I take it all Back. Really.

[Mike Baker 2]

A while back i posted to a wooden mallet discussion. I am new to hand tool woodworking, and mentioned that most of the woodworkers I had seen tended to use the plastic headed mallets, and I had seldom seen them use wooden ones. I posited that mallet making might perhaps be a "beginner" thing, ie; a project for new guys to help one learn a bit, and that I was perfectly happy with my $5 white rubber mallet.
Whereupon the thread was inundated with gentlemen saying "No, perish the thought. I would not know what to do without my wooden mallet", or other words to that effect.
So, I had some cutoffs from a couple of guitar builds, and decided to build me a nice mallet. I used it cutting mortises and tenon this afternoon on my bench build. I am blown away at how efficient this thing is. There is power in every strike. The lightest of taps transfers a huge amount of force to the chisel, and thus the wood. I cut split tenon with it, and it was like going from a Yugo to a high performance sports car. Wonderful, and I'd just like to say, "I would not know what to do without my wooden mallet". :D

Below are pics. It is laminated, curly maple on the outside, black walnut in the center, and straight grained maple for the handle. 3 or 4 coats of wipe on poly took care of the finish.
Once again I have to say thank you for the knowledge on this forum.
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[Noah Magnuson]

Works good. Looks Good. Can't ask for more than that.

[Stanley Covington]

Very nice!

[steven c newman]

Looks great from here!

[Mike Baker 2]

Thank you, gentlemen.

[Nicholas Lawrence]

Much nicer than mine!

[George Conklin]

That looks really slick, Mike!

Kinda too nice to use:). Well done, Sir.

[David Ragan]

Thanks for posting that MB2, I had wondered the same thing myself. Great project for me. How about a Rube Goldberg mallet?

[Jared Hendrix]

Nice Mallet! This was the first thing I made after my bench, and i wish i had made it before.

[Jim Koepke]

It is great when such a great looking tool can be made from scrap wood. You made a great job of it.


I posited that mallet making might perhaps be a "beginner" thing, ie; a project for new guys to help one learn a bit

There are a few projects that are great for beginners to help build skill, making a mallet is one of them. Others would be a pair of bench hooks, shooting board, saw benches and on up to a bench.

jtk

[Pat Barry]

I would have a huge problem with that mallet Mike - it looks too good to use ! Nice work

[Kees Heiden]

Nice!

Now go on, find yourself a lump of oak and mortice it for a handle. Just to make yourself a mallet which goes on maletting for ever when your laminated one has split apart. ;-)

[Daniel O'Connell]

Beautiful work!

I've been using a really crappy wooden mallet I bought in a box of tools at a flea market. Its an off the shelf hammer handle attached to a block of misshapen wood with screws...but it's much nicer than my rubber or deadblow mallets and that became clear almost immediately. The only thing I've done that improved things as much as that wooden mallet was moving to proper vises(I started out with a mechanics vise, a clamp, and a sort of bench hook thing)

[Dave Cullen]

There was a mallet swap a year or two ago on another forum where each participant sent another member a hand made mallet. The results were amazing. The variety of styles and materials for a simple and useful tool is staggering.

[Mike Baker 2]

Thanks again, guys.
On the woods used, I normally would not use flame maple for something like a mallet, but it was off cuts that pretty much would never be used for anything else, so......
Daniel, I almost bought an old beat up mallet for a buck at a local flea market before I built this one.
Kees, thanks. As far as the mallet splitting, if I joined the wood right, it should fail before the glue does. Although the glue was a couple of years old.

[Jerry Olexa]

Great results and from scraps too...Well done.

[Rob Luter]

Nice! If I didn't already have a boatload of hammers/mallets I'd make one like that. I may anyway.

[Joe A Faulkner]

Nice Job. Now that you've made a jointer's mallet, you should make a smaller matching mallet. These come in handy in tapping together smaller pieces or adjusting blades on woodies. My Wood is Good mallet pretty much sits on the shelf these days.

