How To Make The Impossible Mallet

this Mallet is impossible today we're going to figure out how to make it possible let's dive [Music] in we're going to start off with a block of purple heart and this is a a bull turning blank that I bought a while ago and I've made a couple different Purple Heart mallets out of similar ones we're going to start by making one Edge pure and true and off of that we can then Mark and we're going to rip this down to a block that's about 4 in x 3 in x 6 in may look like I'm cross cutting but I'm actually ripping because those are marks from the mill not marks from the grain then once we have this off we can use that first initial surface to square off and make the second Side Square to that one and then I can make the other side parallel to the second side or Square to the first side and then I can plan off the other side parallel to the first side uh a little confusing but if you ever watch videos on dimensioning Lumber it comes off fairly straightforward I want to cut the two ends off and put a bit of an angle on there about this I'm not looking for anything special it's about 1 in to 6 in uh something around that and then I can use a Crosscut saw to cut that down uh this angle makes it so that your wrist isn't having to rotate farther and it makes it much easier to use a joiners mallet with an angle on there uh try it without it and you'll realize wow it it actually really is because you hold the Mallet up close to the head you don't hold it back like a hammer at the end that's one of the big differences between a mallet and a hammer a mallet you hold up close to the Head a hammer you hold back at the end so we can trim this all off and get a nice clean face on there I'm going to use a normal hand plane to grind in from the middle and I might actually bring in the the low angle it works a little bit better on the ingrain here but as long as you plane in towards the middle and don't blow out the other side you won't be tearing out the fibers now for the handle I'm going to grab this scrap piece of Oak and of course it's white oak why would I use anything else normally the handle will be baned out of about 1 in in or 3/4 in material but in this case I'm actually going to be making out of inch and a half wide material because this handle is going to be a little different it's not going to be something that simply goes through the Block it's something that actually uh goes across the block which is going to be a little mindbending to begin with um but we'll cover that when we get there I'm going to start by TR up one side just like with the head we're going to be dimensioning this Lumber as long as you get one side nice and true and then bring the second side to 90° with it and the other side 90° with it or parallel with the first side then you'll know you have a good straight piece of wood to work with these are winding sticks that will tell me if there's any twist or wind in the wood which regular straight edge won't be able to tell you once I get that down then we can use the marking gauge to Mark parallel to that reference surface and then rip that down uh this block is the width of the Mallet so however thick your Mallet head is that's how wide this is so this needs to go across the Mallet all the way because we want to see the dove tails on the outside side and then once that's done we can clean up the uh the opposite side and bring that right down to the line I want to flush up one of the ends because this one wasn't uh originally true uh so we want to clean that up and give ourselves a nice Square end that we can actually Mark and measure off of the next step is going to be figuring out how to do these dovetails and there's a reason they're called The Impossible dovetails they are rather confusing so I'm going to try and explain it um but if not I'm going to leave links to other information down below that explain it even better in paper format first thing I need to do is find the center of the face I'm going to find the center um on the bottom and then find the center on the stick and then set the stick on the center and then Mark exactly its width because the outside needs to be no wider than the width of the piece we're working on uh we need the dove tail to fill the whole space and then I'm going to back it up a little bit and start laying out where the dove Tails need to go on the top and this is one of those things where I did it one way and then realized oh wait no no I need to do it the other way way I don't want pyramids I want dovetails uh and you kind of go back and forth on it um and there are some specific measurements if you want to make it specifically to that particular shape and size I'm making it to match the wood I have on hand rather than going buying something to match that specific size so I need to do some math to figure it out and basically at the top of the Mallet they are going to be very thin and at the bottom of the Mallet they're going to be very thick so that they can slide in yeah it's it's a bit more confusing than it should be but once you wrap your brain around you see some of the measurements you you can understand what it is so once we actually lay it out then it's just playing connect the dots and you can see this is the bottom of the Mallet right here and we want to actually connect from the top down once those are out I'm going to make one curve in the middle and then remove the waist and this is the fun part I always like removing the waist you come in and just chip out big chunks and I'm going to stay a good ways away from the line all the way around because I want to leave that that space I can work with I can come back and true it up I work from one side about halfway in and I'll come back from the other side and work that side as well I don't want to take off large chunks yet um I want to um leave some space otherwise if you take off a big piece it might actually blow out the delicate fibers on the the top face that we're seeing here it's my goal to leave everything a little bit big and a little bit wide on this because I I want to be able to have the space I can come back