Wooden Plane Mallet | WoodnBits Workshop

Making a Plane Mallet

Written by Larry on November 23, 2009 - 3 Comments
Categories: Tool Projects, Tools, Wooden Plane Mallet, Woodworking

Sometimes I’m asked where I got the plan for this or that project. Most times I don’t have a plan but in this case I do. Here it is:

Bob Roziaeski, chief cook and bottle washer at the Logan Cabinet Shoppe produces some of the finest podcasts you’ll ever see on the use of handtools to shape wood. His recent podcast, Hand Plane Tune Up goes through the process of fettling a typical steel-body plane as well as a wooden-body plane. During this second session Bob wields the hammer you see in the photo. As Bob is so much better at adjusting wooden planes than I am I know this is because of his jazzy hammer and that the one I use is one step up from a tack hammer.

And so it began (phrase stolen from Lord of the Rings), I gonna make me a jazzy hammer too. I got the idea not only from Bob’s podcast but the fact that I was rummaging in my scrap box and right there, on top of everything was a block of paduak that looked almost like a Roziaeski hammer head ™. Now I wouldn’t recommend padauk as the ideal hammer material but gosh, I had it and all it took to get it to proper size was a short time on a shooting board to get the ends square. I added to this a stick of maple for a handle and I was, as they say here in Quebec bien equipped!

I began by working over the surfaces of the headblock with a plane and scraper.

As this was a through-tenon I marked out the mortise on one side and then drilled two small holes on each end so that I could reference them while chopping from the other side. I chopped a shallow mortise from that side so that I wouldn’t get a bunch of tear out and then started the heavy mortising from the other side. On to the handle.

The first step was to cut it to length. My “plan” suggested this to be somewhere around one-foot so that’s what I cut.

I marked the base of the tenon. This was determined by the depth of the hammer head plus a bit. You choose the size of your bit. It doesn’t really matter, though, as it will be cut off before the day is done.

I then marked the tenon sides. Some might only mark two sides at this point as you really lose half the markings when you make the first two tenon cuts. I prefer to mark the whole thing so I can compare it to the mortise before I start cutting. Remarking is quick as the gauge is already set.

This is where your ‘cut to the line’ practice pays off. I cut the two sides and then use a bench hook to cut them off at the shoulder. I remark the short sides of the tenon and cut those as well. Easy peasy. If you don’t have a lot of practice with this, it’s best to cut the tenon fat and use a shoulder plane to bring it to size. It’s likely that you’ll have to use that plane to fit the tenon to the mortise in any case.

Before worrying about fitting the tenon, I shaped the handle. Most of this was done with a spokeshave, followed up by a rasp. This is really the fun part as it happens quickly and you get to play with the shaping. I finished up with some sandpaper.

Now’s the time to slow down. You need to clean up both tenon and mortise so they fit together. Repeated checking of this fit as you remove material is better than wishing you had when you find out that you’ve removed too much material. The end of this process is to clean up the shoulder of the tenon so that it fits snug to the bottom of the hammer head.

Once all that is done, cut a slot down the middle of the tenon for the a wedge. The parts should look like this.

I used this little scrap of padauk for my wedge. Notice the bit of wood I put between the padauk and my bench hook fence. This provided an angular cut that you can see in this photo. I then flipped the piece on the left and cut it straight, providing me with a thin wedge-shaped piece. Sorry, my photo of the wedge was out of focus.

Because your mortise and tenon fit so nicely together, when you pound the wedge into the slot is should produce a very strong handle/head connection, leaving you with almost nothing else to do. I used a flush-cut saw to remove the protruding tenon and then applied a couple coats of boiled linseed oil and a bit of wax. I tend to use either oil or shellac as a finish on my tools as 1) it makes them feel good in my hands and 2) they are very easy to freshen up as they age.