Thread: Building a mallet on a cold day

Real mallets for real work!
I read your post and it made me think of all the pictures I've seen of them putting up circus tents and using those monster mallets to get er done.
For real use they don't need to be pretty just strong and if it wears out a couple a minutes and you're up and wacking again.

My froe mallet is just a 60cm piece of alder log. Was maybe 1500g fresh.
I made 1/2 of it skinny with a handsaw and an axe = handle.
It is beat to rat-crap. Always pieces of it flying off.
I have more log pieces, thinking I should replace it but it still does the job.

This is the type of mallet that Ian would no doubt consider "tarted up" ... actually, so do I ...



The brass on the sides was infilled to increase the weight. Overall, the mallet weighs 28 oz.



It is used for morticing into hard wood.

The handle connection is important - you don't want the head flying off. This is a wedged tapered mortice and tenon.



The shape of the handle is equally important. This has two hand holds, the closer one for a choked grip. I see straight handles on mallets and wait for them to go flying out of the hand

Regards from Perth

Derek

Orright, I thought I was the only weirdo with a shedfull of mallets, but since Geoff has laid his soul bare, I feel I can fess up to being another mallet tragic...

I don't know when, exactly, but I was well into my woodworking journey when I discovered "carvers' mallets", and for the next 20 years or so, that's all I used. These are typical of what evolved for me as the more useful sizes, a smaller one for tappity-tap type work like cleaning out dovetails (450g, or near enough to a pound for those not conversant with the metric system) and a larger one for heavier work (650g): Carvers mallets.jpg
The three features I came to regard as essential for this type are: 1) a bit of taper in the head, 2) a flat top so it will sit stably on the bench, & 3) a thinned-down handle close to the head to reduce jar when walloping in earnest.

Then for no particular reason, about 10 years or so ago I started making & using the 'carpenter' type, and now reach for one of these for 99% of my mallet work. These three are my daily users: Daily users.jpg

Weights and handle-lengths are as follows (L to R): 890g 230mm; 620g 200mm; 490g 200mm. Of the three, the smallest gets far & away the most use, the middle one comes out for heavy mortising, particularly in harder woods, and the largest gets very occasional use when I need to hit something very hard.

There are two others which I find useful on occasions: Big bashers.jpg
The one on the right weighs in at 1275g and has a 320mm handle. It has an odd history - it was made by a friend as a joke, and had a very flimsy handle. I used it one day to belt out a serious bend in my mower deck, which it handled admirably. The handle broke just as I finished the job, but I liked the concept of a really heavy, sacrificial basher, so I replaced the handle with something more appropriate. It seems to be indestructible now! The largest of all weighs in at 1450g and the 440mm handle allows a two-handed grip. With this one, I can get really serious, so I use it for driving small splitting wedges, etc.

It's pretty difficult to go badly wrong making a mallet of any type. I prefer to make 'hammer' style, oval handles because it makes it easier to orient the head automatically - a too-round handle allows it to pivot during use, which isn't good. Square handles are uncomfortable, so oval is the happy medium, for me.

One thing I do with mallet-heads is put a very distinct chamfer around the striking surface. This doesn't prevent chipping of the edges, as you can see, but does limit it. Because we are blessed (or cursed!) with very hard dense woods in great abundance on our continent, mallets last a good while, even with heavy use, but mine do show a few battle scars: wear & tear 1.jpg

Cheers,

Originally Posted by IanW

Orright, I thought I was the only weirdo with a shedfull of mallets, but since Geoff has laid his soul bare, I feel I can fess up to being another mallet tragic...

I don't know when, exactly, but I was well into my woodworking journey when I discovered "carvers' mallets", and for the next 20 years or so, that's all I used. These are typical of what evolved for me as the more useful sizes, a smaller one for tappity-tap type work like cleaning out dovetails (450g, or near enough to a pound for those not conversant with the metric system) and a larger one for heavier work (650g): Carvers mallets.jpg
The three features I came to regard as essential for this type are: 1) a bit of taper in the head, 2) a flat top so it will sit stably on the bench, & 3) a thinned-down handle close to the head to reduce jar when walloping in earnest.

Then for no particular reason, about 10 years or so ago I started making & using the 'carpenter' type, and now reach for one of these for 99% of my mallet work. These three are my daily users: Daily users.jpg

Weights and handle-lengths are as follows (L to R): 890g 230mm; 620g 200mm; 490g 200mm. Of the three, the smallest gets far & away the most use, the middle one comes out for heavy mortising, particularly in harder woods, and the largest gets very occasional use when I need to hit something very hard.

