Hi every one! I’ve been using this rubber mallet for most of my woodworking but the thing is, this leaves a rubber stain on most surfaces… so, yes this time is making a mallet and here it is. I know there are many similar mallet making videos but as usual I go with the way I like so let’s see how I made it! Ok, a few weeks ago I found this nice maple at the HomeDepot. This was like a 17inch cut off portion from someone and a HomeDepot guy was nice enough to charge me only for 1ft! I thought this would look good as a mallet head so I roughly hand planed. Now I’m cutting the wood to the width I wanted and this project is almost done already. I mean I just need to glue the pieces and stick a handle in it. The next step was the handle fabrication. I used a leftover walnut but as I like the smooth feeling of the maple, I’m cutting out the sides so I can glue thin sliced maple pieces on it.
This process was just like making a long tenon. Then I carefully glued the handle pieces so there won’t be a gap. At this moment, I actually glued the 3 pieces of the mallet head, too. Once the glue dried, I trimmed the little excess parts of the handle but yeah, there was a gap! I really suck at gluing when there is no reference to push against so I decided to do inlay to fill the gap. It wasn’t planned but It’s not a big deal. I can just cut the narrower slot than the filling pieces and hammer them in. While I waited for the inlay to dry, I worked on the mortise of the mallet head but let me just show you how I finished the inlay. For the better hand plane finish, the grain orientation of the maple pieces and the walnut piece are set to be the same way.
Now, the mallet head. I know many people just cut the pieces like the picture before the glue up so they don’t have to cut the mortise. The reason I didn’t do it like that was, I wanted to make the shoulders on all 4 sides of the tenon on the handle while the handle piece and the maple head pieces were almost the same thickness. I could have gone to get a thicker wood for the handle but it’s just one mortise so making this mortise was a lot faster way than going to get a thicker wood.
Then I cut the tenon. The shoulders are only about 1/8” to 3/16” so I just sliced the pieces a little bit. The only thing here I paid attention to was, the width of the tenon. This shouldn’t go wider or the mallet head may split. Finally, I can shape the mallet to be like how I want. I know some people make the mallet head slightly angled like the picture but I like to keep it square. It’s because I like grabbing the handle right below the head so if I cut it to the angle, it’ll be uneasy to use when I grab the end of the handle. And then, I shaped the mallet head. This small hand plane is so convenient and my favorite. I do most of the details with this.
For the handle, since I suck at using a spokeshave, I cut it by knife. It’s simple enough not to make a mess. Lastly, I glued the joint. Well, before this project, it seemed like my wife was looking for a mallet for my Christmas gift and she told me she saw one expensive mallet that just looked similar to what I’m making. It’s the one from Blue Spruce. So? Just for fun, I put the leather on one end to make it look more similar. Now I put wax to finish. This wax is very jellyish because I’m still trying to find the best consistency of the self made wax. I used walnut oil, carnauba wax and beeswax. Anyways, Here’s the final product. It’s nothing special.
A mallet is just a mallet. No, I was super excited about it because this came out to be much better than my expectation. The grain is so beautiful and I kind of hesitate to use it. Oh but before closing, let me highlight the size of the mallet. It was actually based on my palm weight and forearm length and its diameter. Just kidding. If you want to know, the mallet head weight is about 2 apples and the length of the handle is just about an L size banana. I guess that’s it for today. Thank you so much for watching! I would be happy if you liked the video and happier if you subscribe to this channel. If you have any suggestion to my video, it’s also welcome. See you!