[steven c newman]

Maybe use a lathe someday, and turn a few?
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My "2 Pounder"....

[george wilson]

I might mention that shocks are an excellent way to make glue pop loose,for what it's worth. The glued up head may be of concern.

[Jim Koepke]

Maybe use a lathe someday, and turn a few?

My turned mallets mostly only get used on my froes. One big 'un and one little 'un.

Though my plane hammer was turned:

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It is the dark one at ~6:00 O'clock. The handle is myrtle wood, iirc, and the head is lignum vitae.

My "light tapping mallet is at ~5:00 O'clock. It is a piece of oak from a pallet that was repurposed.

At ~2:00 O'clock is my main bopper made of local bitter cherry from the firewood pile.

Straight up at ~12:00 O'clock is one made of ash. It has a crack in it so it is used mostly for the jobs where a good mallet should be spared.

At ~9:00 O'clock is a mallet that was made to sell. After a few weeks of going unsold it was repurposed. My bandsaw was used to cut pyramids on one face and it was then sold as a meat tenderizer, ice breaker mallet.

The mallet at 7:00 O'clock is made by Footprint in England. It was my first mallet and was purchased one time while visiting one of the more earthy hardware stores in my old locality. My understanding is the folks there have since retired and have closed the store.

jtk

[Michael J Evans]

I guess great Mikes think alike :cool:
I just completed my first mallet this weekend. Mine was also intended to be used for my bench build but I got too impatient and used a rubber mallet. This mallet is my Second project since building the bench. Solid ash head 7" long x 3.5" wide and paduak (I think) handle. I had intended the handle shape to be different but it works. When I showed it to my 5 year old he said "what you think your thor" :D 364682
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[Mike Baker 2]

LOL!
Very nice mallet, Mike.
Love Padauk, btw. It works beautifully.

[Kees Heiden]

Kees, thanks. As far as the mallet splitting, if I joined the wood right, it should fail before the glue does. Although the glue was a couple of years old.

I hope and pray for you that you will be right! And maybe you will be lucky indeed.
I used to have three wooden mallets, one laminated, two mortised. Now I only have two wooden mallets, and you can guess which one didn't survive. :p I did take some extreme effort though, beating stakes in the ground in the garden.

Never mind, it won't self destruct immediatly, so plenty of time to look around for a nice piece of oak and some ash or hickory for the handle. Beech works great too.

[Mike Baker 2]

I hope and pray for you that you will be right! And maybe you will be lucky indeed.
I used to have three wooden mallets, one laminated, two mortised. Now I only have two wooden mallets, and you can guess which one didn't survive. :p I did take some extreme effort though, beating stakes in the ground in the garden.

Never mind, it won't self destruct immediatly, so plenty of time to look around for a nice piece of oak and some ash or hickory for the handle. Beech works great too.

Oh, if it flies apart, I'll do my best to put it back together again. Until I can find me a nice chunk of firewood somewhere. But I will eventually build a more traditional one piece mallet. I have a feeling it will be good to have more than a couple around. Until then, barring catastrophic failure, this one should work.

[Matthew Hutchinson477]

I might mention that shocks are an excellent way to make glue pop loose,for what it's worth. The glued up head may be of concern.

Would epoxy be preferable to glue in something like this?

[Patrick Chase]

Would epoxy be preferable to glue in something like this?

Maybe 24 hr epoxy, like some of the Hysols. The faster-drying stuff is pretty brittle and likely wouldn't do any better (and potentially worse than) aliphatic wood glue.

A configuration that provides mechanical interlock might do the trick, though it may not be worth the effort compared to just finding a big enough piece to mortise.

[Matthew Hutchinson477]

Maybe 24 hr epoxy, like some of the Hysols. The faster-drying stuff is pretty brittle and likely wouldn't do any better (and potentially worse than) aliphatic wood glue.

A configuration that provides mechanical interlock might do the trick, though it may not be worth the effort compared to just finding a big enough piece to mortise.

