Wood to make mallet

[Runner]

I am going to turn a couple of round head mallets to use with my chisels. What is the best wood to use and what sizes are most useful? Thanks in advance!

 

[djnye]

runner,

hickory, beech, ironwood(hophornbeam) all make excellent mallets.

take care, daniel

 

[rich pierce]

Osage orange is also great but heavy. Sugar maple is fine- they use it for bowling pins! Oak works too.

 

[Runner]

I have oak, hickory, and Osage Orange available if I want to collect my own. I think I will try the hickory first. What sizes? They dropped 320 acres of timber this year near our property, so I will just go find a hickory top and cut a few blanks for drying. There are several oak burls that they cut off that are too poor for anything big but might have a nice bowl or such in them I need to go get anyway.

 

[the skrat]

i made one from hard maple head length 4 inches diameter 2.5 inches tapering a little towards the handle you can make larger or smaller depending on how agressive you want to remove wood or your physical stature

be careful on using a branch heartwood and sapwood combination will tend to crack unless you dry real slow soak in linseed oil and store in a cool basement i made mine from sapwood only but you need a larger piece of wood this way good luck on your project

curly maple

 

Did a squre one after my grandsfather's beech one the center had been drilled out and some lead pour in.
David

 

[Wehrmacht]

Runner,

Just a couple of thoughts.....be a little cautious about using the wood out of limbs to make anything.The cellular structure on the top part of the limb grew under tension,and that on the bottom grew under compression.This makes it dimensionally unstable and prone to twisting cracks when worked into any wooden object. You might be better off selecting a standing tree about 8-10 inches in diameter and using a chunk cut out of the butt maybe a foot or so above ground line.

Hickory is great.I've seen a zillion mallets made out of hickory. IMO hard maple might be a little better simply because the cellular structure is what we call diffuse pourous as opposed to ring pourous as hickory and oaks are.Wood,when under high stress will tend to shear along the grain,and ring pourous species will shear a little quicker than diffuse pourous species.Doubt,though,that you would ever put a mallet to the point that it would shear along the grain.

Bet that Osage Orange would make a great mallet! We don't have it down here in the Deep South,but I've heard a lot of good things about it.Thunder and lightning won't bust it,I'm told :m2c:.

 

[longshot47]

Runner-
I'd go with the hornbeam -if ya can find it. Got a few I shaped out for use with a froe, which remain in service after more than 20 years of poundin.
~Longshot

 

[44-henry]

Not ideal but I've been known to wack my chisels with a scrap of 2x4 off the shop floor a time or two, it worked fine for me at the moment, maple or beech would be better and more traditional though.

 

[donk]

The mallet I like to use, I made out of rock maple. It is very dense and hard. The head is relativly small I don't have it here to measure but I would say the head is about 2 inches round by 3 inches long with about a 12 inch handle. If you keep your chisles sharp you shouldn't need any more than that. My dad always told me the bigger the tool the bigger the "OOPS" :results:

 

[Runner]

Thanks for all the input guys! I will post a couple of pictures when I get the first couple done.

A 12 inch handle??? Maybe I need another question answered. I was figuring short handles about as long as the head where your hand would be touching the bottom of the head. Are many of you using longer handles?

 

[rich pierce]

I have 2 mallets. One is an old commercial mallet of some exotic wood, very dense. It has a handle 6" long, say shovel handle diameter. The head is round and 4" in diameter and 4" tall. In other words shaped like a really big coffee mug. It's very heavy and would kill a moose in the right hands. OK, a coyote for sure. This is good for slabbing off wood with a wide gouge. The hitting surface is very near the hand.

The other is a simple handle-shaped piece of swamp oak shaped to my hand, the whole thing flares toward the top. It's squarish at the "head" and the hitting surface is about 1 and 3/4" wide and 4" tall. I use this for tapping chisels (tap-tap, not making threads!), actually most inletting work. The hitting surface is probably 6" from my hand but I seem to adjust w/o thinking.

 

[Stumpkiller]

I have one I made out of green shagbark hickory. It split, and I soaked the whole in 50/50 turpentine and boiled linseed oil. The crack "healed" overnight and has been fine in the 20 or so years since!

I have a smaller one I made out of a broken hickory pick handle.

 

[SilverBear]

I have a couple of old mallets that I use. My favorite has an oak head that was made from a section of an old wagon wheel felloe. I've used that mallet heavily for a long time now and it don't look much the worse for the wear.

Tony

 

[Chuck Thom]

A great mallet can be found at an antique shop. look for an old wood potato masher they are hard wood and work really good and about $30 cheaper than at a wood craft store got mine for $9 a friend got his for $5

 

[Runner]

Thanks for all the info guys!
My wood lathe is a cheapy, but it does great for projects like this.

 

[pondoro]

I made one out of an old croquet mallet and it works well, not sure what kind of wood it is, looks like maple.