Well I did another thing today…  

 

After some great advice on making blanks, I did.  I wound up with a 3 1/4 x 3 1/4 x 12” Ipe blank this morning and decided it was just the thing for making carving mallet heads.  That was a bad decision.  This stuff is terrible to work with.  It is hard, it is dusty, it is messy, and I am not using carbide or even HSS chisels for turning.  Lets just say that I have gotten a lot of practice at sharpening those things today.  

On the good side, I learned how to properly turn a tenon which is a pretty useful skill. I learned what not to use on end grain, roughing gouge I am looking at you.  How to properly use a parting chisel. How to bore a hole using a tailcap chuck.  

 

I learned that the wife has a reaction to Ipe dust so she is not allowed back into the shop until I can get that cleaned up tomorrow.

I also learned that my respirator works well and that my little ghetto air scrubbers are actually really good at grabbing Ipe dust out of the air.

 

Anyway the end result is a tapered mallet head center bored 3” for a 1” diameter handle which will NOT be Ipe.  On a side note, I had to sharpen the bit twice to bore that hole and it still took over half an hour.  It still needs to be sanded but I will wait until I get the handle on it and to a final smoothing and sand the whole thing at once.  In retrospect, I should have left it on the tenon until I was done with the handle and then done the final smoothing/shaping but it won’t hurt to have a turning point marked if I ever have to smooth out the face for some reason.  

 

What do you guys to with used tenons?  It almost looks like it could be glued to something and reused if you wanted to.  Is that a bad idea?

 

One mallet I made with a through tenon and used a wedge to secure it.
 

My bench mallet has fake through tenon. I started with a long square piece of walnut which became the handle. On one end I glued 4 pieces of hard maple to form the mallet head. Turned the pieces round to make a carver’s mallet. 
 

my lathe beater is an oak newel post turned into a carver’s mallet. 
 

I prefer a carver’s style (round) mallet to one that looks more like a hammer 

 A few years ago, I saw somewhere that someone made a hammer style mallet with laminated boards.  The handle went through the head for use.  After use, the handle could be pushed up through the head and stored as a 2 piece unit.  I will look for it on YouTube.  

2 hours ago, FlGatorwood said:

 A few years ago, I saw somewhere that someone made a hammer style mallet with laminated boards.  The handle went through the head for use.  After use, the handle could be pushed up through the head and stored as a 2 piece unit.  I will look for it on YouTube.  

That is on the list as well, a joiners mallet is really useful for banging together tight furniture/cabinet joints and I will be making one of those too. 

Sounds a great project and one that you figured some things out on, that makes it even better. As to your question about used tenons, I often save them for making two piece tops.

Seems like i read somewhere that Ipe' is one of the woods that has silica in it...making it (as you've found) very hard on cutting edges. May also be part of the problem with the dust, kinda like breathing concrete dust. Anyway, I've made a mental note of your experience and will never try it.

Hey Static, I know it's not turning, but I just thought perhaps you may glean a few ideas from my mallet build.

 

Looks good.  Some wood species can be hard on the tools.  I guess you got it hammered out.  Pun intended.

Looks like you are getting there. I have a carvers mallet on the lathe and a hammer style at the workbench. As to drilling on lathe , what is a tailcap chuck? I use a Jacobs in the tailstock and lathe speed needs to be below 700 or you will have problems BTDT. 

  I have a drawer or two full of left over tenons. They can easily be used to make snap tops. 

  By the way if that is a Spindle Roughing gouge you speak of Please only use in spindle work and no bowls or hollowing, can be bad news.

Slowly but surely getting there.  Sorry about terminology tailstock is the term I was looking for. Speed was slow but that stuff is hard as all get out and had to go slow to keep it from burning. 

 

Yeah I was talking about the spindle roughing gouge, that was a learning experience.

Finally found the link that I was looking for.  It was Paul Sellers.  Here is the link. About half way through the presentation, notice how he makes the handle.  It won't come off and you don't need any wedges.  

 

 

Edited December 24, 20214 yr by FlGatorwood

Now if only it had a handle. I have watched several of his videos and wonder sometime when will all the parts be done?

He shows how the handle comes out and near the end of the video he shows how to make the handle.  

Well it has been an interesting ride.  After a lot of figuring out what I did wrong and how to not do that next time, I have a final product.

This is a turned carving mallet with an Ipe head and Ash handle.  It is hard and heavier than it has a right to be. 

There are definitely some imperfections and I learned a lot through this process.  While I am nowhere near being good at this, I suppose I might rate as sort of competent and I am pleased with the end result.

Should be all smiles now.  Looks great!

On 12/24/2021 at 5:06 AM, John Morris said:

Hey Static, I know it's not turning, but I just thought perhaps you may glean a few ideas from my mallet build.

 

This is the language I normally speak.  Turning is brand new to me and might as well still be mostly greek.  I will probably do something very similar for my joiners mallet.

It looks very good as if you done this many times before. 

You should be proud! Not only well proportioned but beautiful as well!  The contrast between the ash and ipe is gorgeous!

Looks great.  keep in mind it is a learning curve that last a lifetime.  We didn't start life running marathons.  Somewhere crawling was involved.

sure looks great to me. Well done.