Mallets From Pallets

I have a nasty habit of working with old tools, well past their prime, if they ever had one.  There’s nothing worse than hammers and mallets in that regard as I’ll use an old stone if it’s available.

This is the mallet I’ve used for at least two decades.  It never was much to look at but it could find the back of a chisel so I used it, and used it, and used it some more.  But I decided to replace it and this is where I always say to myself “If I’d known how little time it would take, I would have done it a long time ago.”

I took a piece of what I believe to be white oak that I got from some pallets a friend of mine brought me.  It was 3 3/4″ x 3 1/2″ in cross-section.  I figured it would make a decent-size mallet for tapping on my LN chisels without insulting them with ugliness as my existing mallet was doing.  My tools talk to me and they had complained – honest.

So, the first thing I had to do was to heat up the shop and so I did.  Nothing like a Disston D8 and a big chunk of white oak to warm things up.

Then, I’m sad to say, I failed as a blogger.  I was so excited about being in the shop that I forgot to take photos.  I took my blank (which was nothing more than a foot long piece of the oak) to my chopping block and I lopped off the corners, somewhat rounding it up.  It’s much faster to do this than to chuck up a big square stick and then spend forever being beaten around by my roughing gouge.

Once finished, I chucked it into my lathe and turned a cylinder.  I used a parting tool to mark the two ends of the mallet-to-be.  Note that I changed its length when I got to this point.  I’d originally guesstimated a length where the pencil line is but decided that I didn’t need the handle that long once I got to the point where I could actually wrap my hand around the stock to see how it fit my hand.  This is the real virtue of making your own hand tools.  One can buy a mallet like this for not much money but I was able to fit the handle to my hand as I refined the shape.

At this point all that was left to do was remove everything that didn’t look like a mallet.  I ‘designed’ it on the fly, putting a slight taper into the head, fitting the handle to my hand and turning a knob on the end.  I actually had to shorten that knob just a bit as there was a nail hole that I didn’t want to include.  Roughed out it looked like this:

I’d gotten to this point using a roughing gouge and then a spindle gouge.  The surface, however, could be a lot better and so I smoothed everything up using a skew chisel.   I sanded it a bit, particularly in the curved places where it’s hard to create a surface with a skew.  then I applied a thin coat of #1lb cut shellac to bring out the color and followed with a layer of Renaissance wax, which is named after the Renaissance Woodworker, I think    The result looks like this and my chisels approve.  It was embarrasssing to listen to them giggle.

Cheers — Larry

larry@woodnbits.com

Hit It With a Hammer

A few days ago I posted a description of energy expenditure, by me, to produce a plane hammer for adjusting wooden planes.   In that post I joked that maybe if I created such a hammer I could adjust wooden planes as well as Bob Roziaeski, who is quite good at it.  I admitted that I was not.   Both of these statements were true but the suggestion that a hammer would make me an expert plane adjuster was a joke, though everyone says it’s best to be an optimist.

And you know what?  While I’m still not an expert plane adjuster, I’m sure a whole lot better at it with this hammer.  I’m taking the time to mention this as the differences in results between using my tack hammer and this wood hammer are “Sha-zaam” level different.  I used it to adjust an old smoother that I picked up at a flea market – one of the few wooden planes I’ve ever found in the wild and one I’ve never been able to set dependably.

The plane sports the same old blade with the same old Larry-quality sharpening job.   Its response to my hitting it with my new hammer, however, was akin to the princess kissing the enchanted frog.  In no time this sweet plane was wisping shavings off a piece of scrap and the surface of the board literally shined as though I’d applied finish to it.  There’s just no telling how good it can get if I ever become proficient at wielding this magic hammer.

So, Bob, I’m still behind ya but not so behinder as I use-ta be.  Have I mentioned that I like my new hammer?

Cheers — Larry

larry@woodnbits.com

Making a Plane Mallet

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.

Thanks, Bob, for both the plan and the inspiration.

Cheers — Larry

larry@woodnbits.com