a lot of times you've heard me talk
about chisel hammers different types different sizes and I really like these
but you can't really substitute these for these every time these are more
traditional mallets and I really have enjoyed using them for a long time I've
used them ever since I was a boy and I've never seen any craftsman using a
hammer on a chisel and yet today because of the manufacturers like Record, Irwin or
Irwin Marples, or whatever all those conglomerates are called these days where
they combine a steel button on the end that transfers through the chisel most
crafts most carpenters are using chisels and hammers and I i just did it just seems
incorrect even today for me because I like the use
of a mallet, mallet is somehow transfer way you get the center of
percussion you adjust them you can work with them they're very good when you
have a small chisel handle you're working on close work or whatever they just
somehow deliver the blow right where you need it without thinking see how small
this surface is, striking with this getting a dead center is not always the
best so I think everybody should have a wooden mallet of some kind and so we're going to take a look at
them my favorite mallet, this is one that I
made from a wood that grows in Texas mostly in Texas and it's called cedar
elm and I'm not sure why it's got the cedar in there but it's an elm it's a specific elm and the wood
on it is like 50 times at that may be an exaggeration but it is so much denser
than regular elm so much denser than oak and one of the things you don't want in
any mallet is for the wood surface in the dimple here is to surface fracture
in there and become mushy you want this thing to deliver the blow and so this
one has been round up at this one for probably 15 years there are other woods
that are good there's a wood called Osage orange or bois d'arc has several
different names that's really a very good wood Oak works fine not my favorite tends to
mush a little bit but I like to own a good old mallet so let me look I've got some oak here, the reason I chose the oak is because it's so readily available if you
were living in kingston-upon-hull you won't find bois d'arc growing in
kingston-upon-hull or anywhere in the British Isles you will find it in
different regions of the United States it's a wonderful wood and and I really like it but we're not going
to get it so I'm using wood that you can get hold of the thickness can be
difficult I don't like laminated mallets they don't
seem to hold nothing laminated seems to hold for 50 years or more you know almost everything that is
laminated seems to come unglued at some point so I've got a couple of
pieces of oak, here is one that's already been smoothed and planed and prepared
for a mallet in fact I've already made one mallet from this you can see here this
piece came from that one so what I did here is I hand cut this
with a bow saw and then split off the section that I wanted and that's a good
way of doing it here I've picked a piece of oak, this is very typical lots of
craftsmen used to pick their mallet heads from a knotty area of of the
trunk of the tree so there's a piece here that's got a knot here and a knot here, is the same knot, this is obviously the outside of the
tree because it's smaller here so this is the inside there are my growth rings
that's how i can confirm that so this will it go any further? no, it
probably won't and what you could do with this is mix two part to an epoxy
pour this into the cracks and the fissures there and then just leave it to
set for 24 hours and then go back in and work it just like you can the whole surface of the wood the reason
craftsman chose this knotted area is because much of the energy of the tree
when it's developing this massive branch goes to this area and it has this
hardness and solidity that you don't get in other areas of this of the wood
that's growing around it so you get this configuration here that makes it very
difficult this would be very hard to split so what
I'm going to do I can get four mallet heads out of this this, the mallet heads
are going to be six inches long four inches from across here four inches
across and then three inches thick this could vary according to the
wood oak is not a very dense wood is fairly open pored but it's a good wood
it is going to be fine for a mallet so this is my oak first off I'm going to
cut this down the length at four inches so this is eight inches wide I think right on eight inches so I'm going to
go down the middle here now because this knot here and this grain is swelling
around here it's also doing something in this area
of the wood so if I were to try to split this it
would probably take me into this area and I wouldn't be able to get
a mallet head from it so I could saw down it and I don't know if you tried
cutting along three inch oak even with a good saw can be quite an effort you can do it and there's
nothing wrong with you wanting to pursue that but I'm going to cut this on the
band saw and then I'm going to also cut this across here on the band saw and
then this one here I think what I'll do is I'll do this a
little differently I'll go across here first with the band saw then I'll go down here and I'll get my
two guaranteed mallet heads and then on this one I'll split this into using the chisel hammer and a an axe to get me down this section here ok so safety first band saws always have
some kind of inherent danger one of them is dust you really don't want to be
breathing the wood dust you don't want to take it is very very fine i'm gonna
extract her on the back that pulls the dust away from me and the chips and
shavings and everything but there are findings in the atmosphere that you
really don't want to be breathing because they're the ones that cause the
greatest damage I've got my dust mask and eye protection and I'm going to go down on here find the middle this way I've got 13 so I'm gonna go six and a half what I'm going to do I set this to the
correct angle which I'll give you later so I'm going to go here and out here and
that's going to give me two angles and I'll just go in here and transfer on the
bandsaw they won't be quite crisp on the corner but I'll make my turn in here let's take a look at this now just my height ready to go I've got two here I don't know what
would have happened in here you can see one of the nice things about working wood this way is you get this nice even
surface you can see medullary raised on both of these pieces I think here going
across and that's because we growth rings in the wood and that gives
