Wooden Mallet

This blog is the companion to my Etsy Shop of the same name, where I sell buttons, baubles, and other things I make in the shop downstairs. You can find the shop here, if you're interested. If you've come over here from the shop to check out what's going on or if you've stumbled onto this blog from my other blog about books, reading, libraries, and robots, here's what's up: I'm planning on putting up notes about the shop, what I'm working on, and whats working (and what isn't.) Feel free to comment where ever you like, and I'll check in and write back as soon as I can.

In the shop, the things I make I try to keep all natural, so that includes the stains and finishes I use. I love to recycle old wood, but I also try to make sure that it hasn't been treated. For example: pallet wood can be great, but I don't know if its been treated with anything, such as a preservative, or a pesticide, so I won't use it for anything I sell. In fact, I don't use it much at all, as its not something I have ready access to.

I love hand tools, and I'm learning more about them every day, but I also love power tools, and I put them to good use around the shop. I'll probably discuss the tools in a little detail in later posts, but just to get things going, I'll share one of the first tools I made here at the shop.

Moonlight wooden mallet

Check out the wooden mallet; as I said, its one of the first tools I made here at the shop, and I use it for working chisels, and for setting the wedges in my wedge vice--more on the wedge vices later--the head is maple, and the handle is birch. I split the pieces out of firewood I had in the yard.

The head was sawn into three sections, and the center section was cut to remove a wedge shape to support the handle, and then the pieces were glued back together. The handle was shaped and then I added two cuts into the top, slid it into the head, and then added mahogany wedges to expand the handle to fit the wedge shaped recess in the head.

The decorations on the head featuring my initials, were chip carved in with a knife, and then I oiled the entire mallet with walnut oil. Walnut oil makes a great finish, because it penetrates and brings out the grain, but unlike other oils such as mineral oil or olive oil, walnut oil dries. I know boiled linseed oil dries, but that's because chemical and metallic drier are often added. Raw linseed oil will dry eventually, but it takes a long time, and gets tacky in the interim.

If you have any ideas about what I should add here, or what I should try in the shop, or if you just want to say hi, please leave a comment, here or anywhere else around here, and I'll find it.

UPDATE: The mallet post seems to get a lot of hits, so I put together a sketch of the way its put together. Click on the image to blow it up (that's true for all of the images) and if you think it would be helpful for me to post the sketchup model, let me know and I will.

SketchUp model of mallet construction. Let me know if I should post the model