and work too but it is important that the inside of this be flush and so I'm using a square here with a straight edge and I'll have it touch at one point and then touch at the other point and I want to make sure it's not riding on anything in the middle if anything I would rather have it slightly concave in the middle uh if you have a float or a file it makes it very easy to come in and clean that out one of the the problem Spots You're going to have are these little bit inside and so you're going want to make sure you chisel those out and and get into the corners if anything undercut the corners inside the Mallet a little bit it gives you a a little bit of Freedom it will make it easier to go through in the future we're going to flip it over and do do the same thing on the other side uh this one I was a little bit off my line so I had to come back through and take off a little bit more material inside and again I want to check to make sure that everything is indeed Square we have one that goes all the way through and this one this one's actually really nice cuz this one is just a simple Morse and Tenon rectangular all the way down it makes you feel good so we're just going to bore this out and uh yeah you can use the uh the demon possessed yellow brace if you like um does make things a lot easier especially in purple heart because that's a very very boring project to to run this all down so we're going to board the holes all the way through and then come through and remove the waist back to the lines again stay away from the lines until we get close to our finish and I'm taking everything very close to the line but I'm still leaving everything a little bit fat until I get my handle done because then I can figure out do I want to change the handle or do I want to change the the hole in the head uh so yeah files and floats are your friends they allow you to know number one is it flat inside are you actually making a connection from one corner to the other and it will also make it easier to sneak up on the line rather than taking off too much too fast because often that is the the big problem now we have the head done I'm going to take all of these measurements and marks and transfer them onto the handle and this is kind of the confusing thing because you would think that the handle's widest part would be front to back and actually the the handle's widest part is side to side on the Mallet um so just keep that in mind so I'm going to take all of these measurements and marks that I have on the head and transfer them over to the handle we have to make four big rip cuts that come in from the top and these will create the two cheeks on either side of the Tenon as well as create the sliding dovetail angle on the outside uh this is one of those things where you you you don't want to do it wrong um because it's very very easy to mess this up and and it's very very easy to think about it wrong and double check and triple check that all of your marks are right but as long as your measurements from the Mallet match the measurements on the handle it should all go together should we use the Turning saw to come in and remove most of the material get it down close to the line then I can set it down on the bench and chop this down in and this will be what the head actually sits on this tiny little spot at the bottom um this Mallet really isn't a incredibly practical mallet in that it is weaker than most others because of the way it's built so it's one of those things where it is kind of a showpiece but it is fully functional you can swing it you can use it just understand that it's probably going to break a little faster than others again a file and Float will definitely be your friend um clean up all these faces any of the rough saw marks and then bring it back to those lines you drew um just sneak up on the lines stay away from those as long as you can on these I'm actually leaving uh these uh tenons to stick through on onto the top I want to make sure that those uh pop out uh so that I have something to kind of work with and and Cham for the top edges for this now we need to create the actual dovetails on the Mallet and so those are on the face the nice thing about this is you have one line already drawn that's the other side of the dovetail we just need to draw the front side and then we play connect the dots and run down the corner so you can see how it's kind of coming from this corner um to the line we drew again stay away from the line um I chose to use the the Japanese saw for a good bit of this and I I I didn't like it quite as much because this one really needs a lot of vac here see you're off of this and it shows um it's one of these things where this one this one's important because it uh you will see it it sticks out um unfortunately the Western Saw can't get all the way down and so the Japanese saw works out really well I mean I could grab the panel saw but I would rather have the the finer teeth and a little less control we can cut cut in the shoulders remove the piece and then chisel it out so most of the the detail on this and actually shaping and bring it right to the line I do with the Chisel and take off some of these big pieces but I'm again stay away from the line at this point I'm I'm actually getting close to it and I'm I'm getting right up onto my line and staying just a hair off of it I'm going to come back in and do one more pass one more cleanup one more filing and that will be what actually fits it together but I want to see how close am I really the big problem with this whole design is you can't test it everything has to fit the measurements and if the measurements are right and everything is right on the measurements and the marks it should fit but you can't actually test it there is no way to put it in because once you put it in it's locked so now that I've gotten everything close to the line I'm going to come in with files and floats and really detail it and bring everything down right to the line on this side the handle side I want to make sure sure that this is very very close to what it should be and then I'm going to eyeball things