Build this amazing traditional mallet

this is a true story back over the summer I was at this neighborhood tag sale huge thing went on for blocks and blocks I'm walking down the street checking out all the different vendors and I hear this voice behind me yells out hey big man big man you need Thor's hammer come on check it out man and I turned around and I'm just expecting some BS and there's this middle-aged guy standing in front of a table full of random junk and he's like come on man you need Thor's hammer come check it out and I looked at it and I was like oh come on that's just oh and antique joiners mallet let me just I'll just take a look at that real quick and gave it the once-over and immediately I was like oh this is this is actually something this is Scottish maybe English pattern joiners mallet old probably you know hundred years old maybe more and feels fantastic in the hand and just from looking at it I can tell it's got a whole bunch of little design details that I've never seen before so here's a real piece of woodworking history it also feels fantastic and has a whole bunch of fascinating little mysteries in it and the guy says to me five dollars it's yours for only five dollars and I'm like all of this for five bucks there's only one response to that we take three bucks so for years I've been using this this is the Paul Sellars joiners mallet and I made it from his video and it's really an excellent tool sturdy comfortable and not too difficult to make I've even used this in professional cabinet shops and it served me really well but the second I picked up this mallet I felt like something was just really really different for one thing it's much more comfortable more more rounded easier on the hand the other thing is when I use the sellers mallet I feel like there's a lot of leverage and using it I really have to swing it and there's a lot more handle than I necessarily need that's all part of the original design but when I use this mallet it feels completely different it feels like there's just this I don't know chunk of mass just sitting up above my hand and rather than swing it I can just sort of let it drop and it delivers just just monster hits with very little effort on my part whoever designed this thing just understood a lot about geometry much more than I understand now it also has some really interesting construction details we'll go back to the sellers magnet for a second it comes apart which is handy and you can see that this handle is actually wedged it's wider at the top and narrower at the bottom and that makes perfect sense because when you're at the clients house and you're using it in your chiseling away you don't want to swing back for a big hit have the mallet head go flying off the handle and you know through the clients window that sort of thing is bad for business so this wedge to shape this makes a lot of sense this one is also wedged but in the opposite direction it's narrow on top and fat on the bottom and even though there's a little additional wedge up here that doesn't make a lot of sense that should be a loose head that wants to fly off especially over decades and decades seasonal changes in use but it's easy to tell that it hasn't you can just look at the patina on the tool it's totally flush right here no lines down here this mallet head has never moved which is really interesting the head is also aggressively curved I've never seen this much curvature on a head and then let me get him close here right at the top of the handle you can see this little circular detail on both sides it's beautifully executed makes the tool look really nice but it's more than that when you get in there to grip it it just lets you feel exactly where the flats on the sides of the head are and it makes it incredibly comfortable right appear on the top I've never seen a detail like this before in fact most of the details on this mallet I've never seen before so it's a really comfortable ergonomic tool filled with fascinating woodworking mysteries clearly we have got to build one let's get after it I want a hard and tough wood from my mallet head so I'm breaking out this log of Osage orange Processing's from firewood can be a huge time waster so I'm going straight for the hatchet I'm gonna use this tool for as long as possible before switching to planes so I concentrate on keeping a loose grip and a light easy stroke I'm not just shaping the billet into something roughly square I'm also removing all the sapwood and revealing that bright yellow heartwood with the rough shaping completed it's time to cut off the section that I'm actually going to use I start off with the DeWalt saw that I use in all of my woodwork for humans videos but this Osage wood is more than a match for this cheap big-box tool I need to break out the big guns here so I get my big old distant crosscut saw so that I can get this cut finished before the video is over the rough billet looks good and now I can start refining it I use a wooden fork lame and a pair of winding sticks to establish one flat face then I reference a square off that face to play in the adjacent edge flat and true with two good edges I can gauge straight lines and bring the last two rough sides into final dimensions you can see me referencing my gauge directly off the original