Making a Wooden Mallet

Making My Wooden Mallet

My hands flipped over a

chunk of wood that fell as an offcut from the chopsaw a few weeks ago. Its a 3 x 6 and
just long enough for the mallet head. As per my usual, I thought it would be good to make
one for a future blog and a video so here is the result in case you wan to make one. I think
in my previous blog I said that oak wasnt an ideal mallet wood, but having said that, I
think that alongside beech it was fairly commonly used by vernacular craftsmen to make
their mallets from because people like me used what they had and not what they went to
the lumber store for. Fruitwoods were also used for mallets. I have seen them many times
in old tool chests Ive come across. Cherry, apple, and I have also of course seen many
nut woods such as hickory. Ash makes a reasonable mallet and many a craftsman made
one from crotch-grain areas of a tree. It was a common thing for craftsmen to use this
area of the tree because of the super tight interlocking grain around this convoluted area.
So too knotty areas of the tree where a live knot gave a hardness that resisted splitting
and surface fracture. My cedar elm mallet has some knotted surround in it and I picked it
for that.

My oak chunk is straight grained, but it will make a useable mallet no doubt. This mallet
has taken me about an our so far and that includes all splitting and planing preparation for
laying out the hole. As I teach my class today I will finish the mallet and tonight I will
post the steps it took to make it. Got to leave for the Penrhyn Castle workshops now. The
suns shining and I want a walk in the woods down to the river before we get started.

Related

Why not mallets - myths busted again!

In "Paul Sellers' Blog"

I forgot to give details of this some time back when I promised to give details of the best
wooden mallet I ever came across. An elderly woodsman from Cheshire showed me a
beautiful mallet thats now buried somewhere in my monstrous collection of user
woodworking tools on two continents. I say buried because I put special and unique
aspects of my tools in wraps for when I complete the book Ive prepared regarding the
importance of tools to the generations of woodworking craftsmen. Thats beside the
point.
My copy of the original

About 40 years ago I saw tools in a chest beneath a bench of a man I knew for a few
years. He was a country man who built fencing and new the nature of anything you
needed to know about hedging of any kind. Nestled amidst Ultimatum braces and brass
and ebony shoulder planes, chariot planes and Norris infils was a wooden mallet made
from beech but rich in those hues no modern stain maker seems at all able to match. I
pulled the mallet from the nest and placed it on the bench at his request. It stood like
mine does above and looked so lovely that we both stood and stared at it for a minute or

two before anyone spoke.

The light glanced the facets that held our gaze so and filtering as it did through the
window-light as it did I couldnt help but ask if it might be for sale. Aye! He said, but
youll ave ter buy the lot. I looked under the bench at a full set of pig-stickers, jointers,
jacks and tri-planes and said, OK. The deal was done and I owned a mallet I liked.
One thing that struck me (no Pun here) about the mallet was the care the owner had taken
in its design, but way beyond even that, I liked the care he had taken of the mallet that
was a good 100 years

old.

These drawings detail my mallet. It has the best balance of any mallet Ive made or
owned and its heavier than the old one by 25%, which I like. This one is made from an
unusual wood cedar elm. Instead of me telling you about the tree itself, please go to
this site and Ill tell you little of whats inside it.
Few non-tropical woods are as dense and close-grained as cedar elm. I doubt you could
drive any size of nail home in it without it buckling at the first or second blow. I have two
mallets I have made to the design of the old find. My other equally favoured mallet is
made from Osage Orange, also known as Bois d`arc, a unique wood with half a dozen
other names too. Anyway, my mallet has dished only 1/16 in 20 years. There are no
cracks or fissures anywhere and its heavy and hard. I heard someone somewhat
influential say you didnt need a heavy, hard mallet for joinery and I listened, considered
his words, and decided a heavy mallet can tap as lightly as a lightweight one or deliver
more than a lightweight one in one tool. Hence the saying, Tap softly with a heavy
mallet. Heavy mallets are practical, adaptable and they are nice to have when you need
them. I also like my Osage mallet because, like the Cedar elm, it is defiantly durable
under any and all pressure, it dishes only marginally, and it does not surface fracture on

end grain, as will many woods typically used for mallets such as beech and oak. Hard
maple works well for mallets too. Not as well as Osage Orange and Cedar Elm, but it will
work.

On my mallet, that follows

the old original one, the sides are not flat like the ones you buy, but shaped as shown in
the drawing above and in the photo left. The end too is round as you can also see (thats
the top edge in pic). This improves the dynamic of the mallet substantially.

A scallop to the inside corners also improves the shape to remove the clunkiness so that it
moves through the air like a jet to strike dead on that sweet spot scientists call COP
(centre of percussion). I like the angular handle shaped again by simple scallops to give a
hexagonal shape. This improved grip over oval handles and directs the blow more
accurately.
My wood came from Texas. Cut and air-dried for over seven years, it has never moved or
distorted one iota. So too my Osage Orange, which came from an old fencepost in the
ground for 50 years and as gnarly as a Texas Dry Frio riverbed. I know, I know! Where
are you going to get Cedar Elm 3 thick from. OK, Im sorry for building you up and
then letting the wind out. The three inch thick head is about 45 years of Texas
HillCountry growth. Not the most conducive to fast growth, but one of the few regions
this tree grows in the US.
Oh, by the way, protruding handles sticking out too much are a problem in tight spaces.
Allow them to protrude until you thing they have shrunk as much as they can and they
have also tightened into the mortise hole. That way they will not go too deep inside the
hole later. See picture above.