if you look down here you can kind of test the top on this and you can kind of test the top on that one and you can see yeah do I need a little bit of work here a little bit of work there and you can see where you need to take off the material um and I will do most of the editing to the Head uh rather than to the handle I find that to be a little bit easier now this is the confusing part we're going to be cutting out these large chunks and you want to cut out a little bit more here than than you think you should because you need these to be able to flex and so I cut out a little bit on one and then tried to bend it and it wasn't enough and I cut out a little bit more and I tried to bend it and it wasn't enough and needed to clamp these down until these outside pieces almost touch the inside which is a long distance in there and yeah it's really not great to do this with white oak because White Oak is is a little bit more brittle um yes you can steam bend it very nicely um but if your grain is isn't nice and straight you're going to have issues with it you also want to make sure that the relief on either side is similar so when you squeeze it together both of them squeeze together the same amount because you're going to be able to clamp it from the outside uh you're not going to be able to squeeze one side more than the other and then I found out I need to take it a little bit more so I tried bringing in the rasp and grinding it down in a little bit lower and I I was able to get it to squeeze very close to what I wanted but I wanted to get a little bit more on there at this point I'm going to switch over to working on the head and bring this right down to the lines now that I know that the handle is right on its lines the head should also be right on its lines and then I can come back and forth and check and make sure does it actually start into it if it starts into it then it should work um should and this is kind of getting to the scary Point here because we need to crank these down in so I got my videographer to come over he's got big hands and he squeezed it down in and it got those in place and then with those in place now we can drive it in and hopefully hopefully this will go all the way in and H oh it's a little short here what what's up with that oh I was hitting something underneath so I need to open it up and then I turned it 90° in the visce and was able to drive it down the rest of the way in that and just like that the handle is now in the head and you're not getting it out it's just now it's it's like a Minecraft handle uh so now we need to remove some of the material and this is where a lot of people go to turning and honestly I don't like a turned handle I don't want it to be round I want it to be octagonal I want it to be um I want it to be an ovaloid ovaloid shape of octagonal I want it to fit my hand nicely and turned handles just don't feel good they don't have that directionality to them so I'm going to start Rea this down and creating the handle and bringing it down to about 78 of an inch thick as opposed to being um 3 in wide so we use the marking gauge to lay out the line and then I get to grab my big saw this thing's a lot of fun and I can rip this down now I didn't do this ahead of time because I want to keep it as strong as possible because we're going to be pounding on it to get down in there and then there's the other problem of uh if you cut this all the way down to the Head then you're not going to have any material coming up through and so this isn't going to work so you need to leave a little material at there and so I left about an inch and a half and then I cut down the cheek and the shoulder U and one of the problems with this Mallet is that you can't hold it right up at the head which just it feels wrong uh so yeah it's another reason why it's not a completely functional one oh yeah maybe you should wear safety glasses when chiseling because U things get in the way and because your hand will be resting up against this block uh we want to make it a little more organic but I still want to leave a lot of material there so that it still has some strength to it so we're going to be rounding over all these Corners coming with the the Chisel bevel down makes it very quick and easy to take off most material then I can come in with a file and rasp and clean it up and make it feel a little bit better still doesn't feel great but it's going to it's going to feel better than the way it is and it's amazing how fast you can get things done with a file and rasp to create that little organic shape and then we can turn our head to the actual handle which is getting close to handle size now it's something that is almost comfortable we want to put some faces on there and I was looking at this thinking you know the the the end on it from the the chainsaws this was on the end of the log kind of has this weird angle on there and the more I play with it the more I thinking you know I I kind of like that look so we're going to take it down closer to it shape with a draw knife and spoke shaves and I'm going to use the the spoke shaves to clean up from the draw knife and then once I get really close to it we can then come back and start doing the the corners on it and so I'm just going to basically chamfer over the corners to get them close and make it octagonal is and then I'm going to feel it and see where do I want to feel a little more and then try it again again and feel a little more uh I want to move these chamfers into a rounded surface so if you come in with a fine file you can make that transition uh from the square to the round relatively nicely then we flip it over do the same thing on the other you know one of these days I should probably get a shave horse but then I'd have to have space for it maybe I should build an outdoor shop I we think about that so again we're just going to be playing the same thing on this side feel it try it feel it try it see how it goes then once I get it really close we can breing out the card scraper and do the final detail nice thing with the card scraper is you can do the rounded sections or you