How To Turn A Mallet On Your Wood Lathe

a mallet is a handy thing to have in your shop it's one of the first things i turned and what i like about it it is easy it only takes one maybe two tools it's when i taught a class of john c campbell uh folk school with with beginners this is the first project i have started with so let's get to turn this i'm gonna show you how to make one and then toward the end of this video stay tuned and i'll show you how to convert it into a dead blow mallet when it comes to wood most any wood will work i'm using a piece of crab apple uh that i got just because i know it's a very hard wood uh i'm using a large branch and the pith doesn't grow out in the middle which is fine i don't i don't mind the pith coming out toward the side uh there is a possibility because if this is green wood it will it will crack most any wood will do free wood is best dry wood is good but you know when you're just starting off get what you can and because this may not be your first your first mallet so i'm just going to take a spur drive and put it in what it looks like the middle it's going to be around by the time we finish this is about a 10 inch block and it's about 5 inches in diameter including the bark we're going to take that off that bark so we're going to put this in i've already cleaned the clean the spindle out so we'll put this in here i didn't really mark the center on this end either we're making this super simple super simple and that's close enough okay so the main tool we're going to use is going to be using a spindle roughing gouge we're going to get this tool rest set in position make sure it clears because it's going to be running a little bit out of out of balance we're going to use our face shield for this we're going to have chips flying so this is the one tool we're going to use the spindle roughing gouge it's the one that looks like a large c-shaped and it's never to be used on bowls it's only for spindle work because of this bark we're going to take off a little bit of time so listen up to this this is an important lesson take off just a little bit of time don't go back and forth we want to take this bark off so we don't get a get a catch with a large flap of bark and have it having it fly up in our face so we're going to turn this speed down a little bit we don't have to worry about going too fast we're just starting off here anchor the tool ride the bevel hold it down on tool rest and we're going to go from left to right so we'll get rid of this part so you definitely don't want to get [Music] caught okay i think i've got to strip back to most of the bark now we're going to go ahead and bring a tool rest up so we we don't want a gap here any any wider than we need it to be so give it a little bit of room we don't want to have room to accidentally slip our finger in there so now we can turn the speed up a little bit since it's running fairly true it's almost round and this is the front of the early wood project you get to see these chips flying especially just a tip i see a lot of beginners that want to come in parallel now if you that might be that might be okay if you're using a carbide tool but with a cutting tool like this you need to have a handle drop anchor the tool ride the bevel without cutting and get in the habit of doing it and then lift the handle until you start seeing that that shaving come off the side just like just like that you can use almost any hardwood um this one i showed you earlier is made out of bradford pear i've got one out of dogwood uh persimmon might be nice uh hickory would be good and any hard wood should be fine like i said free wood is good and green wood it might crack but hey not a real problem on mallet like this so now we're going to decide about how wide this thing's going to be and i'm going to see how wide it is i probably want it a little less wide than this so i'm going to use a set of calipers you can measure a ruler on the end if you like [Music] one of the important things is try to cut this as flat as possible because we'd like this thing to stand up on the end and we can always make it make it flat by using a parting tool so that'd be the other tool you might you might need we're going to follow the dimensions the dimensions aren't aren't critical but we're going to use the dimensions shown in this picture and that this thing is all about 10 inches long and the mallet head we're going to make it about four inches i like to turn the handle at the at the tail stock side because i think it's a better process to do all your turning from right to left so if you've got more turning here leave the mass over here to give it give it more stability so with that in mind we're going to come back on this end and we're going to measure the head of this mallet at about four and a quarter we want it to be as flat here as possible i didn't do a real good job on the on the bandsaw getting this perfectly flat but that's easy to fix with a parting a parting tool so we're going to come down here with this parting tool and just flatten it out i'm going to be careful to stop before i get to the spur drive and we're going to start coming down here toward the end so just anchor the tool and then we're going to just move to the [Music] right now i'm going at about 1600 running true we could bring this thing up at the spindle very safe turn twin center so we can turn speed up a little bit and just start wasting away the wood we're going to make a bead right here on the handle that'll be at least a half inch thick and i'm just going to part it down a little bit [Music] and that looks to me it would be about uh probably no more than an inch which is about where i want it to be let me just measure that actually it's easier to use a vernier caliper for that and it's uh all right at one and a quarter inch so