Ya, the mortise wouldn't be too bad if you drilled it out first. Tapering it properly might be tricky, though. Or does it even need to be tapered? Could you just drill a straight mortise and then wedge the tenon on the handle?

[Michael J Evans]

Ya, the mortise wouldn't be too bad if you drilled it out first. Tapering it properly might be tricky, though. Or does it even need to be tapered? Could you just drill a straight mortise and then wedge the tenon on the handle?

Paul sellers has a video on it. Bore one hole straight, the other tapered then pare to fit.

[Pat Barry]

A good wood glue joint is stronger than the wood. Epoxy shouldn't be any better than that.

[Patrick Chase]

A good wood glue joint is stronger than the wood. Epoxy shouldn't be any better than that.

That's only true for conventional strength measurements with static/continuous loads. It isn't true for impact loads as experienced by mallets, or else Kees wouldn't have experienced delamination and George wouldn't be warning about the same :-).

Wood is very resilient stuff. Most adhesives aren't. Some of the tougher, long-cure-time epoxies are pretty good in that regard.

[Nicholas Lawrence]

Oh, if it flies apart, I'll do my best to put it back together again. Until I can find me a nice chunk of firewood somewhere. But I will eventually build a more traditional one piece mallet. I have a feeling it will be good to have more than a couple around. Until then, barring catastrophic failure, this one should work.

My laminated mallet cost nothing more than glue. The wood was scrap. If mine breaks I will build another.

[Mike Baker 2]

My laminated mallet cost nothing more than glue. The wood was scrap. If mine breaks I will build another.
Exactly the same here. It will just give me another reason to build something I thoroughly enjoyed building the first time around. And I won't be driving garden stakes with it, either. :D
But the information in this thread RE glues, etc., is great to know, and is appreciated.

[Pat Barry]

That's only true for conventional strength measurements with static/continuous loads. It isn't true for impact loads as experienced by mallets, or else Kees wouldn't have experienced delamination and George wouldn't be warning about the same :-).

Wood is very resilient stuff. Most adhesives aren't. Some of the tougher, long-cure-time epoxies are pretty good in that regard.
Curious where that fact ("It isn't true for impact loads") comes from. Its the first I have heard it. As far as Kees, he could have just made a bad glue joint - that's not unheard of either, and delamination, if that's what happened can just as or even more easily affect an epoxy joint.

[Jim Koepke]

Ya, the mortise wouldn't be too bad if you drilled it out first. Tapering it properly might be tricky, though. Or does it even need to be tapered? Could you just drill a straight mortise and then wedge the tenon on the handle?

The taper holds the head to the handle. Without a taper there is always the danger of the head flying off at an inopportune moment.

It is actually fairly easy to chop a tapered mortise.

It is also easy to set guides on a piece to help line up an auger bit to drill at an angle.

My first joiner's mallet build was all chopped without drilling:

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

If you watch PBS, Roy Underhill season 33 episode 13: Big Ash Mallet!:

http://www.pbs.org/video/2365021538/

It is worth a watch.

jtk

[Patrick Chase]

Curious where that fact ("It isn't true for impact loads") comes from. Its the first I have heard it. As far as Kees, he could have just made a bad glue joint - that's not unheard of either, and delamination, if that's what happened can just as or even more easily affect an epoxy joint.

The fact that the numbers that people use to justify the "stronger than the wood" claim are from continuous tests is clear from the relevant ASTM and ISO standards.

As to the impact strength of epoxy vs PVA I can't find a canonical source at the moment. There are guides out there (like this one (https://d-lab.mit.edu/sites/default/files/D-Lab_Learn-It_Adhesives.pdf)) that highlight epoxy's suitability for applications requiring impact strength while conspicuously not doing the same for wood glue, but I can't find a direct comparison offhand. I know I've seen it spelled out with measurements somewhere in my previous mechanical engineering career, but I can't find where.

While it's possible Kees could have created a bad joint, are you saying the same of George as well? He voiced exactly the same concern after all.