can do the flat sections and I forgot to PL this side off since I still have the saw marks on there so the the card scraper makes a pretty good quick job of that then we can come in and smooth out all the corners with a finer and finer file until it looks just the way we want it now for the fun part we're going to actually do uh the last little final details on this um this is an interesting Purple Heart I've never had one like this before where you uh where you PL it and turns really really Brown and then like a day later it's purple again um usually it gets purple right off of the saw which is kind of surprising on this so we're going to plane these faces down nice and clean there are still a few slight gaps on here and that was one of the things that you almost never get away from those uh most people come back in and fill them with some sawdust um personally I like to show them a little bit because you know I'm human I like to make that that obvious for the end I wanted to keep that uh that odd angle on there so I cut it off at an odd angle and then I'm just going to come in with the Chisel bevel down and chamfer those angles each and I really like how that came out just that that faceted end into the organic um shape at the top of the handle just I was very very pleased with that part we're going to make sure we chamfer all the corners of the head because if we hit something slightly off we don't want to uh split uh the the corner off of this so coming out the block plane allows us to do that and then the stop chamfers I can do with a chisel bevel down and just bring it in from one onto the other and create a rounded chamfer that matches in you can feather that in with a card scraper and do the last little bit of detail to clean it up at this point it's all about the details coming in and hitting those last little spots here and there and cleaning up this chamfer and adding that little chamfer uh these through tenons that come all the way through I wanted to champer those edges and clean them up I also hit the very tops with a file it allows you to clean up those saw marks and give a nice clean surface on there I'm going to hit everything with a very very high grit sandpaper this lets me know number one where have I missed and so a lot of times I'm going to come back and clean those up with a card scraper or a Spoke shave and get it all ready for finish I do like to hit it with very fine grit sandpaper right at the end um I like filling the pores with the dust it allows it to pull in the oil a little bit better then of course boiled Lin oil and paste wax let it soak up as much as it wants and then let it sit for a little while come back in add some paste wax and voila I I really really like how this came out and I'm looking forward to giving it away this is a fun project so there you have it the impossible Mallet now myth says that this was designed and first made by Abraham Lincoln um there's really no backing for that but it's a fun myth and a lot of people like to say it because you know it's kind of cool and it is the interesting impossible Mallet how in the world did you get that together dovet Tales don't work like that uh well it's because you they don't and you have to kind of think through it and this is this is a fun one I I really enjoy doing this this is the second one I've made uh and they are very very difficult to get gapless they're they're almost impossible and almost everyone I've talked to once they make it they always fill it with something um I prefer not to fill it I don't glue it um I just like to leave it that way to show this is what normal is um so if yours have Micro gaps here don't worry about it it's still functional that head is not coming off of there you saw how much force I had to put it on there um it's it's one of those fun things that it's it's just a cool thing to have now it's really not a great Mallet it is not practical it is not functional it has bad balance cuz you got this thing pushing your hand away from the handle your hand should be right up against against the head um giving you best balance and uh it's weak because of the holes inside and the joinery on it uh yeah it's not a great functional Mallet but man is it fun and it is a great showpiece and on top of that this is actually going to one lucky person in the secret santa group um every year I do a secret Santa on the hive mind and I announce it on one of the shorts and someone on there gets one gift from me and so someone is getting this one so if you're on the secret santa list you have gotten your G yet gift yet um it might be coming so I hope you like this we any questions thoughts ideas snide remarks throw those down below and thank you that really helps us out there are a whole bunch of people who actually go down below and they put comment Down Below in the comments uh or some weird rendition of that and I really love that so thank you that really helps us out gets us in front of more people and you can join the comment down below group uh if you want to find out more then think hit the like share subscribe or if you can go really far join the these people over here those are some of the patrons on patreon because without patrons we wouldn't exist we're completely sponsored by you guys patrons and members people who join the channel thank you you guys keep the lights on and keep me being able to do fun crazy things like this so if you like that think about doing that you know what to do I think I'll do it for now until next time have a wonderful day smash that like button that's impossible no it's just improbable for those times that Thor needs to dress up and be a little more fancy

Channel: Wood By Wright How To

Views: 36,844

Keywords: Wood By Wright, wood By Wright 2, Hand tools, Handtools, Woodworking, impossible mallet, lincon mallet, lincoln mallet, mallet making, purpleheart mallet, woodworking techniques, woodworking projects, handmade mallet, woodworking inspiration, woodworking ideas, woodworking crafts, woodworking creations

Id: uzNeXpZ9-vc

Length: 21min 30sec (1290 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 09 2023