mallet I'm making a copy so there's no reason to measure with a ruler of course I'll put all the exact measurements in the plans and you can grab those down in the description now my billet is much too wide so I jump back to the hatchet to waste away some material I think a lot of woodworkers see this as a camping tool but if you're working by hand you cannot dismiss the efficiency of an ax or a hatchet I get close to my line and then I can quickly just finish up with a plan and here's where the project hits a snag the billet looks Square and solid but if you look closely at the end grain you'll see this little check that happened when the wood was Green before I sealed it I thought it was tiny but you can see it running all the way down the side for a tool that's going to get hit over and over again a flaw like this is a disaster this billet is not salvageable luckily I have a big chunk of dry white ash that's been sitting in my shop for years I know it's stable so I immediately start transfer the measurements off the old head you can see me walking in and out of frame here as I dimension the new head on the bandsaw there's just no time for me to do another one totally by hand but this ash is clean and straight grand and in no time I can move on to the handle which is probably the most challenging part of the piece anytime you're making a mallet I recommend you start by making sure the head and the handle fit nicely together and saving all of your shaping for later for this piece I'm copying the strange double tapered tenon of the original so I lay out lines with a ruler and then just plain down to them once the wedge shape is made I copy it onto the mallet head this way I have some layout lines to follow as I'm chopping the mortise for a really deep mortise like this it makes sense to bore out the waist so I'll go in from both sides using a smaller bit on top and a larger one underneath after the waist is removed it's on to some straightforward chiseling anytime I do a mortise with the center drilled out I still go straight across the work as if the hole wasn't even there some people will chisel along all four sides of the mortise but I find that leads to inaccuracies making a series of cuts straight across let's the width of the chisel determine the finished width of the mortise it's a very precise way of working now you want really crisp edges at the top of your mortise but don't forget that this whole tapers in both directions get your edges defined and then use your layout lines to lean your chisel and get that correct angle you don't have to nail it on the first shot we'll be trimming that mortise in a second personally I never get a good fit right off the jump my handle doesn't even go all the way through and it is gapi as hell the good news is that looking through the mortise instantly shows the places where my edges aren't as square and where I need to trim there's a lot of ways to trim a mortise but I really like grabbing the mallethead in the vise and using this controlled two-handed chisel technique to pair the sides and maintain a flat edge if you're frustrated with your mortise and I got frustrated with this one time's try using the edge of your chisel as a straightedge lay it along the inside edge and see if it'll wobble like I'm showing here notice that if I rotate the head 90 degrees and do the same thing the chisel is flush along both the edges and stays steady this tells me that the wider cheeks of the mortise are already flat but that the narrow ends are still high in the middle and they need work now I have a very heavy vintage vise and it's sturdy enough for mortising but if your vise is more light duty or if your piece is slipping when you hit it you can clamp a piece of stock into the vise and then screw clamp your mallet to that piece of stock with this setup you have the full support of your bench underneath the piece and the holding power of the vise to keep it from wandering around as you chop I don't have to use this setup but I often use it anyway just for its stability and convenience after a couple of rounds of trimming and testing the fit my handle is starting to fit the mortise and I'm getting an idea of why this goofy tenon even works that double taper might seem like it's going in the wrong direction but it seats very tightly inside the head I actually have to tap it out to get it to release and I'm not even done getting the fit oh and you don't need a mallet to make a mallet if you don't already own a wooden one I recommend one of these Auto Body hammers they make great temporary chisel mallets and there's such good general tools that I keep this one under my bench all the time with the head and handle fitting accurately it's time to start shaping those big curves on the head I've laid the lower curve out on my piece of ash and I'll define the lowest part of that curve with a stopped saw cut then I can take out the waist with a series of bevel down scooping chisel cuts I've got a whole video on doing curves with just a chisel and saw so I'll let you watch that if you want to learn about this process but I do need to mention this middle section around the mortise if I come right over the edge of that hole with the same chisel cut the unsupported grain on the edge of the mortise is gonna break out really badly