Mallet for dovetails?

[Daniel Rode]

I'm currently using a Vaughan soft face hammer for dovetails. I think it's 12 oz but feels more stout when swung. It's good, but not ideal. I find I use my wrist a lot for dovetails. I use short, controlled taps and longer sharper hits but all wrist driven. I think I'd like something more massive but not overly large. 16 - 18 oz, perhaps. I thought about making something from a dense, heavy wood (purpleheart?) but I think the head would end up too large. Good for mortising, but maybe a little bulky for dovetails and detail work?

I don't want to spend a fortune on this. I'me NEVER going to buy a $100 mallet. If I have to buy a mallet, my limit is about $20.

What do you use for this type of work?

Also, I'm going to make a larger wooden mallet for mortises and heavier chopping. Is oak OK for this? I have some 5/4 QS oak scraps that would be a good size for laminating. I also have some rift sawn red oak scraps.

[David Weaver]

Wood is good 20 ounce. I use it for everything, including mortises. I've turned my own out of verawood and other more common stuff, and used just about everything else I could get my fingers on (though I've never bought a hundred dollar mallet, either, mallets aren't the part of the hobby where I waste money). The WIG mallet is just better than any of the things I've made - the urethane is indestructible, you can smack holdfasts with it, it doesn't skip off of things when you strike - it's hard to exaggerate how nice it is to work with.

Oak is fine for a mallet. Bevel the edges so you can't splinter a big chunk off of it. Don't worry about whether or not it's perfect wood, just put it together solidly and use it until it breaks and then make another one when it does.

http://www.amazon.com/Wood-Is-Good-W...wnorthwinda-20

(that link is creek-ized so that the creek gets a kickback - it doesn't change the price of the item, so might as well have some of it sent here if anyone buys one).

You can choose something lighter if you'd like, but I think I'd reserve light duty mallets to be those that you make for yourself. 20 ounces is ideal to me for everything, i'd rather have one mallet under my bench than 5.

It's a little more than $20, but it's made in the states and the price includes shipping. Grizzly has an import knock off for about 20 bucks, because ....well that's what grizzly does. I haven't always found their shop fox knockoff items to measure up to what they're copying, though. Actually, none of their knockoff items that I've bought have been very good quality, but maybe this one would be the exception because it's just urethane wrapped around maple. I chose to send the $$ to the people with the original idea.

[Sean Hughto]

While I have lots of mallets, and turn new ones on my lathe routinely just for kicks, my go to day-to-day always on the bench and always used mallet is my 18 oz. Wood is Good urethane. Just a good tool all around.

[Sean Hughto]

Maple:


Hickory:


Vera - very heavy for its size:

[Brian Holcombe]

I use a 13oz mallet for detail work and a 24oz for most furniture joinery.

[Andrew Fleck]

I'm another fan of the Wood is Good mallet. I like it a lot better than the conventional mallets I used to use before I started taking hand tool work more seriously. I use the 20 ounce, but I'm sure the 18 ounce would work just as well.

[Derek Cohen]

One of the best mallets I have used for non-hooped chisels is the 18 oz Veritas Cabinetmaker's mallet. I prefer this to a carver's mallet as the strike is focused and less likely to cause a glancing blow, which would be less accurate.

My Veritas has been slightly modified. Leather has been added to one wooden face, and I replaced the handle with one of my own to fit my hand.





For hooped Japanese chisels I use a 375 gm steel Tenryuu gennou. These may be had quite cheaply. Again, this one has a handle of my own ..



Regards from Perth

Derek

[Anthony Moumar]

My joiner's style mallet is 550 grams which is close enough to 20 ounces that it makes no difference. I use it for pretty much everything. I'm not a fan of the carver's style mallet. I shaped the handle so it was comfortable to hold at the bottom and the top. If I need extra control I like to hold it up near the head.

[Jim Koepke]

My go to dovetailing mallet came to me from a friend's estate.

Oak Mallet.jpg

It was a piece of oak 8/4 by 4". He cut a bit off to make a handle. I cut the finger notches to fit my hand. From the nail holes it likely came from a pallet.

I have not weighed it.

I tend to hold my mallets a bit loose so as to not transfer the shock to my joints.

jtk

[Daniel Rode]

I've never used a round mallet before. The size and shape seem like they would work well especially when the force is coming primarily from my wrist. My concern is the glancing blow that Derek mentioned. I'm of two minds on this issue.

My first guess is that a glancing blow, especially with a hard strike, might drive the chisel askew and this would be potentially bad. I'm imagining a kind of a pop-up flyball hit. But the more I think about it, the more I recall that I can strike a round back chisel or a flat back chisel with the small plastic face of my current hammer and I don't recall ever missing in a way that caused a problem.

Is this really an issue I should worry about?

The WIG 18 oz has a smaller head that the 20 oz which I think I'd prefer. Has anyone used both? Does it really matter?

[David Weaver]

Glancing blow isn't really a problem - for two reasons.
* With very little practice, you'll learn to hit pretty straight on the head of whatever you're swinging at.
* Even if you don't get it perfect, the urethane head is grippy and it doesn't just ricochet off of things

For a very long time, I assumed carvers mallets would be a poor choice to use with tools, but once you use them, you find they're not. It's actually a little faster to work with them - all you have to do is pick them up, there's no need to orient them.

[Sean Hughto]

Is this really an issue I should worry about?

No. ........................

[bridger berdel]

I seem to use, in no particular order, a heavy driver I made 30 years ago from apitong, a couple of sizes of rawhide mallets and a small brass hammer. I have others, but those get the most use.

[Sean Hughto]

Here is stupid video I made several years ago. One minute in I'm swinging that WIG mallet chopping those dovetails in some hard maple. Lots of dovetails and I've never missed. It ain't like I'm joe athlete or anyhting either. If I can do it, so can you. http://www.flickr.com/photos/chevy_c...57607001006126

[Daniel Rode]

Thanks. It doesn't hurt to see it in action At any rate, I think I'm going to order the 18 oz WIG mallet and make myself a square faced wood mallet out of the scrap oak for good measure.

BTW - I'm so easily distracted. I really like that dovetail marker you were using. It's nice and thin. Did you make it or buy it?