Wooden Mallet

[Michael Ray Smith]

I need to make a wooden mallet, mostly for chiseling. Anyone want to suggest your favorite materials and design?

Thanks in advance.

Mike

[Jim Koepke]

My mallets are of a few designs.

It depends on what is being done that determines which mallet to use.

It also depends on what kind of equipment you have to make a mallet.

If you have a lathe, it is easy to make a "carvers mallet."

Before making a traditional woodworking mallet, it might be necessary to have a mallet.

Here is one I made:

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?161952-One-Thing-Leads-to-Another

One of my mallets is made of an oak a piece of 2X4 oak with one end cut down and smoothed for the handle.

235121

This one is for adjusting planes and is about 7" tall:

235122

The handle is mytrle (if my memory is working) and the head is lignum vitae.

There are a few threads on mallets here is one:

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?93436-What-is-the-best-type-of-mallet-with-which-to-strike-a-chisel&p=938187#post938187

Lots of ways to make a mallet. For working with a froe, I have taken big hunks of fire wood and cut or turn a handle on one end. When it breaks, it can return to its original purpose.

jtk

[Gary Herrmann]

For chisels, I also like carving mallets. This one is made of osage orange. Like Jim said, if you have a lathe, eazy peazy.

Any material will work. Even pine.

[Robert Thomas]

this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcaV5jWpR1k
or this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lz2ypcBKFnU

[Graham Hughes (CA)]

There are lots of designs that work. One thing I did want to mention, though, is be careful what you make it out of. Traditional English mallets are usually done in beech, which is on the soft side and slightly less prone to splitting like mad (oak and ash and ring porous hardwoods generally like splitting). I have my grandfather's mallet which is made of some exotic Australian timber and is hard as a rock and keeps destroying my chisel handles. I have one in lignum that doesn't do that and a number of others; maple is probably a pretty good one, but you can't go too far wrong with whatever you can find in turning blanks. Remember that a mallet is semi disposable; if it lasts a year or ten before getting too chewed up to use and you make another one, that's not really a big deal.

[Steve Thomas]

"I have my grandfather's mallet which is made of some exotic Australian timber and is hard as a rock and keeps destroying my chisel handles."

This is why my are pine, beech and something soft from a indo forrest somewhere. I don't want to replace my tools... much happyier making a new mallet every 20 odd years. than chisel handles every two!

Steve

[Joe A Faulkner]

Robert, thanks for posting these. I have a "potato masher style" that I picked up at an antique/junk store, but am inspired by these to try my hand at a shop built mallet.

[Joe Fabbri]

For a mallet, I guess the best wood would be anything hard and dense, and not likely to split. If it's too hard, though, it might be likely to damage your chisel handles.

I've used birch for a mallet head, with ash for the handle. The birch might be too hard, but we'll see. I've also made one out of cherry because I had a chunk laying around and because I figured it would be good for assembling softer woods without damaging them. The handle is some maple I had on hand. The maple/cherry combination is attractive, though I don't know how the cherry will hold up, as far as splitting goes.

Anyway, as far as the design, the ones I've made are all traditional joiners style, with the wedged handle. Chop the mortise in the head about 1" in length (by whatever width you want--3/4" is okay), then after you have that done, flare the mortise wider on the top about 3/16" overall, and make the taper all the way down to the bottom. Then take the mortise measurements and plane down the wood for the handle accordingly. Just be sure to test fit it often so you don't remove too much from the mortise or handle.

Make sure you also leave a little extra length and width at top, so that the handle has room to continue wedging itself more tightly as it's being used.

Also, for the grain direction in the handle, make sure you orient the growth rings to be parallel with the striking, or as close to it as possible.

Joe

[Michael Ray Smith]

An afterthought. . . here's the mallet I ended up making, based more or less on this method that Robert posted. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcaV5jWpR1k I don't have a lathe, and I'm not a turner, so those designs weren't options for me.

Both the head and the handle are maple. The head is made from 3/4 inch stock, and as you can see I didn't bother shaping it -- basically out of laziness. The handle is made from a 1 1/2 inch maple turning blank that I turned into a slightly elongated octagon shape using my LV low-angle block plane with the chamfer guide and 50-degree blade. (I started out with the 25-degree blade that I usually keep in the plane, and, as you can imagine, the split-out with the maple was horrible. The higher angle blade worked like a charm, making a nice, smooth surface.) Some might prefer a rounder handle, but this one is comfortable enough for me.

One thing I did differently that I might recommend to others. Rather than using fishing sinkers, sand, etc. as weight, I bought a couple of 1 1/4" copper tubing caps (outside diameter = 1 1/2") and filled them with solder. (I doubt that's the cheapest source of a dense metal, but with metal prices these days I'm not sure there's any such thing as a cheap source -- and I happened to have a pound of 50/50 lead/tin solder that had been lying around my garage since I stopped doing stained glass work years ago.) The caps were 1 inch long, and instead of cutting them down to fit the middle piece of 3/4 inch stock, I extended the cavities into the two outside pieces. I glued the caps to all three pieces with epoxy, thinking that the cap might provide a bit of reinforcement to hold the three pieces of the head together. I used 1 1/4" caps because I wanted a lot of weight to it. If you want something lighter, use a smaller cap and less solder. If you know how much weight you want to add, it's easy to calculate the size of cap you need based on the density of the solder (which you can find online for the particular solder composition you might use).
238477

[bridger berdel]

here's one I made a long time ago.it works well. the flat sides of the handle are parallel to the flat sides of the head, which helps to make alignment in your hand automatic- and makes building it with power tools easy.238480238481

the head is apitong, the handle is red oak. these were selected because the were available as scrap at the time.

Bridger

[Mark Dorman]

looks good Michael.

[Matthew N. Masail]

Nice ! looks like a good way to go

[Bill White]

I made my carver's mallet, froe maul, and wedges from dogwood. Very good wood for that purpose.
Bill

[Tony Shea]

It sounds as though you plan on making a mallet but at the last Lie Nielsen Open House in Warren I ordered one of Blue Spruce Toolworks mallets and there is nothing out there that even compares to the feel, weight, strength, and beauty of this thing. It is worth every penny IMO but they are pricey. And in comparison, I have a bit of a mallet/hammer addiction for some reason. Counting this mallet I have over 15 mallets and hammers to choose from, some of which I've made for special purposes but when I want to pound on my chisels I always turn to my Blue Spruce. Oh, and this thing WILL NOT dent for some reason.

[Jessica Pierce-LaRose]

Oh, and this thing WILL NOT dent for some reason.

If I remember correctly, aren't the Blue Spruce tools made with a resin-impregnated wood for the head? Supposed to make the thing sturdy as heck, and help from damaging the non-end-grain sides of the turned head.

[Jim Neeley]

Yes, and they work *great*!! The shape feels really natural in the hand and the wood handle provides a wonderful tactile feedback when you strike. The density of the head makes a perfect impact without being head-heavy.

(In case you can't tell, it's a favority of mine for chisel work and no dents to date!) :)

Jim

[Harlan Barnhart]

I've made five or so by lamination and several of them have failed. It's not a big problem, I just plane off the glue residue and put it back together. My next one will feature a one-piece head. Mallets are like spaghetti, you should make your own. Practice until you get it right. There are no failures in mallet making, just experiments.