I've got some shaping techniques and you know this is what these projects are all about their more about the techniques and now the project the project is just icing on the cake it's a byproduct of what we're trying to pass on to you so we're more concerned about the technique so these planing techniques using the spokeshave we're going to be using next whether it's use a chisel we've got chamfers to put all around here we've got to shake the head to give it its aerodynamic I don't care what anybody says nobody will agree with me probably but when I shake the head like this one this whole mallet works better in my hand it's what we call balance is it just is aesthetic just something that looks good or is aesthetic something that feels and looks good or is it more than it feels good I think it's probably as much to do with either but I love the idea that it fits my hand take this apart, no I won't to take it apart yet because I'm going to make some of these marks on here so this first scallop starts one and a half inches from here so that's probably going to be close enough so you can mark this like this so one and a half from there and then this end it looks like it's saying one and a half so let's go a little bit more I'm using my finger as a gauge just eyeballing with it this would just give you a start and stop and then this scallop down this area here is about a quarter of an inch in so what I do is I just set my finger to gauge this quarter of an inch quarter of an inch quarter quarter on every one of the facets, oops then turn it around and do the opposite corner here and I'll show you what we've got in a minute so that's what we have on each corner we've just got this depth here got it then between the two just eyeball the center just and then once you've eyeballed it just check yourself see how close you are so I am 80 millimeters there and I'm 80 millimeters there so you can't see my house or you can so they're 80 millimeters and 18 millimeter okay what's that in inches three and a quarter then three and a quarter so then just make this, this is going to be a center point for you to gauge the bottom of the hollow that you're scalloping out so it's going to get you close enough on this part here we're going to leave this protruding but we can round this slightly like this because we're going to be doing that anyway so that's one and then on to this I'm using my arc of my hand here so I just make an arc here like this to get these the same I just pull this gauge line like this and like this and that's going to be close enough so that's got most of it done we'll come back to some more of us in a minute so first off we're going to shape the handle just shock that loose if it will come loose there we go show you a couple of ways to get this so this is the end of the handle I'm going to go in the vise like this here I'm going to use a spokeshave, I'm going to use a spokeshave anyway I wouldn't normally just use a chisel but I could but this will get me so I'm going to use this spokeshave on this one like this and I just elongate my strokes now I'm going up into end grain there so a little bit more here then I'm going to set this a little bit shallower so it takes off less now I'm going to pull this here so I get a smooth cut down into the bottom and if I need to usually I don't need to I'd take a scraper like this and just clean up the surface fibers here like this I don't know if you can see there there's my line so I kept my line there I lost it there so if you've lost it you could go right there, no, don't do that, another method here, let me see how can you see this this is another method you just go with a wide chisel right on that center line somewhere there just pop it on the corner and then come down here from the high point try and feel for the grain to make sure the grain isn't dragging you deeper can't see that way, let me come from the other end so you can see you can do it this way too, just with your upper body stabbing we just feel for the grain first and once you have that grain moving and you know its direction and it's not trying to trick you and take you deeper you can take it off that way now I'm going to go with my spokeshave just to refine it like that same from this end here that's pretty close little end grain in the catchment in the bottom there so just clean up those end grain fibers clean off your pencil ones that's that one it's nice really in it everybody likes this I think can't imagine not keep consciousness of your pencil lines your starting stops it's ready to go kids love this you got to get kids in the shop there we go scrape off your pencil lines you could plane those too long as you don't come up near the head area this works fine all right you could sand that I'm not sure whether you need to it feels nice to me but if you just took some 250 grit maybe if you wanted to this is just personal really little light sanding, like that that feels pretty good to my hand, I slightly roughened it from my planing but, so on this end here now can you see that this is slightly out of square because I took all the taper off one side alright so but I want to round the end so I'm going to come on here maybe 3/16's which is about four or five mil from the end and I'm going to take a little bit more off the other side okay not quite there like that now how would I do that you could chisel it you could file it you could use a rasp I'm going to show you how I would chisel this just pop this like that and then take off a little bit less like this so that works fine but it doesn't get me fly doesn't get this arc continuous arc that I want, the other way would be to do the whole thing with the rasp that works fine too so the cabinetmakers rasp the rasp is going to leave a consistent surface but not a smooth surface so now I've got my shape that was fast not inconsequential I think it's pretty good so now I can take off those flats with the rasp now I could use the file on top of that and I love the way this turns out watch here hmm bit of vibration there, so drop this lowering the Vise to get rid of the vibration like this, this almost has a soapy texture it's lovely when you're working with it like this on this area on this area here, on the arc I don't want these square edges because my hands are going to catch against it take your file and go across the corner follow the arc so you get a lovely crisp corner there, same here, chamfer should I say, same there just take that corner off because your hands are going to be up against it a lot of the time, on here I've got hard corners again so I'd use my plane usually, oops just on here two swipes usually, three swipes to each corner so it's uniform that feels so much better, the same in here so I'm going to go down the hill here and down here okay so I've got to do the round on the end of here exactly the same no different so go with your chisel like this, like that just saves the rasps, you know rasps can be very expensive tools and the chisel edge you can restore the rasp you can't generally by getting arc to the center for now like that same on this one here you can see me take this one off I think right on that cut line there like that if you find a lot of resistance there just take half a bite in other words you can go halfway on like file and you can check these protrusions later to whatever you want you know and what I'm gonna do probably is knock these corners off and clean up this other side here then I might like to be something like this I'm gonna take my spokeshave go right across this corner here go corner to corner I like that think it looks good I like the way that would look there I have this feature I suppose so that's the handle finished let me see how it looks in here it's