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Thread: Best wood for Mallets??

  1. #1
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    Best wood for Mallets??

    Plan to make a few mallets during the holidays (although the interruptions keep coming)....Generally, what wood do you guys recommend for the working part (head) of the mallets as well as handles? I plan to make carver's as well as conventional..Thanks in advance.
    Jerry

  2. #2
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    I made mine with what I had on hand. Red oak. It is not a work of art but it serves its purpose and works well.
    If I were to make some for gifting, I would probably go with something with contrast such as walnut, maple, ash. I would think any hardwood would do.

  3. #3
    You might try a search; I seem to recall a discussion about this just a few weeks ago. Among others, I think live oak and Osage orange had a fair number of fans as head material. Given your location, the Osage orange is going to be easier to find locally. Riven ash makes a pretty good handle but I am sure there are plenty of other species that would work well. That being said I am sure there are plenty of very serviceable mallets hard at work, that were sourced in a firewood pile and/or scrap bin. If they don't hold up well or you are disappointed with balance or aesthetics, it can go right back to the firewood pile without much guilt.

  4. #4
    Persimmon is another possibility for head material. Those of us of a certain age who were around before "game improvement" golf clubs were invented, remember when it was the material of choice for good drivers and fairway woods.

  5. #5
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    Ash is a good material but getting harder to find due to the ash borer beetle.

    What is wanted is a wood that is hard, heavy and not likely to splinter. Lignum vitae is good, but hard to work and expensive.

    My favorite mallet is made of some bog cherry or bitter cherry that was in the firewood pile when we moved here 9 years ago.

    Beech is also a good material.

    Roy Underhill mentions a few woods besides ash in this episode:

    http://www.pbs.org/video/big-ash-mallet-jn5sfd/

    jtk
    "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
    - Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

  6. #6
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    I made mine from dogwood.

  7. #7
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    Hi Jerry. See if you can find some Black Locust aka Ironwood. It will likely be in someone’s firewood stack. It’s heavy, dense, and hard as.....iron. It grows all over the Midwest. I made a mallet from red oak and it’s just not heavy enough. That said, it’s not real big. Some look like Thor’s hammer. Mine is smaller. I may add some steel inserts on the sides to add some heft.
    Sharp solves all manner of problems.

  8. #8
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    Used a spalted Maple blank that was handy..
    IMAG0141.jpgIMAG0140.jpg
    Little mallet laying behind it was inherited, was too light for me......but it served as a pattern for one that fit my hand better. Been driving chisels with it, ever since...

  9. #9
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jim Koepke View Post
    What is wanted is a wood that is hard, heavy and not likely to splinter. Lignum vitae is good, but hard to work and expensive.
    I bought what I think is a vintage lignum vitae mallet off Etsy. It's not a chisel mallet … the seller said it came from an old printer. Not sure what it's purpose was. Maybe to set cold type, or to bang on paper rolls or something. It is a thing of beauty, and it's H-E-A-V-Y-! I cannot imaging a more dense wood. I can see why the species used to be touted often for chisel mallets. You need mass for it.
    Last edited by Kurtis Johnson; 12-08-2017 at 9:13 PM.

  10. #10
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    You might consider epee. Its hard and heavy. I got mine for some decking boards and had to laminate them. It's working well so far. I wouldn't recommend it for the handle, to hard to grip the head well or maybe that's my craftsman shaping the handle.

  11. #11
    I've made mallets of a lot of different kinds of wood. I teach hand cut dovetails and provide mallets for my students. All wood delaminates after a certain amount of use. If you make turned mallets (such as carver's mallets), leave the center marks and when they get bad, you can put them back on the lathe and take a light cut off the face to smooth them out.

    Lignum vitae is good but it delaminates eventually. The one that has lasted the longest is bloodwood, but I'm sure there are some woods I haven't used that will hold up well.

    Mike
    Go into the world and do well. But more importantly, go into the world and do good.

  12. #12
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    Resin infused hard maple, hickory, bubinga.

  13. #13
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    I would bet that you could find some osage firewood without too much trouble in your neck of the woods. I've been using some recently and so far so good. If you look at the Janka hardness scale it's about the hardest stuff you can find domestically, and it is the wood of choice for a lot of bowyers (that's bow as in bow and arrow) so that should tell you something. Back in the day, apparently, a good osage bow was worth as much as a horse. So far no one has offered me a horse for any of my osage, though, so maybe that's just a tall tale.

  14. #14
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    I agree with Richard. Ipe is a great wood for mallet heads.

    I have been using the mallet in these pictures for a few months, and have been pleased with its performance. The head is Ipe, and the handle curly maple. I don't think the handle material matters much if one can make it fairly thick, which should be the case for a mallet.

    Ipe is harder and denser than the Japanese White Oak mallets I am accustomed to using. It should hold up better to striking steel plane blades long-term.

    IpeMallet1.jpgIpeMallet2.jpg

  15. #15
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    I laminated some ipe cutoffs I got from a construction site and turned a nice mallet.

    But very quickly the head of the mallet showed the wear and dings from use. Not heavy use either, just on regular chisels.

    Is there a rubber / plastic I can wrap the head in so it doesn't disintegrate?
    Last edited by Mark Gibney; 12-08-2017 at 11:08 PM. Reason: spelling

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