What do you hit your chisels with?

[Mike Henderson]

I've always wondered why carver's mallets are round? Can someone educate me on that?

For me, it makes it easy to grab the mallet to tap with. I don't have to look at the mallet or feel for the shape of the handle to orient it.

Also, lathes produce round things and that's how those round mallets are made

Mike

[Jim Becker]

I currently have a somewhat large rounded mallet made of Osage orange. I plan on making another one soon as that one sustained some damage due to a hidden crack, although it works just fine. I'll also add two more stepping down in size for each. I like the round style mallets for this kind of work...feels comfortable to me.

[Gary Herrmann]

I have a beech mallet I use. Plan to turn myself one at some point.

Altho having had Labs for years, I keep wondering if I can train my pups to headbutt the chisel handles at just the right angle.

Think about it. Is there anything harder than a Labrador skull?

[Dewey Torres]

Usually one of these

Robert,
Yours are amazing... did you make them all. You gave me some ideas!
Dewey

[Brian Kent]

Up to now I have used a brass mallet for the blade and a separate flat-faced bloodwood mallet for the body-taps.

I recently put a cylinder of ash around one end of the brass mallet do I can just turn it around for the body. It is denting my purpleheart plane - side grain and end grain.

The face of the ash mallet is smaller, but I would assume that end grain ash is softer than the bloodwood.

Any ideas on this?

[Bob Smalser]

Turn your carving mallet out of one of the softer hardwoods like Bigleaf Maple, add some lead to the head, and you won't need to spend any money on a dead-blow mallet.

[Tom Henderson2]

I've always wondered why carver's mallets are round? Can someone educate me on that?

I believe it is so that you can just pick it up and hit the chisel -- no worries about getting the hammerhead aligned, etc.

-TH

[Robert Loss]

Robert,
Yours are amazing... did you make them all. You gave me some ideas!
Dewey

Yep I made them all, and all with wood from my firewood pile. I'm glad you got some ideas - after all I got most of them from someone else.

The red gum comes from trees we planted in out small suburban garden some 30 years ago. During the last decade we have had to have them all taken down I had one milled - still have most of the slabs under my house, and I have milled one myself. Since then I have taken up home milling in a big way and now have a whole sea container worth of timber that's undergoing drying.

[Ernie Hobbs]

Now, I've seen everything.


SO, what do you hit your chisels with???

Greg

I use a hammer. Although I have a few mallets and a couple of dead blow hammers, but I find that a regular hammer (hitting with the side of the head) does just fine. No issues with tearing up my chisels and just the right amount of force. For finer work, I'll pick up a smaller hammer.

[Jim Koepke]

When we get a lathe, after making a bunch of chisel handles, one of the things I want to make is some carver's mallets. I used to use mostly the flat faced mallet. Now that my sharpening skills have become acceptable, the finesse of light taps with a round headed tool are more to my liking.

The bottom beater is made from a remnant of an old pallet.

jtk

[Ethan Sincox]

Hi, my name is Ethan, and I'm addicted to lignum vitae carver mallets.







I do have another carving mallet I turned myself out of Osage Orange...



If I can get my hands on a good piece of LV for not too much, I'd like to turn a mallet out of that at some point.

(In all disclosure, I believe I've acquired two more LV mallets that I've not taken pictures of and uploaded to my photobucket account...

[John Thompson]

What do you hit your chisels with? .....

A deliberate blow from a wood mallet and a lot of pride....

Sarge..

[Narayan Nayar]

Different things. I've got a completely ordinary flat-face rectangular wooden mallet. I've also got a really old, beat up wooden mallet with a round head.

But at the L-N event in Oakland I ordered some stuff from Glen-Drake: a Tite-Hammer and a couple of right-handed Chisel Hammers, and I like them a lot. They recoil very well, which makes using them a bit easier, as he demonstrates in his DVD.

[Ryan Cathey]

Awesome mallets Ethan! This thread is giving me a mighty hankering to turn myself one.

What's the diamter of the mallet in your second picture? Any other measurements you could give would be appreciated. Thanks in advance!

[Ethan Sincox]

Ryan,

I'll measure tonight and throw you some numbers.

Ethan