At the end of the day, the fact that PVA has problems under impact loads is something that everybody who uses it eventually learns the hard way. Maybe you should build a mallet and join the club :-).

[Patrick Chase]

The fact that the numbers that people use to justify the "stronger than the wood" claim are from continuous tests is clear from the relevant ASTM and ISO standards.

It turns out that there is an ASTM standard (https://www.astm.org/Standards/D950.htm) for adhesive impact strength.

Unfortunately manufacturers like Franklin do not state ASTM D950 results for their PVA glues. Some of those same manufacturers do provide D950 results for their acrylics and epoxies, which IMO tends to confirm what we empirically know: PVA isn't a very good choice for impact loads.

[Michael J Evans]

Mike,
Whether you mallet falls apart in the future or not.
still looks great and I'm sure it'll function for a good long while. Good job!

[Mike Baker 2]

Thanks, Michael.
Despite the concerns in this thread, I do not believe I will be hammering on any chisel I own with enough force to cause any issues. It would be hard to imagine a scenario where I would need to hit a chisel with that kind of force. And that is the only thing this mallet will ever hit. I have the aforementioned rubber mallet, and plenty of other hammers, for anything else I need to smack.
But, seeing as I have a Youtube channel, chances are if it does come apart, there will be film. :)

[Sheldon Funk]

Hey Mike,

Great looking mallet. I have used laminated mallets for years. Not the same one, they come apart, stressed by the act of malleting, it's no biggy, a few pieces of scrap and a couple of easy hours later and you will have a new one. Make five. Mallets are consumables in my view. Use them to hammer, then when they are finished they burn nicely on the bonfire.

[Mike Baker 2]

Hey Mike,

Great looking mallet. I have used laminated mallets for years. Not the same one, they come apart, stressed by the act of malleting, it's no biggy, a few pieces of scrap and a couple of easy hours later and you will have a new one. Make five. Mallets are consumables in my view. Use them to hammer, then when they are finished they burn nicely on the bonfire.
Thanks!
That sounds like a plan.

[george wilson]

We made lutes in the instrument maker's shop. Old lutes had no joint at all holding their necks on. They were simply butt glued onto the vaulted backs,where a flat surface at 45 degrees was provided.

One of my journeymen was seen struggling at length with a thin spatula trying to get the neck loose after tis contour had been fitted to the body. I took a little brass hammer 1/2" in diameter,with a 2" long head. I showed him that one good rap on the fingerboard side of the neck,just over the joint,would instantly pop the neck right off. He was glad to know that,as he'd struggled for quite a while to get lute necks off.

Note how small that little brass hammer's head was.

As fpr epoxy,I have always found the QUICK DRYING to not be as brittle as the longer drying type. I've been sealing guitars with a thinned out quick drying epoxy,sanded down to the grain of the wood,for many years now. It makes an excellent sealer that never lets the lacquer sink into the grain. And,the lacquer can look like 20 coats with maybe only 4 coats applied,even over very open grain woods like rosewood.

[Patrick Chase]

As fpr epoxy,I have always found the QUICK DRYING to not be as brittle as the longer drying type.

It depends on the specific epoxy. You can certainly get brittle, strength-optimized slow-cure epoxies as you describe. With that said the toughest and most impact-resistant of all are the "toughened" or "structural" epoxies, and those are invariably slow-curing in my experience. Hysol E-60HP (https://tds.us.henkel.com/NA/UT/HNAUTTDS.nsf/web/9BAEF10D19CB8FFF882571870000DB35/$File/EA%20E-60HP-EN.pdf) is a good example.

[Stewie Simpson]

As fpr epoxy,I have always found the QUICK DRYING to not be as brittle as the longer drying type.

Not from my experience.