you that figuring not going to be much good to us on this mallet head but still
pretty, well let's take a look at the splitting for this next one here I'm
going to use an axe splitting for this next one here I'm
going to use an axe probably not a good idea to just axe
blow this could be a quarter of an inch probably not a good idea to just axe
blow this could be a quarter of an inch and I've actually got a fissure in
here if you can see this is a slight fissure there which could be to my
advantage so I'm gonna actually go on that fissure there take my, go over the leg of my vise here let's see what happens look pretty good one is going to be
bigger than the other just slightly it's look pretty good one is going to be
bigger than the other just slightly it's so again you get to know the nature of
the wood so different than a machine the machine gave me this pristine
surface now I understand the nature of the machine gave me this pristine
surface now I understand the nature of I can see the the type of grain I've got,
kind of coarse I can see the the type of grain I've got,
kind of coarse so I could take off some of this excess
here so there's my ex blank already started got one of the angles got one of the angles I get this fairly smooth out here I've
got to have one straight edge that I can so let's take a look now but this one
aside I can still get a good mileage out so let's take a look now but this one
aside I can still get a good mileage out so that's another mallet head I've got okay what I'm going to do is just square of
this so I can register my square against okay what I'm going to do is just square of
this so I can register my square against it and I go to just my Stanley smoothing
plane now I'm going against the grain now I'm getting this much smoother cut, medullary raiser glistening and smiling back at me silky smooth how square I am I don't
know yet silky smooth how square I am I don't
know yet way off here can you see this ray flecks coming here
this direction here all right does that tell me much I'm not
sure really ray flecks can be very all right does that tell me much I'm not
sure really ray flecks can be very deceptive the split grain here tells me
a very different story because this is so technically I feel like I need to
plane in this direction it can be so technically I feel like I need to
plane in this direction it can be but what I'll do is I'll follow the ray fleck so we can see I think that's the but what I'll do is I'll follow the ray fleck so we can see I think that's the wrong direction let's take a look I could be wrong still not obvious yeah this is definitely against the
grain for sure but I don't need to spend a lot of time on shaving up this face
because I'm going to be shaping it if you look at the sides of this mallet
here we've got round here we got round on this face the other one was to stay
square is this one and then we got some shaping on here that gives the
impression that this is shaped but it's not actually shaped so I'm going against
the grain here so I was probably right to choose the other direction but I
could be going against the grain here 'cause remember that knot was in there
and that knot is giving you this shifting great this feels so much smooth out and all I
want is enough on this face can you see here, I'm getting a nice
continuous shaving here with no surface fracture here so I'm happier then I'm
going with the grain and I definitely feel the smoothness on this side here
which I this is what I was going off this split grain was telling me a more
accurate story so I'm close but not there yet so we'll take a little bit more off the
inside you could but your iron off if you don't
have the physical strength just takes a little bit longer, so I want a straight face just
to register my square against I don't have to do the other side and I don't
have to do the outer edge I'm square for that I've got this
beautiful smooth surface can you see this raise here they're not medullary
raise that's the, it's almost like your curly ray that's in there that means that is going to be more
compacted grain and that's because it was close to the knot, knotted area so now I'm going to work on my handle
because I get the tapered mortise hole from the shape of the handle so I'm
going to show you how to do that now so we'll take this and we'll make the
handle from this let me show you how I do that I've got
my mallet head kind of roughed out, face mark face edge just to show my wish to
register I'm not going to register against these two faces and neither am
I going to refine them any more than I have done at this stage because I don't
need to it's a waste of my energy what I do need to do is cut the taper
of this mallet head you can see this pops up, it's very very much
a great thing to have this separated because it's so big when you put it in
the toolbox, the tool chest you can store these separately or
alongside one another and they take up a lot less room in your tool box so that's why
we do that this part is protruding exactly the
right amount we don't want it to protrude any more than that, a lot of mallets
show especially when you buy them as a store-bought mallet, they are usually
protruding about an inch that's about the worst thing when you inside a
cabinet on your knees and your chiseling a mortise recess you're holding a chisel here this
captures the top of the cabinet and chips out the corner or something like
that, is unnecessary but when you first make your mallet you
do want it to protrude about three quarters of an inch half an inch to
three quarters of an inch because very often the shaft will shrink
the handle itself will compress in the mortise hole as you drive this in, things
like that happen this end the ends of the mortise holes can consolidate themselves so there are things like that so you
want it at first to leave it for about 2-3 weeks a month or something like that
protruding and then after you've got it really
settle you could go in and trim it down to a shorter protrusion so here I've got a piece of, this is just over, actually this is
7/8 start but I'm going to actually plane this down to about three
quarters but first of all I want to lay out the pattern from this which is one
and three quarters at this end here and then 14 inches long, this isn't
necessary, you actually don't use the mallet down here use it more up here close to,
but the extra on the handle gives it a certain balance and a point of
equilibrium somewhere here in the hand that gives you a balanced way of working
with the mallet so 14 inches is a pretty standard length and I haven't found