it's a little bit bigger than i need here that's fine got this on my hip just moving my body doing the turner's damp since i measured this and i know it's one and a quarter i know visually about how i've come down now we're going to try to figure out how we want this thing to grip on our hands to get a feel for it and that that doesn't feel too bad that's a little too thick for me so i'm going to keep bringing it down do a little trial and error now spindle you go from large to small so as i come down down this slope when i get to the bottom you come down i've got to come in the other direction to come down i said we we'd do all this with one tool and we can but it is a little easier if we can take a refining cut here with a spindle gouge we're gonna again drop the handle right you know rub the bevel and just bring that in right there you got to be careful coming in this direction that you stop don't run into end grain or bad things will happen and come back in here and again if you've got a spindle gouge that's probably a better tool to make this round over that's one and three eighths a little bit i actually didn't feel too bad for my hand i think i'm going to leave that one design consideration you don't want to do don't put any beads or curves in here you want a continuous form otherwise you'll create a weakness here you don't want to do the one that's shown in this uh the smaller dogwood now we're going to bring this down we got to do two things again the spindle gouge the best of this we're just going to chamfer the edge a little bit let me just knock off the edge at about a 45 degrees you don't have to worry about getting it super round or anything the next thing we're going to do is we're going to bring this this end down about a quarter of an inch so i'm just going to come down by eye and now we're going to just bring this in where we lay a ruler on it and this is where the wood needs removal one of the things one of the things i see a lot of novice turners are they keep wanting to come back here and keep taking another cut well every time you do you bring this down smaller so remove the wood where the wood needs removing so that's right here i know that sounds pretty basic but i'll tell you what it is one that's not uh not always intuitive incredibly obvious to the casual observer then look for bumps i'm looking out here for the profile for any bumps to get this thing a continuous flat and just to kind of test it you can always lay a ruler against the edge and i like that that's pretty that's pretty close so i'm going to also round over the edge here [Applause] and our mallet is is essentially done i had a little bit of tear out i think that might have been where the pith came through i probably want to clean that up a little bit and take off a little wood to get rid of that little rough spot but maybe round over this end just a little bit again the flute is always almost always going away from you the other thing i see turner's want to do they want to come in this way into the end grain and you don't want to do that you want to slice you don't want to scrape now we could go to the trouble of sanding this but frankly it's not worth the effort it's going to take a beating that's the nature of the mallet you don't want it so pretty that you're afraid to use it and mess it up now the handle yeah you could probably take a pass with some sandpaper i wouldn't get crazy about it but you know we smooth it up a little bit and then we always sand with the grain now if you want to put any finish on it that's fine it's not necessary but if you want to look a little nicer you could always rub i would use i would not use a film finish such as a varnish or a polyurethane i put some type of oil oil finish on there i think what i'm going to do is i'm going to use some sanding abrasive paste because it has it has some oil in it and that that will give it a nice polished kind of look so i'm going to use some of this work by some of this by super shine from glenn's woodworks i've made this stuff and it works good but glenn was nice enough to send me a sample and and get some feedback so contact glenn at glenswoodworks.com so this abrasive paste has got a some type of abrasive in there probably something like tripoli or diatomaceous earth and probably some mineral oil and probably some beeswax i think he might put a little uh some other see secret ingredient in there but it doesn't take a lot just rub it in before you turn the lathe on slow the speed down maybe around 400 one thing about a wax finish you can always uh replenish it you don't want it to be a slick finish in your hand and then keep keep maneuvering it around on your paper until there's no wax showing but this gets rid of any any small uh sanding scratches that you had left although on this project frankly i wouldn't sand it up much past 180. this is not a bowl or a platter again it's just an easy woodworking use whatever sandpaper you got don't worry about it i'm happy with that i think that bonkers gonna get some get some use now i've got this this end here i need to uh take that down and either cut it off with the bandsaw or push it up against a spindle sander all right i said stay tuned i'm going to show you how to turn this into a dead blow mallet so you can always go out and buy a hideous orange dead blow mount like this but what's the fun of that so here's a quick example of where we're going with this thing we're going to turn this between centers and we're going to wind up drilling a hole in it we're going to make this a little spindle drive and that that piece of wood for that spindle drive that's what we're going to use as a uh plug when we go to filling it up with some weight to turn it into a dead little mallet so we're going to turn the mallet have a hole drilled in like this we're going to cut