There are two others which I find useful on occasions: Big bashers.jpg
The one on the right weighs in at 1275g and has a 320mm handle. It has an odd history - it was made by a friend as a joke, and had a very flimsy handle. I used it one day to belt out a serious bend in my mower deck, which it handled admirably. The handle broke just as I finished the job, but I liked the concept of a really heavy, sacrificial basher, so I replaced the handle with something more appropriate. It seems to be indestructible now! The largest of all weighs in at 1450g and the 440mm handle allows a two-handed grip. With this one, I can get really serious, so I use it for driving small splitting wedges, etc.

It's pretty difficult to go badly wrong making a mallet of any type. I prefer to make 'hammer' style, oval handles because it makes it easier to orient the head automatically - a too-round handle allows it to pivot during use, which isn't good. Square handles are uncomfortable, so oval is the happy medium, for me.

One thing I do with mallet-heads is put a very distinct chamfer around the striking surface. This doesn't prevent chipping of the edges, as you can see, but does limit it. Because we are blessed (or cursed!) with very hard dense woods in great abundance on our continent, mallets last a good while, even with heavy use, but mine do show a few battle scars: wear & tear 1.jpg

Cheers,

Sorry Ian,
Your just weird,
But I know a bloke with about 30+odd hammers in Ballarat ,Victoria
He activity goes looking for more[emoji849]

I may just have to make myself a mallet or two with all the encouragement in this thread. Thanks gents all. Cheers crowie

derekcohen: your mallet with the brass inserts is one of the most sensibly designed, flat-sided mallets that I've ever seen.
28oz is getting into the useful wood bashing rough-out range for bigger carvings.

For carving, all I've used is a 12oz ShopFox and a 30oz lead core WoodIsGood carvers mallets with polyurethane faces.

Originally Posted by crowie

I may just have to make myself a mallet or two with all the encouragement in this thread. Thanks gents all. Cheers crowie

Go for it, Crowie. I can't imagine a working shed without a mallet (or several! ). You must know someone with a firewood pile you can raid for the raw material, or have some hardwood offcuts lying about. I've posted on how I go about it, but there are any number of ways to go about it and you can produce a very usable example with very few tools.

Some Eucalypts split very easily along the growth rings, which is great for firewood, but not so good for mallets. The good thing is, you have so little time and cost invested in a mallet that if you bust one, as Geoff says, it's simply a matter of a nonchalant walk to the woodheap......

Cheers,

Start with a 60cm piece of 15-20 cm diameter log. Chop 1/2 of it skinny for a handle. Beat the Hello out of it,
while you ponder what you really want to do in a mallet build.

The two on the left are red gum (the darker one is obviously a tad froed around the edges), the two lighter ones are from a lemon tree (turned green and no splitting after two or more years).
I tend to like round mallets, quite forgiving of mishits.

Originally Posted by HUON

.....the darker one is obviously a tad froed around the edges)......

Nice pun!

Yeah, apart from the ease of manufacture (once I'd sorted out lathe tools a bit!), I think it was the ease of hitting accurately when not watching the strike-point that first attracted me to round mallets. Either I've gotten better at hitting things I'm not looking directly at, or my hands have gotten used to taking occasional punishment, but either way, I don't find 'block' mallets such a pain to use these days....

I suppose the reason I prefer the block & handle type mallet for many jobs now is that pretty well the whole mass of the mallet is in line with the impact point, so for the same overall weight, you get a bit more bang for the same effort with the block type. It's a minor point, but adds up over a long day of heavy walloping. Either type does the job, in the end....

Cheers,

Which means that you bash two and froe?

Loved your post, htl, but I must admit that I am a little confused. First you mention a cold day in Alabama where my experience is that temperature and humidity are always in the 90's except when they are higher.

Now that laminated or wish-bone handle on the mallet: does that create the dead blow characteristic or provide some shock absorbing besides just looking good and creating envy in everyone of us who just have ordinary one piece handles.



Your mallet head appears to consist of at least eight pieces of timber, and the two faces appear to be only 15 mm (about 5/8 inches, I think) endgrain which seems a little fragile for a mallet. Am I missing something or is the function appearance?

Now that handle seems to have at least five pieces of timber, but no wedges. Is that complexity really advantageous over a one piece handle ?

What impact do you think the laminations in the handle have? I realise that you are not in a cricketing part of the world, but cricket bat handles are made from several laminations of 1/8 inch timber separated by thin rubber (about as thick as bicycle innertubes).

Maybe I am reading too much into a design and build exercise?


fair Winds

Graeme