mortice chisels do not have hoops (e.g. LN), and it seems prudent to avoid using a steel head on them. For chisels such as these, I use a modified Veritas Cabinetmaker's chisel. Here the wooden heads have been surfaced with UHMW. This is pliant enough to not damage wooden handles, but still have enough stiffness to transmit energy efficiently. I changed the handle as well for better gripping ...



It needs to be said that bigger is not necessarily better That is, heavier is more authoritative, but may not have the control of a lighter mallet. For example, the Veritas weights in at around 18oz (around 510gm), while I have a serious mallet I built for morticing (infilled with brass), which weighs 26oz!



I must prefer using the Veritas - less fatiguing as well.

My Japanese mortice chisels are hooped and I use a 375gm gennou with them. That's the one on the right (the other is 225gm) ...



This gennou carries as much "authority" as a much larger wooden mallet: the force is concentrated and the feedback is supreme. Wooden mallets tend to absorb a lot of energy.

In the absence of a gennou, use a claw hammer! The average Estwing is 16oz.

In my experience, the worst for this are round carver's mallets. These are so tempting to use as they are easy to make. However, they are poorer at focussing energy.

Regards from Perth

Derek

Silly question but won't a steel hammer of any kind damage the handles?

The chisels I want to be bashing this hard all have steel hoops. These aren't expensive chisels (Titans) but I don't have a lathe so making my own handles is hard(er).

By the way, Ian and Derek make wooden mallets look like the way to go if only because of how nice those pieces look...

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Hi Eddie

I did write, "When hitting any chisel, I will use the mallet/hammer that suits it best. Some mortice chisels do not have hoops (e.g. LN), and it seems prudent to avoid using a steel head on them. For chisels such as these, I use a modified Veritas Cabinetmaker's chisel."

Nevertheless, there are wooden handles which may be wacked - within reason - with a steel hammer. The iron wood handles of LN chisels are one example.

We will no doubt begin to see resin-impregnated wooden handles in the future (similar to the Blue Spruce mallets), and these should withstand a steel hammer.

Regards from Perth

Derek

Thanks Derek - what I'm driving at is an understanding of why steel hammers won't destroy hooped chisels (as my mortising chisels are hooped but I still managed to trash one using a lump hammer). Could this simply be the weight of the hammer? The larger genno go up to almost 2lb which is similar to the hammer I've been using. EDIT: I can see that a genno has a much longer handle than a lump hammer so it would seem easier to get a blow square atop the chisel. It's the angled blows that are doing the damage.

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