[Pat Barry]

Thanks, Michael.
Despite the concerns in this thread, I do not believe I will be hammering on any chisel I own with enough force to cause any issues. It would be hard to imagine a scenario where I would need to hit a chisel with that kind of force. And that is the only thing this mallet will ever hit. I have the aforementioned rubber mallet, and plenty of other hammers, for anything else I need to smack.
But, seeing as I have a Youtube channel, chances are if it does come apart, there will be film. :)
I'm sure it will be fine, assuming it stays dry. I'd like to see someone else's delaminated mallet. Maybe Kees has pictures to share?

[Warren Mickley]

I have used a dogwood mallet for 38 years. It has a one piece head, an eight inch handle, and weighs 30 ounces.

In 2009 I won a mallet in a contest. It was a brand that Chris Schwarz had recommended a year or two earlier. Handle and head were beech, but the head was made of four pieces: two side pieces and two middle pieces that form the mortise for the handle.

Like many contemporary mallets, it was poorly balanced. The handle (10 inches from the head) was too long and the head was too light. So I never used it. It had a leather loop attached to the handle and I hung it up on the wall like a trophy. About two years later, a friend was looking at it and noticed that a glue joint had opened up and maybe a year after that the head came apart and fell to the floor. I am left with two L shaped pieces and the handle. Never used.

This laminated system is alright for a machine woodworker, but would be too much work to true up and glue up those four pieces by hand and then flush off the joints at the end. Much easier to use the traditional solid head.

[Todd Stock]

I've had two laminated mallets, and both have held up well...but both have essentially been plywood. One is a 15-20 year old lignostone mallet that is about 2-1/2 lbs and was used for joint cutting on frames and other stuff that needed more than the usual 18 ounce mallet. The other is a mallet I made in 1970 from BB plywood and epoxy. In both cases, the wood is not allowed to move around much, due to resin impregnation or just a lot of glued layers, so the joints held up well. Neither make my heart flutter when reaching for them - ugly things and seldom used these days.

Not sure why a solid head and two long holes would not be the way to go - chiseling out the waste between the two holes does not take that long, and I've yet to see a one piece mallet head that failed at the handle socket. Leaving the short grain rounded over from the bit eliminates the stress risers (although it looks awkward to my eyes), and requires just some rasp and scraper work to fit.

[george wilson]

Yes,Stewie,but things work oppositely on the other side of the World!!:) May just be the brand you are buying. My quick drying epoxy ALWAYS stays more flexible than the longer drying type. And,I have been using it to seal guitars for at least 20 or 30 years.

I remember when I was a teenager,the bridge of a classical guitar I had made,and stupidly used long drying Epoxy to the bridge on,gave way with a BANG,and hit me in the back! I was on the phone and the guitar was on the counch behind me. That was the LAST time I tried using epoxy on a guitar bridge! The glue seemed to just have gotten harder and harder until it got too brittle and let go.

[Pat Barry]

I have used a dogwood mallet for 38 years. It has a one piece head, an eight inch handle, and weighs 30 ounces.

In 2009 I won a mallet in a contest. It was a brand that Chris Schwarz had recommended a year or two earlier. Handle and head were beech, but the head was made of four pieces: two side pieces and two middle pieces that form the mortise for the handle.

Like many contemporary mallets, it was poorly balanced. The handle (10 inches from the head) was too long and the head was too light. So I never used it. It had a leather loop attached to the handle and I hung it up on the wall like a trophy. About two years later, a friend was looking at it and noticed that a glue joint had opened up and maybe a year after that the head came apart and fell to the floor. I am left with two L shaped pieces and the handle. Never used.

This laminated system is alright for a machine woodworker, but would be too much work to true up and glue up those four pieces by hand and then flush off the joints at the end. Much easier to use the traditional solid head.
? Never used it, hung it on a wall for a couple years and it delaminated ? Don't buy furniture from whoever made that thing. Wood glue joints delaminate due to poor surface prep and or contamination, large gaps, insufficient pressure, temperature too cold for correct cure, wood that is naturally oily and incompatible, maybe due to disimilar materials. That's basically it.
Note: I am not advocating that a laminated mallet is better than solid wood, just that it can work very well. I'm sure countless solid mallets have failed due to splitting along the grain also