Making Abe Lincoln's Mystery Mallet! // "IMPOSSIBLE" Woodworking Joinery

hey everybody how's it going my name is Chris and this is my shop partner oats and in this video I'm gonna be showing you how I built this impossible dovetail mallet now legend has it that Abraham Lincoln designed this mallet way back in the day because he wanted to come up with a way to make a mallet that had a head that would never loosen or slide off the handle now the problem with these tapered dovetails that it also makes it impossible to put that Mellet on the handle so there's some trickery to it it's really cool it's really challenging a lot of hand cut joinery on this one and had a good time so I'm gonna show you guys exactly what I did to make this mallet should be a lot of fun so let's get started the first thing I'm gonna do is take some rough walnut and hickory and dimension them down to the sizes I want once the walnut piece that I will use for the head is squared up I'll make the Hickory handle piece the exact same thickness as the head now I first learned about this mallet a couple years ago on my all-time favorite TV show the wood right shop was right under Hill and building one has been on my to-do list ever since where I also wrote an article in Popular Woodworking magazine about the mallet and explains that legend has it Abraham Lincoln created a similar mallet with these tapered dovetails that would forever prevent a mallet head from flying off the handle the problem was is that the same joinery also makes it impossible to assemble but as you'll see later on there's some pretty clever stuff going on to make this mell possible [Music] then it's on to the meticulous task of precisely laying out all the joinery on something like this where I want extreme accuracy I'm going to use a marking gauge or a knife to make all my lines rather than using a pencil Royce mallet was really cool but looking at his dimensions there was a couple things I wanted to change first I wanted to make the mallet head wider and heavier than his which also meant I could start with the thicker handle stock and allow me to make the handle have more of a flare where it meets the head because of this change I couldn't use any of his joinery measurements and I had to figure that all out on my own but to be honest that's one of my favorite parts of woodworking is actually designing and figuring out the joinery so I actually really enjoyed that [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you can start to see here on the bottom of the mallethead that the dovetails are not only tapered but are also ramped they almost touch that central mortise on the bottom this and how you cut the dovetail Tenon's on the handle are the key to assembling the mallet and you'll see that later on [Music] [Music] and hey everyone if you enjoyed this video please consider subscribing to the channel but make sure you also hit that Bell notification button so that you get alerts when I put out other really cool videos like this YouTube will no longer let you know if I post a new video if you don't have that Bell icon check and also feel free to follow me on Instagram where I post lots of mid-project and behind-the-scenes stuff if you want to help support the channel even more I have merchandising plans over on my website for sale or there's also patreon if you'd like to help keep me doing these videos that way links to all that stuff is down in the description and again I want to thank everyone for all the support you show [Music] [Music] [Music] one of the hardest parts of this project was figuring out the handle joinery I wanted to leave the tenants proud of the mallet head and this caused some issues I needed to take the measurements off where the top of the mallet was gonna meet those Tenon's and then extend those lines up to where the end of the proud Tenon's would be but because they're tapered dovetails they continue to get wider past the top of the mallet and then they wouldn't fit through that Tennant opening that dovetail mortise opening and so I needed to know where I had to cut those back so that they wouldn't make it through needless to say it took quite a bit of head scratching and having a set of calipers really helped making sure everything was fine and here's the real key to making this joint possible you have to cut out curved sections on the to dovetail Tenon's so that they will Bend and you can squeeze them together to start the handle into the mallet head the biggest challenge of this project is that you cannot test fit your joinery first you have to completely trust your accuracy and craftsmanship because once you assemble the mallet that's it it's not coming back apart to start the handle into the head I need to squeeze the tips together so that they will be able to start into that ramped part of the sliding dovetails and as the handle is driven in the outer dovetail Tenon's will follow those ramps and slowly straighten back out now because of the tremendous amount of force and pressure on the two components while assembling it's vital to clamp the head firmly into a vise and also clamp the handle in a couple spots so that they don't break apart while assembling if you're a touch too tight on your joinery your head will either explode or one of the Tenon's will snap off I've seen pictures of both is terrible and because this is a bunch of fancy exposed joinery you don't want to cut everything too loose because any gaps are really gonna stick out like a sore thumb but if you do everything just right all the pressure is gonna release just as it seats and your joining it will look awesome here the through Tenon's we're hitting the screw on my vise before they could fully seat so I took off just enough pressure on that vise to raise it up enough to finish seeing the handle I was still worried that everything could explode at this point so I didn't want to take any chances so I'm pretty happy with how this turned out I am very impressed my joinery did really well now what happened here in the middle is when I was driving that in and these what and these Tenon's weren't pinched you know they pinched at the end but they're they're still straight at the base and they they're like round and bend to the top here what was happening I noticed when I was driving it in was the bottom corner of this bottom opening in the head the dovetail heads can be hard to explain was digging into this edge on the outside of the tenon and compressed those fibers and that's what actually is causing the gap there was a gap on each side and it got really bad right here where it basically pushed to this corner in the edge on this tenon on each side now I took some hot steaming water and flush it in there and it spread those spread some that wood fiber back out but I can't complain what I should have done was thinned out this these two Tenon's a little bit more so that they actually compressed but this Hickory is so so hard and strong and stiff that it wasn't bending at all I was really scared I was gonna break them it's a it's a delicate dance on having these just thick enough I know Roy Underhill's mounts are thinner and by doing so you have thinner tenants here and they have less to bend that's probably why I mean for my first time ever doing it I am just I'm really really happy because like I said there's there's no test fitting this thing you just have to do the best you can laying out as accurately as you can and hope for the best hey everybody I'm over at my friend Tom's shop is a beautiful dream shop and we're gonna be doing some turning now if you remember about a year two years ago last time I turned I turned these beautiful mallets and guess what I'm back over here again doing another mallet but let's jump over on the lathe that we're gonna lay out the shape of the handle and we'll get turning [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Wow that looks absolutely amazing [Music] that is a nice Wow [Music] [Music] [Music] well everyone I hope you enjoyed this video I know I really had a blast making this mallet I love making projects like this that challenge me and make me a better woodworker and I hope I made old Honest Abe and Roy proud with this project so thanks so much again for watching and we'll see it on the next video

Channel: Third Coast Craftsman

Views: 3,413,344

Rating: 4.9190941 out of 5

Keywords: mallet, wood mallet, woodworking mallet, impossible mallet, mystery mallet, puzzle mallet, puzzle joinery, crazy woodworking, crazy woodworking joinery, crazy joinery, joinery, impossible joinery, abraham lincoln, abraham lincoln mallet, cool woodworkig

Id: dx7iN_y4X7k

Length: 16min 10sec (970 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 14 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/zyzzogeton]

I feel spatially illiterate when I see things like this... I see the trick and I know that I would never figure it out... and even seeing it I don't understand it. I like to think of myself as pretty intelligent, but stuff like this makes me feel dumb.

[u/McFly2319]

After all that work to make that beautiful mallet, you couldn’t get rid of the small hole where you mounted it to the lathe?!

[u/_spectre_]

Very impressive. I really enjoy that he used all hand tools as well

[u/poggy39]

It is just a work of art! Beautiful just doesn’t capture the incredible woodworking craft you have surely mastered. Your wood choices make this mallet a true pice of opulent artistry. You Sir have raised the bar. Ok, now I will try and recreate this pieces! See you in about a year! But why the ear protection while you were cutting with the handsaw? Is this frequency harmful or are there machines operating in the background that we are not aware of? Great job!!

[u/hibikikun]

How else is he going to drive stakes through a vampire's heart

[u/Cookedcuck]

That’s it! I’m recreating me mallet!