but you just need to think ahead a little bit if you come in with a coping saw and undercut the Piper's along those edges that should make it safe to finish chiseling the curse you can see on this first cut how I get close to my edge and then carefully lift the chip with the edge of my chisel to make sure it's going to come up cleanly honestly this part of the mallet is still a mystery to me did the original maker chop the mortise and then cut the curve it seems like an awful lot of trouble and risk on the other hand if he shaped the bottom of the head first he'd be laying out a mortise on a curved surface and that sounds like a total nightmare I'm really not sure how he did it but the little bit of detective work is definitely part of what makes this project so much fun with the rough shaping done you can wrap a piece of sandpaper around a spray can and fair the curves in with an easy circular motion what I'm not going to do is cheat and use the radius at the top of my belt sander to finish it up I am NOT walking off camera to the machine I am NOT coming back covered in dust and I am not wearing a respirator you can't judge me now I'm going to crosscut my ends to their final length and give them a bit of an angle the two faces of the original mallet have slightly different slopes but they average out to about 7 inches pretty much every mallet you see has angled faces on both sides and if you're new to woodworking that might not make a ton of sense but as soon as you start hitting it with a chisel you immediately understand what's going on this angled face means you don't have to swing the mallet nearly as far to get a good hit on the chisel it helps protect your wrist from overextending and you could angle these a lot more if you wanted to and pick up more ergonomic advantage but keeping them a little bit more up and down and has another advantage let's say you're working on a piece and you need to get a chisel squared away you need to get something set up over here well you can take a mallet like this and set it down on the edge of a countertop and because the face is close to perpendicular it'll balance on that face with the handle sticking out really conveniently you can get everything set up over here maybe you have a chisel and you need to make a hit you don't want to take your eyes off that chisel you can just reach over Byfield find that now handle it automatically registers in your hands so you know the head is pointing in the right direction and then you can go up and strike your work this design just has so many advantages we have to have it in our piece this back saw isn't deep enough to saw all the way through but that's easy to handle by just rotating the piece you can see me struggling a little bit to get through this tough ash with such a fine-tooth saw but when the waste comes away you can also see how relatively clean the surfaces the minimal cleanup makes it worth the extra trouble from it a sharp smoothing plane with a freshly lubricated soul smooths out that face no problem you don't need any fancy low-angle plane to tackle this tough end grain if you have a well set tool and you use a smooth circular stroke as I work you can see the pale torn grain of the saw marks being slowly replaced by the shiny and dark grain of cleanly sliced fibers and if this step gives you any trouble try using medium grit sandpaper on a block to get your surface I finished mine up this way and it worked great now the last interesting detail of this mallet is this little curved section right here it sits proud of the handle and it's a perfect little radius and right from when I bought the mallet I was super curious about what's going on with piece but the second you get your hand up in there you feel what's going on they let you know where the head is and they're just extremely comfortable especially for this thumb and forefinger grip that you're likely to use when you're doing delicate work when I wanted to make the mallet the first thought I had was well how did the original craftsman ladies out because that's close quarters in there and I immediately had an idea for this I thought well I bet you could just take a coin and put it in there and I dropped in a regular old American penny and it's perfect it gives me the exact spacing from the head to the bottom of the curve and the exact radius so I got a penny in place on my handle stock and traced around it with a marking knife and that gave me everything I needed to get this detail laid out and start cutting and I'll admit cutting these details might be the trickiest part of the whole project and I'd even leave them out except they feel amazing in the hand and they look really cool I chose white oak for my handle and it's a perfect handle material but it's also chippy and difficult to carve so I've given myself a stop cut and you can see me coming in with a controlled bevel up cuts all around that radius once I've got the shape pretty well defined I use a rat tail file to smooth things out I can tell from the tool marks on the original mallet that the maker did all of his carving with chisels but he was working in Beach which is a smooth carving wood a different material demands different techniques you have to be willing to experiment and adapt even in ham tool woodworking there's no reason to