anything that improves on that so then I go down here and this end is
one-and-a-quarter so that gives us the exact taper we want to wear one and three
quarters here one and a quarter down here and then
unite those two with a straight edge that will work there like that and then
you're gonna rip back down you can rip it with the band saw or you could rip it
by hand I probably would rip that by hand I like the extra exercise I get from
working with hand tools it makes me certainly makes me less lazy and I'm
going to leave the line in as I cut this my trusted Disston here, I'm going to
cut away from the line but maybe a 16 too much leverage there against me this is a rip saw now I've gone in, it's kind of hard on it to
be so perpendicular to the face, now I've got in a little bit I can drop my hand
here and I'll get a smoother cut, smoother cut down here another way you might want to go is this way in the vise this will work well too, you just have to be
prepared to move along so here this gives you a much smoother
cut because of the lower angle of the hand down here I usually keep going until it binds in
the cut or I hit the bars inside not really, they're starting to bind in the cut let's move it along, yeah be careful of
the bars in your vise and that's that, so I go to a crosscut saw now
usually use a dovetail saw something like that small tenon saw,
this is a 14-inch not exactly small so I'm going dead to land here somebody asked me why the vise was
away, this is, I can put this in the vise like this and I don't have to
lose my hand when it grips here because I can keep holding it and the other
thing is I can come on this here and I can hold a piece before it falls on the
floor several reasons alright so there's my tapered piece I want
to check this edge foursquare first here and I'm dead
square which I knew because I've already planed that straightedge so now I'm going to make sure this edge
is straight and square 'cause you don't want any gaps inside this tapered mortise hole I've got a little, I can see my line, can you
see my line down the whole length there ok once just check it for we're slightly out the square in fact
I'm quite a way out of square because I was using a four and a
half instead of a four no no not really, just love my four correcting that still kept my line on
that side and I am square so I'm going to leave that line just
where it is what I do now is I'm going to take an exact center line on this so
I'm just a hair over one of three quarters so I'm going to go just a hair
over 78 and the same on this end one of the quarter so I'm going to just
over 5/8 I'm just over that size that's given me a center line and I'm going to
use down the center of my stock, sharper pencil down here like this, ok, can you see that so I'm dead center on there then I'm
going to go on here, now I still have to cut this angle on here and I'm gonna
mark that on here, this angle is seven degrees so my angle marked on there, I'll
just cut this off in a minute with a bow saw I could do that right now couldn't I, let me do
that for you and then you can see if you can see that or not, let me put it that way you could use a
tenon saw it would be fine I think a tenon saw will cut this most of
the way through now halfway through, you could just use
your tenon saw like this saw through from both sides I like the
continuous cut that I get from using the bow saw, here is a bow saw that I made
and we're going to do a video on this soon hopefully so you could use a bow saw like this
which I find very effective for this type of work before you go too far through probably a
good idea to turn this this way and then follow your cut through from this side
like this and we're going to be planing the end of this so don't worry if it's
not perfectly true we can be really planing soon anyway that one and then
to this side we do the same, like this bow saw really is it's doing exactly the same as a bandsaw
would do one of the nice things is it needs no power except your energy and it
works so nicely really especially if you want to work with hand tools a little bit of a break out as I unite it
here the two cuts, now I can go with my
smoothing plane like this and clean up this face, can you hear that harmonic, that's
coming from friction between the surface of the wood and the plane and also the end fibers of that outstanding grain end, so I go with my plane but
listen to the difference now ok again one more you don't need a block plane for end grain, this number four is perfect that Leonard Bailey he knew his onions when it came to bench
planes that's my end grain planed on one end same on this end here actually my cut was
better from my bow saw than it was from the bandsaw but that's because I had a pretty
aggressive bandsaw blade in which I use a lot because it cuts so efficiently this is the end where the knot was just
below and I can feel it on that surface so there we were pretty close then you
can see I'm slightly out of, well I'm quite a way out of parallel here so if I take my finger guide here you
can see I'm quite a chunk out of way but what we're going to do is we're going to
be coming in here something like this when we're done but I may want to chisel off some of
this or I may want to axe off I'll show you both both methods oops, bye bye, ok here I could just axe down, when I was a
boy the axe was in common use, I used
it all the time my mentors of my apprenticeship used it all the time but
you could if you don't have an axe a good sharp axe, I'll show you how I might
do it I might take this with a wide chisel
sharp and I might go in here go across with the corner of your chisel,
watch this, this is a technique, this you'll love it you go across here and you use a quarter
of the chisel width, and you chisel across this like this what's this now, see, so easy you won't find this in a book how do you
put this in a book you won't find it in a book so we're
giving it you here on these videos see here just getting all the undulation from the
splitting from earlier and I'm ready if I wanted to plane this I could start the planing procedure here
now then, watch this, here I've got a hollow in here like this and instead of
going with the grain go across it just take off that one high spot right
in the middle great experiment look at this, it's going down quite rapidly number four bench plane is all you need and I've got my surface ready to go
smooth, parallel this outside face I didn't touch yet it may not be parallel, let's
take a look here, yeah sizteenths maybe sixty fourths as a parallel
