My Big Ash Mallet

[John Morris]

I had a little fun in the shop this morning. Soon I'll be firing up some chairs to build, and right now I am kind of jigging up and tooling up for this big project. Besides the jigs my son and I have been working on, today I got in the shop and made one complete mallet, and I have a couple more in the wings that need to be made as well.

Before I took these images I had already made my layout lines and cut the mallet handle slots on my table saw. I simply set my table saw t-slot miter to 4 degrees and cut the slots in from one side then I set it at 4 degrees the other way and cut the other slot in the other side, then I hogged it out with several passes over the table saw blade. My 12" blades have 1/4" wide teeth so it didn't take long to hog the slots out. I laid out 3 mallets and gang sawed them.

 

I cleaned up the slots with shoulder plane, the slots were heavily kerfed so I used the shoulder plane to knock the kerfs down, not all the way, but just enough to clean it up.

 

I cut my lay out lines to produce the mallet blank halves. The key angle here is 5 degrees on the face. This allows your mallet to be used flush on a bench without your knuckles hitting the bench top but at the same time to have a sweet spot at the arc of your swing or tapping.

 

Blanks ready to be glued up

 

The handles are just dry fit into the slots. To get a great fit I had to sneak up on the handle widths, as not all handle slots in each mallet were the same as the next, because I cut these on the table saw without any jigs, just eyeballing lines is all. So each mallet was a tad different. I had to plane each handle to fit each slot right. I'll have a better assembly process next time, I plan on making many of these and pass them out as gifts and possibly sell them as well.

 

A dry fit looking at the top of the mallet, the slot is tapered, so the bottom is tight and snug, the top is flared out leaving room for the wedges to secure the mallet. When I do these again I'll cut the slots so there is not much of a flare out at the top, it's really not needed. I think a 2 degree slot flare would suffice next time instead of the 4 degree.

 

Lots of glue in around the handle, and on the wedges, I wanted the entire slot filled with either wood or glue, securing it for life. I tapped the outer wedges in just a tad, and I drove home the two center wedges pretty hard. Keep in mind, if you make a mallet, the wedges must be tapped in perpendicular to the grain to avoid splitting the wood.

 

Cleaned up the glue a tad

 

I used my bow arc to make the arc on the top of the mallet. Was an arc needed? No, but the mallet looks better with some shape to it.

 

The arc

 

All the edges of the mallet were chamfered with my block plane and the handle of the mallet of was shaped using my draw knife and a card scraper.

 

The finished mallet at the right, and my two roughs waiting in the wings on the left. I put a very heavy coat of Watco Danish Oil on and wiped off.

 

Here is a fun picture showing the hand tools I used to help make this mallet, it took a combination of my table saw to make the slots, the shoulder plane to clean up the slots, the miter saw to cut the blanks at 5 degrees, and my hand tools to shape and make it interesting.

 

It's hard to see, but the chamfers I put into the handle and the edges of the head, are less than perfect, but that's alright, it's a mallet! The most difficult part was shaping the handle with my draw knife, ash is so brittle and grainy, it shapes horribly with hand tools, so I had to follow up my draw knifed handle with a card scraper.

 

I'll be finishing the other two tomorrow. The main reason I built this mallet was for my chairs, I can't use a regular steel hammer without leaving marks, and a rubber mallet bounces too much. I already gave this mallet a test drive and I also used it on some chisels, I love it.

I did not use any plans, I just read up on the required angle of the face of the mallet, and made my mallet thicker than the average. Most mallets I looked at were in the 2 3/4" thickness range, I made mine at 3 1/4", and I am glad I did, it has a nice big face.

Thanks for following along!

 

[lew]

Nice photo series, John!

 

I really like the way you pinned the handles into the heads- strong and adds a touch of class with the contrasting wood.

 

My Mom lives in a retirement village not far from here. The place is unusual in that there is a tremendous amount of open space that the original architects filled with lawns and trees. Unfortunately one of the trees they planted an abundance of is Ash. The Ash Borers have hit the trees hard and many will have to be removed. I going to keep an eye out for some free turning lumber when they start. 

[John Morris]

Thanks Lew,

Ash sure is hard to shape by hand. But it's a great lumber for chairs, it's one of the most widely used for chairs of the Appalachia's. It steam bends well and it is strong!

I'll be curious to see what you get turned out of it when you finally get some in.

[schnewj]

Nice mallets...well done.

 

I have found that the best way to work with the Ash is to first, pare it down with a draw knife, allowing it to split and follow the natural grain to create a blank. Then rough shape it further with the DK (shallow cuts), spoke shave and then finish with a card scraper to final shape.

 

It is one tough wood and takes a beating. You just can't force it to do what you want, you have to work with it.

[John Morris]

2 hours ago, schnewj said:

pare it down with a draw knife

You know, I've seen this, and I'd love to try it, splitting the wood and working it from there, I may just do that for my next mallets, I enjoy splitting wood, thanks schnewj.

[Stick486]

10 minutes ago, John Morris said:

You know, I've seen this, and I'd love to try it, splitting the wood and working it from there, I may just do that for my next mallets, I enjoy splitting wood, thanks schnewj.

done yet???

that is the way to go...

[John Morris]

1 hour ago, Stick486 said:

done yet???

that is the way to go...

Never done Stick, always moving, forwardever, backwardnever! 