be a slave to tradition once these details are cut I shape the handle using my homemade spokeshave that I made a couple of weeks ago of course I have a whole drawer full of good vintage spoke shapes but I honestly like this one it's really light and the wood sole glides so smoothly against the work the handle on the original mallet is very rounded it's kind of a long teardrop shape I can't see any tool marks on the original so I have to assume that the maker sanded or rasp to the final surface the sanding stick that I'm using is made from a scrap of square aluminum tube it's really flat and rigid and it helps me quickly get a smooth and finished surface I'm also finishing up the round details at the top of the handle with sandpaper wrapped around a magic marker at this stage I'm not so concerned with getting crisp lines I'm much more focused on getting a smooth finish that will be friendly to the hand I've radiused the top of the mallet to match the underside and my sanding stick bears those curves really effectively to finish off my mallet head I'm gonna chamfer every edge these details aren't aesthetic when you have a striking tool any sharp edge is vulnerable to splintering chamfers protect those brittle corners and you might wonder why I'm hand planning wearing a respirator no it's because there's still sanding dust in the air from sanding the mallet head I have asthma so I'm really careful about not breathing dust assembly for this mallet is really quick first I cut a slit in the top of the handle and then I put glue on the tenon set it in the head seat the fit against my bench and then I can use glue and a scrap of walnut to wedge the top when all that's finished I don't even need to wait for the glue to dry this mallets ready to use here's the original and here's the copy and you know you can tell just by looking at them the copy is very faithful to the original I got all the details and the general shape really great as soon as you get this tool in your hand the design of the tool itself tells you how to use it so you grab it down here where the handle is thick that's your power stroke that's what you're gonna deliver a big hit on you're wasting away material choke up a tiny bit on that handle and then you have a more delicate grip and that's for if you're doing something smaller like chiseling out the mortise for a hinge but there's one more grip if you put your index finger flat along here and your thumb along here I'll call that your carving grip this isn't a carving mallet but if you just have to do a little bit of detail work on something this mallet with its curved head and this special detail on the handle that's gonna let you get that work done without having to carry a second mallet in your toolbox now this channel specializes in easy projects for the woodworkers getting started but I have to be honest this this was not easy this was a pretty complex project and it took me a whole day of shop work to get it done now if you need a mallet don't buy a commercial one make your own I've got several videos on how to make easy and effective mallets I will link to those down in the description but even more importantly if you don't have a mallet yet build the Paul Sellars mallet this is a fantastic tool Paul has a great video link in description and this is approachable for a beginner it's just not very difficult this is the first one I made and it came out good enough to use on the first shot so it's highly recommended but if you've already got him out if you've already made him out and you're ready to step up to something a little bit better well allow me to suggest a Cadillac I must own a dozen mallets and this one is better than all of it if you need something really fine and you want to make it yourself I highly recommend this I have a set of plans available on my website very reasonably priced you can grab those at rex krueger comm slash store before I go I always have to thank my patrons my patrons are the people who are giving me the support to go on crazy archeological tool hunts and chase down tiny little details spend days in the shop experimenting and figuring out little things packaging it all up in a nice little video and bringing it to you the internet for free it's not free to them because they help pay for it which is good because it's not free to me I got expenses and my patrons on patreon are making this a viable job for me I can't even say how grateful I am if you'd like to be one of those people go on over to patreon calm Rex Kruger and check out the early access and rewards that I have just for my patrons and to everybody who's watching I wouldn't be down here at all if I didn't have viewers thank you so much for watching

Channel: Rex Krueger

Views: 676,408

Rating: 4.9101973 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: sq3K6dLaquk

Length: 21min 6sec (1266 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 18 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/DpperDn]

This guy’s entire series “woodworking for humans” is pretty good. He does a lot of just starting out, bare minimum tools. He has a ton of videos on how to make different tools. I followed his wooden square video, and it is now my go to square if I’m not needing a slider.

[u/dunderthebarbarian]

Great video! Are you the youtuber?