going to work for now it's not perfect because it's not to final length so I'm going to leave it that's good I'm going to leave it protruding and then in three weeks time I won't cut any more off here because i like the way it looks I'll just take a shaving off one of these faces try it in, tighten it up another shaving until it protrudes the right distance which will be something like this or this plenty that's protruding quarter of an inch on the finished edge so now we just got the head left to do I'm here now I like the way this fits in the mortise this way so what I do is I make an X on here and an X in here it just seemed to seek better so I'm going to keep that so long here now we've got to take I'm going to work on this outside face here to take off these extremes here so how do I do that I could just go with the plane like this set it quite deep if I go square across like this is going to break off but if I angle my plane like this usually it won't I'm not saying it will never because wood is so unpredictable I take a full pass with the plane from one side to the other like this and I avoid the mortise hole here because this is going to show and this could break off if I plane across that mortise hole so I look at my line just to get my arc closed now then see how that looks before I get to my line I want to see how it looks it's still not enough for me I think the line is more where I want to get to so I can keep going this is easier this way than with the grain so I'm going to take this down to my line like this so I've got a definite a reit down the middle layer ridge so I've got flat a flat and a flat here then take the ridges off like this and then from here I'm going to plane here in a sweeping cut from the center line towards the outside like that so there's my line and you can see this graceful arc in here what if I wanted to do a different way what about this for another option we just draw something on there at least you can see where shooting for like that so I follow this arc from the flat from the from this point here from the entry hole of the mortise like that see that is very fast very effective split it off get it out of the way and then I'm going to go to this side now here and then join up somewhere here, so I'm pretty close now, now another method really to clean up is to go across the grain like this it's just to take off the high ridges then you go with your plane again remember you want to keep these crisp lines in your mortise hole so you have to really go from the high along or with the grain now down into the outer edge like this that's got me just down there can you see so we followed this gracefully now then if you'll notice on my mallet here I'm also round in this plane to that so I'm leaving this middle section I go along this area here quarter of an inch and quarter when it's there for 4 to 6 mil anywhere like that this time let me use the plane again I could use a spokeshave what about the spokeshave, that works so nicely look at this okay ok now this way across the ridge again towards the middle of this midsection here and from this one here I can smell the essence of the oak just a friction so it's no dust in the atmosphere I used a bandsaw all that's gone now hopefully this is what I'm smelling now is the friction of the sole of my spokeshave on the very fiber of the oak which is something I really don't get with the machine so let's take a look at this side I think the spokeshave is my best option so watch here now 45 degrees all the way down to the pencil line like this now I'm going up the grain here so I have to turn around come down here till I get to my line okay and then I can take sweeping strokes to arc outside here so this just takes a little skill to master but it's the first tool I ever bought for my children when they were three and four and five I gave them a spokeshave because it's very much of doing to all this really gets them involved engages the senses they feel like they're involved they're doing it okay so that's that one done so I'm going to leave that I probably wouldn't sand that scrape it or anything I would leave the undulations in there so now I have the sides to do remember we had this grain awkward grain in here we're trying to read the grain this broader surface probably not the best to use the spokeshave probably best to use the plane so I'm taking an angle here about quarter of an inch down like we did on the other and across the top now here I'm going with a straight cut at the moment and what that gives me is it a curved line on this face and I'm going to leave that I'm not going to try to follow this necessarily but on this face I will try to round it like this, this grain is just very beautiful here, that's just lovely so I've got a round on this face a round on this face I was planing this way so I have to flip over and feather to guarantee my grain run and this is remember this was that rough grain let me show you here quarter of an inch down here quarter of an inch down here and then we feather into that with the plane like this now you'll see why it wasn't necessary to plane all four faces so we take equal amounts from both sides because we want the mallet to be balanced, half an ounce on one side would make an imbalance I think look how the grain emerges from that rough sawn bandsaw work from when it was milled in the mill all the way to a bandsaw months ago and I'm not going to scrape or sand this outside face because I want to leave the marks from my hand tools in the surface so I've already done these end grains but I don't want to leave sharp corners because they're hard on your hand so here's where we go this time the spokeshave is the best to follow the arc that we just created on these outside edges so watch this follow the outside edges and take off a chamfer till it looks the same size as this side here and here so I'm pulling across and up and I've got my spokeshave angled so I don't get any break out on these corners blowout in America I think I'm sure everybody understands me so I'm getting some breathing exercise here I'm getting some upper muscle upper body training hand-eye coordination and I am enjoying this because I'm doing it you're enjoying it gives you watching it but you're going to get more fun from doing it so one last step here I don't know a bit more than we did three eighths of an inch three-eighths of an inch and stay away from the corners by three-quarters of an inch like this this and then short stabbing movements down from one side and down from the other taking care not to go beyond lines we set so now I'm meeting in the middle sometimes the grain is going to be against you there we have this scallop on this side when this starts to get warm this line here let me show you what we have, can you see that this line here will become more visible it will be more I don't know just apparent really it's just going to be I'm going in to end grain there, very unusual so it means I can go in and out from one side there I've got pencil marks in here that don't really want to see particularly, a scraper is better than the eraser now when we arch this end we could have like on this one I took off the corner so I'm going to make sure that I put that back just to make sure there's no break out and then you just apply whatever finish you want you could use shellac you could use boiled linseed oil would be very traditional two three coats over two or three days put a coat on now and then leave it overnight put another coat on tomorrow leave it overnight go to my blog and see the dangers of using boiled linseed oil for flammability it will spontaneously combust and there is my mallet it's gonna last me for the rest of my life and this is taking two hours probably
