Project Working: mallet

Showing posts with label mallet. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Woodworking Mallet

I had to stay home with my sick son on Friday so while he was taking a nap I was able to finally start on my Wood Working for Mere Mortals woodworking mallet. I bought enough material to make 2 mallets so the first one is pretty much going to be just like the one Steve made in his video and the second one will be more personalized to my style. It all depends on what I learn while making the fist one. I bought 2 - 1x2x2s and 2 - 1x3x2s. 1 each in maple and 1 each in Oak. The first mallet I am making is with an Oak head and Maple handle. The second will be reversed. This will also be my first project not involving Pine.

You can view Steve Ramseys video here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcaV5jWpR1k&feature=g-user-u

I started by cutting the maple 1x2x2 in half to glue together to make the handle. I cut the oak 1x3x2 into 3 pieces. 2 at about 8 inches and 1 at about 6 inches. I took the 6 inch piece and measured in 2 inches and marked the center. I then realized that the board was 2 1/2 inches wide so I remeasured to 2 1/2 inches and re-marked the center.

I made a 1 1/2 inch hole to be able to add some weight to the mallet.

It turns out that speed really does matter. The drill press came setup at the max speed of 3100 RPM.
I changed it to the middle setting of 1720 when I assembled the drill press.
I cut the hole on the right at 1720 and it kept stopping as I lowered the Forstner bit
and it also burned the wood some.
I adjusted the belts down to the lowest setting of 620 and drilled the hole on the left with no issues.

I set my mitre saw to 2 degrees to cut the inside of the wedge.

I flipped the board over to cut the other side. The piece of wood was pretty small so I used the push
stick from my table saw to hold it in place when I cut it.

The wedge is where the handle will go with the narrow part at the bottom and the wide part on top.

I am gluing one side to another 1x3 board.

I am using the second board for clamping only. No glue.

I am making the handle out of 2 1x2 pieces of maple glued together.

I let the glue dry for about 2 hours and then removed the clamps.

BBs to give it a little more weight. I estimate that I should be able to make about 5 mallets
with this container of BBs.

Now to glue the second piece on.

Saturday, January 25, 2014

Mallet handle shaping ideas

I took a better look at the mallet handle this morning. The thicker part of the shoulder is 3/8" and the thinner part is 1/8". I am thinking that I will run the thicker part through the tablesaw and bring both sides down to 1/8". I dont have a bandsaw to cut the sides in to fit my hand better so I am probably going to trim the corners on the router table with a chamfer bit and then just sand the heck out of it with some 60 grit paper. I was also looking through my scraps and found the piece of oak left over from where I put the BBs inside the head. I think that I should be able to make the wedges for the top of the handle from that.