the plug off like that and we're going to fill this thing up with some lid weight or bb shot so the variation is when we turn it between centers we're going to add a chuck tenon and put it in a chuck for drilling the hole as follows now most likely you're going to drill using a a jacobs chuck or drill chuck like this with a one inch forstner bit but in my case i'm fortunate enough to have a large twist drill bit high speed steel with a morse taper that'll actually allow me to do it with this tail stock all right so i'm going to measure this and we're going to do it about three inches i'm going to get this down to oh somewhere close to 500 and then just ease it in [Applause] all right we're going to try some of this slip stick from woodturners wonders it should reduce friction on any thing like large drilling like this a little easier to put on than paraffin and that takes care of the drilling okay this is a long piece to extend outside of a chucks now i'm using very large chuck jaw so it might accommodate it but if normal jaws probably not now we could solve that with a 60 degree cone to stabilize it some if you don't have a 60 degree cone you can certainly make one like this i've shown this in videos before but the issue is we've still got to come down and turn the base of this the handle uh with it outside the chuck so let me show you how how we're going to do that we're going to go ahead and take it out take it out of here all right now i'm going to take a spindle scrap you know a lot of my projects i tell you to save your spindle scraps because you never can tell we're going to use them for a jam chuck or a friction chuck and here's a good example of that so what i'm going to do is turn a tenon down here that will fit inside this one inch hole and use that as a as a drive and that'll give us full access to the handle coming straight in like we do the parting tool and drop the handle and that will give us a nice snug fit all we got to do is bring up our wire center to give it some support get the speed up a little bit okay i've got to take this plug down now we're going to park that off with a thin parting tool and that's what we're going to use for our plug okay now that we've drilled our uh mallet the appropriate depth in my case uh it was it was three inches to accommodate a lead shot i'm going to use i was fortunate enough to have a friend of mine that reload shotgun shell so he left me with some lead shot views i use this for a chess set for an earlier video but let me give you a quick comparison and some alternatives this is 4.7 ounces which i i feel is an appropriate amount of of lead shot and it also gives a little space there for the you know the lead shot to move an alternative if you don't have access to lead shot you can go out on amazon and you can buy you a pack of daisy rifle uh bbs they're a little bit lighter this is 4.2 ounces but but plenty heavy enough for this dead blow mallet now if you do use a bee beads you got to drill your hole a bit deeper you might want to experiment with that i think you need to drill it probably 5 8 of an inch deeper and that still brings it down you've got lots of wall strength if you don't have access to lead shot and you don't think you want to go out and buy some bbs from walmart or amazon and you're thinking about using sand let me dispel that notion this is three ounces of sand which is only about two thirds of the weight of of the lead shot it's a larger amount and you'd need fifty percent more to accommodate that you'd have to open this up quite a bit larger and then therefore you're going to wind up weakening the walls when you start pounding heavy so i would not recommend sand but if anybody doesn't say it yet successfully leave in the comments below okay time to put in our weight and glue it so i'm going to use a little carpenter's glue i feel like this works a lot better than ca glue which dries faster but is uh much more brittle under use so i would not advise using ca glue so we're going to use a lead shot i'm just going to pour that in here and figure out how to hold it with one hand um okay so all we're going to do is take a little glue we've taken our plug which has a very slight uh chamfer on it so when we put it in it'll slide right in put in an adequate amount but don't get excessive i would put just a little bit on the other wood because it's good to have wood on both surfa uh glue on both surfaces but again don't be too liberal with the wood because you don't want it sticking to any of the lead shot that's going to reduce the effectiveness of your of your uh mallet so we've got that on there now we're simply going to take this thing loose i'm going to smack it a little bit and as it turns out it went right in there i probably should have tapered a little bit more but i'm going to put this up against a uh spindle sander when it's dry i'm going to leave it like this so the shot so it'll dry with a shot down at the bottom just in case any of it spilled over i enjoy using my shop made mallets and i know you will will too if you're a first time visit of this channel please make a comment and let me know what you g you found useful in this video below if you're interested in other tool making videos check out 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Channel: Mike Peace Woodturning

Views: 54,686

Keywords: woodturning, wood turning, Woodturning lathe, wood turning lathe, beginning woodturning, woodturning tools, wood turning tips, wood lathe, lathe tool, basic woodturning, Mike Peace, mike peace woodturning, mike peace woodturner, woodturning projects, fun wood turning, mike peace woodturning videos, wood mallet, wood mallet making, woodturn a dead blow mallet, wood mallet from log

Id: W-w2EpFI1i4

Length: 22min 30sec (1350 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 02 2020