Thread: Plane mallet

Hi all

My collection of wooden bodied planes has grown recently and my bronze Japanese plane hammer was guilty of marring the wooden bodies when making adjustments.

I looked at several wooden plane mallets and really liked the HNT Gordon Gidgee plane mallet but with cost of living etc it was out of reach.

I gathered some scraps from other projects, Ironbark I had set aside for carpenter's mallets (yet to be made ) and Queensland Rosewood that I had used for box mouldings.

The Ironbark was for the mallet head obviously - and the hard as buggery wood is perfect for whacking plane components even the iron. It is laminated from two pieces with a tapered mortise cut into the centre of each piece (see pic below). Despite being laminated this is more than adequate for tapping plane bodies and irons. The Ironbark is tough to work with grain going all over the place, but a sharp plane, scraper and sandpaper dealt with it.
20231202_170657.jpg

The Rosewood handle on the other hand was a pleasure to work with a plane, spokeshave and sandpaper. The wood had the taper from cutting off the beading, and while all mallets and hammers broaden where the hand goes, I don't find it to be a problem in use (it's a tapping tool not whacking chisels). The handle has taper to correspond with the tapered mortise in the head, and is held only the wedging action.

The long handle length is based on my Japanese bronze plane hammer where the long handle perfectly balances the bronze head. Give the big difference in densities between the Ironbark and the Rosewood, I find it has the same kind of balance.
20231202_170636.jpg

The mallet weighs 160g and the Ironbark accounts for 130g of that. By comparison the HNT Gordon Gidgee plane mallet weighs 150g.

It's a great mallet for adjusting wooden bodied planes and I wouldn't want to use a metal plane hammer on my HNT Gordon shoulder plane.