I'll do a few more mallets and try my hand at splitting for the handles. It'll be a great warm up for splitting my chair parts on my Apalachia Ladder Backs I am about to embark upon.

[PostalTom]

This will be a little off topic from your original post, but since the properties of ash were mentioned, I have a story related to that.  Several years ago, I was making a high chair for my granddaughter from ash.  I had previously made some bedroom furniture, and had a hard time getting stain to take properly.  Remembering that, I stained the high chair heavily, let it soak in for maybe 30 minutes, and went to wipe it down.  You can see what's coming!  The stain had dried, and the entire project looked like a child's experiment with finger paint.  In a panic, I grabbed my can of mineral spirits and some cloths, and set about trying to remove the stain and start over.  The end result was that the stain had settled into the grain patterns, and in between wiped off to just a light hint of color.  My "mistake" turned into a pretty nice looking piece of furniture.  Next time I'm at my son's house, I'll try to remember to take a picture of this for posting.  BTW, those mallets look good.  I'll have to try to find the book.  I'm sure I could learn a lot from it.

 

P.S.  Throw this in a different forum if you think it is more appropriate.  I did kind of hijack your thread.

Edited August 28, 2016 by PostalTom
Forgot to give credit for the mallets in the OP.

[John Morris]

10 minutes ago, PostalTom said:

This will be a little off topic from your original post, but since the properties of ash were mentioned, I have a story related to that.  Several years ago, I was making a high chair for my granddaughter from ash.  I had previously made some bedroom furniture, and had a hard time getting stain to take properly.  Remembering that, I stained the high chair heavily, let it soak in for maybe 30 minutes, and went to wipe it down.  You can see what's coming!  The stain had dried, and the entire project looked like a child's experiment with finger paint.  In a panic, I grabbed my can of mineral spirits and some cloths, and set about trying to remove the stain and start over.  The end result was that the stain had settled into the grain patterns, and in between wiped off to just a light hint of color.  My "mistake" turned into a pretty nice looking piece of furniture.  Next time I'm at my son's house, I'll try to remember to take a picture of this for posting.  BTW, those mallets look good.  I'll have to try to find the book.  I'm sure I could learn a lot from it.

 

P.S.  Throw this in a different forum if you think it is more appropriate.  I did kind of hijack your thread.

Great story Tom, and high-jack away!

Sometimes it's funny how these mistakes turn out. I'd love to see some pics of that high chair. Thanks!

[John Moody]

Very nicely done as always John. I really like those.

[HandyDan]

Nicely done John.  Here in Ohio we have lost most if not all of our ash trees to the Emerald Ash borer.  I had to remove a dozen from my property and saved some of it for use.  One thing I noticed is the trees seem to break (from wind?) just a few after they are done.  I know the borer doesn't eat into the tree but have wondered it they have somehow affected the strength of the wood.  I haven't noticed any weakness in use but I see a lot of trees stand dead for many years without breaking.  Anyone else make this observation? 

[Bundoman]

Plus one on handle wedging!  That is a cool looking!

[John Morris]

On 8/29/2016 at 4:58 AM, John Moody said:

Very nicely done as always John. I really like those.

Thanks John! They were fun to make, too bad I can't make a living on just making mallets , they were really that fun!

[John Morris]

23 minutes ago, Bundoman said:

Plus one on handle wedging!  That is a cool looking!

Thank ye much Brent, appreciate it. Isn't it funny how folks eyes seem to always go to the part of a project that was made by hand tooling? There must be a natural human connection to that. Funny eh?

[John Morris]

On 8/29/2016 at 7:26 AM, HandyDan said:

Nicely done John.  Here in Ohio we have lost most if not all of our ash trees to the Emerald Ash borer.  I had to remove a dozen from my property and saved some of it for use.  One thing I noticed is the trees seem to break (from wind?) just a few after they are done.  I know the borer doesn't eat into the tree but have wondered it they have somehow affected the strength of the wood.  I haven't noticed any weakness in use but I see a lot of trees stand dead for many years without breaking.  Anyone else make this observation? 

Dan we do not have a huge supply of Ash trees in my neck of the woods, a ton of pine though. And we have the bark beetle. It ravages the bark and weakening the trees defenses and eventually the tree just dies, and it does stand dead for a long time. Until one day it just can't take anymore, and a breeze just blows it over, because it just rotted inside, but it looked fine from the outside. Looks can be deceiving with these diseases for sure.

[PostalTom]

On ‎8‎/‎27‎/‎2016 at 11:50 PM, John Morris said:

I'd love to see some pics of that high chair. Thanks

Took awhile to get a good picture.  First ones had a ghost image of the chair off to the side.  Anyway, here it is.  The grain contrast I was mentioning can be seen on the chair back.

[Gerald]

Tom noce job on the chair. I would have never have guessed Ash, looks more like some oak.

[John Morris]

19 minutes ago, Gerald said:

Ash, looks more like some oak.

It doesn't it Gerald? Hard to discern at times.

@PostalTom that is a fantastic chair, strong no doubt! That chair should last a few generations of kids, grands, nephews, and more! Nice job sir.

[PostalTom]

Thanks John and Gerald.  That chair was actually the third one I made. The first one I made was from oak for my first grandson, who is now 23 years old.  Second one was from cherry.  All three chairs are still alive and well.

[John Morris]

5 minutes ago, PostalTom said:

All three chairs are still alive and well.

Built like that they'll out last all of us here Tom!