Michael Ray Smith
07-24-2017, 1:48 PM
I apologize if this topic has been discussed before.
I made this mallet a year or two ago. As I think you can see from the pictures, the wood is "delaminating" on each side of it. I made it from a round ash (white ash, probably) blank for turning baseball bats. (I'm not a turner and don't have a lathe, so I shaped it with a drawknife and spokeshaves.) My thought was that ash would be a good choice precisely for the same reasons it's used to make baseball bats, notwithstanding the difference between a baseball and a chisel handle.
I was trying to figure out if I could have anticipated and, even better, avoided the problem, and I remembered when I was a kid, we were always told not to hit a baseball on the bat's trademark, that the bat would break if we did. I always figured that it was superstition, but it turns out there's some truth to it. I found out that ash bats will "flake" (what I was calling delamination), and they're more likely to do it if you hit the ball on the side with the trademark -- or on the side directly opposite from the trademark, which is what we did as kids! But it's a bit more complicated than that. To reduce flaking, you should hit the ball on the side 90 degrees from the mark, but that orientation also makes it more likely for the handle to break. All that is discussed here: http://www.woodbat.org/
It also turns out that maple bats don't flake like ash bats do, which means hard maple would have been a better choice than ash for my mallet. But, of course, maple is more expensive, and because I bought two ash blanks, and because a baseball bat is much longer than a mallet, I still have enough ash to make several more mallets. And they're fun to make, so that's what I'll do.
But now I'll be careful to strike the chisel "parallel to" the grain....as the above website puts it, like striking with the edge of a deck of cards instead of the face. I'm thinking I may flatten two sides a bit so that I won't inadvertently use the wrong side....and to keep the mallet from rolling around.
Has anyone else run across this before?
364425364426364427
I made this mallet a year or two ago. As I think you can see from the pictures, the wood is "delaminating" on each side of it. I made it from a round ash (white ash, probably) blank for turning baseball bats. (I'm not a turner and don't have a lathe, so I shaped it with a drawknife and spokeshaves.) My thought was that ash would be a good choice precisely for the same reasons it's used to make baseball bats, notwithstanding the difference between a baseball and a chisel handle.
I was trying to figure out if I could have anticipated and, even better, avoided the problem, and I remembered when I was a kid, we were always told not to hit a baseball on the bat's trademark, that the bat would break if we did. I always figured that it was superstition, but it turns out there's some truth to it. I found out that ash bats will "flake" (what I was calling delamination), and they're more likely to do it if you hit the ball on the side with the trademark -- or on the side directly opposite from the trademark, which is what we did as kids! But it's a bit more complicated than that. To reduce flaking, you should hit the ball on the side 90 degrees from the mark, but that orientation also makes it more likely for the handle to break. All that is discussed here: http://www.woodbat.org/
It also turns out that maple bats don't flake like ash bats do, which means hard maple would have been a better choice than ash for my mallet. But, of course, maple is more expensive, and because I bought two ash blanks, and because a baseball bat is much longer than a mallet, I still have enough ash to make several more mallets. And they're fun to make, so that's what I'll do.
But now I'll be careful to strike the chisel "parallel to" the grain....as the above website puts it, like striking with the edge of a deck of cards instead of the face. I'm thinking I may flatten two sides a bit so that I won't inadvertently use the wrong side....and to keep the mallet from rolling around.
Has anyone else run across this before?
364425364426364427