Traditionally, carver's mallets were turned using lignum vitae, which is one of the hardest and heaviest of all woods. Lignum vitae is also used for bearings and bushings, often in an underwater application, because of its durability and natural lubricants. The source of lingnum vitae is the West Indies,
Central America and northern South America. Its name is Latin for "long life", from which comes one of its common names, Tree of Life.
However, when designing this particular carver's mallet, I decided to incorporate some other woods. I chose purple heart for the handle, and osage orange for the head. Both of these woods are very hard and, when used together, they create a wonderful contrast. Hence, in spite of this particular mallet's simple style, it carries a touch of excitement with its colour.
Begin with the Head
Mount a 3" x 3" x 5" square piece of osage orange between centers. Use a 1¼" roughing out gouge, and remove the corners in a few back and forth passes. Do this with the flute of the gouge in an upward position, and the handle square to the wood. First feel the wood with the bevel, and then lift the gouge just until the tool starts to cut. Be careful because if you lift too much, you will scrape the wood instead of cutting it. So, to achieve a cutting action, it is very important to RUB the bevel. Once most of the corners, or resistance, have been removed, then turn the gouge on its side to produce a finer cut. Either side of the gouge can be used - remember that there are two sides to a gouge - so use them both!
Cut the Tenon
Now that the head has been brought to round, cut a tenon so that it can be held in a chuck. This facilitates drilling the hole that the handle will fit into. Cut the tenon with a ⅜" parting tool, using a set of calipers to size the tenon.
Drill a Hole for the Handle
Use a ¾" saw tooth bit, held in a Jacobs chuck in the tailstock, to drill the hole for the handle. Hold the body of wood in a stronghold chuck. Remember to only drill two thirds of the way through, as you do not want to hit the chuck with the drill bit. Make a jam plug, then reverse the head onto the plug, and drill the other third of the hole. Don't force the head onto the jam plug - it just needs to be a little snug but not so tight as to split the wood. Remember also that the tailstock will be in place to hold the wood.
Drill hole for handle
Jam plug
Taper piece
Parting ends
Turn the Head
With the head in place take a light cut, tapering it down slightly. Then part the ends. The parting tool is really only good at removing wood, not at making a superb cut. The skew, on the other hand, is not really that keen on removing a lot of wood at a time, but superior at making fine finishing cuts where no sanding is required.
Turn the Handle
• Put the head of the mallet aside now, and concentrate on the handle. For this I used a piece of 1" x 1" x 10" purple heart. Mount it between centers, and turn to a cylinder. To fit the handle to the head turn it exactly ¾" diameter at the far end of the spindle, occasionally checking until the fit is perfect. Then 5" along the piece make another part at a ¾" diameter. Remove the bulk in the middle of these two parts, and then plane with a skew to make an exact fit. Next, glue the handle into the head and allow it to dry.
• Cut the transition from the head to the handle with a ½" spindle gouge, ensuring that the gouge travels downhill always. Next, shape the handle so that it pleases your eye. Finally, turn a bead at the end. At this point I sanded and finished using Mylands friction polish.
Size tenon
Turn transition from head to handle
Turn bead at end of handle
Turn the Ends
Lastly, turn and finish the ends. To accomplish this, hold either end with the Stronghold chuck, using a set of rubber bungs off the jumbo jaws. At this point it is important that you do not take a very heavy cut, noting that about 98% of this cut is done with the tailstock in place. Cut both ends, then sand and finish.
And there you have your mallet. It is a simple, yet practical turning with a very pleasing look.
This mallet is just one of the many tools that we will be making in the coming months. The mallet, along with the hand plane (also featured in this issue) are wonderful additions to any shop.
Use of Canadian Woodworking's Website and It's Content
This website is presented with the understanding that:
The authors, editors and related web personnel are not responsible for the results of any actions taken on the basis of information on this website, nor for any errors or omissions;
This website is not engaged in rendering professional advice/services; and
Any and all content submitted by this website's users is in no way an expression of the beliefs or opinions of the owners, webmasters, authors and editors.
Canadian Woodworking disclaims all liability for any claim in relation to:
• any matters or factors outside of its control, including the availability or unavailability of the website and digital content due to the availability of the Internet, or telecommunications or other infrastructure systems; for any reasons including but not limited to power outages and maintenance.
The owners, webmasters, administrators, authors and editors, expressly disclaim all and any liability to any person, whether a user of this website or not, in respect of anything and of the consequences of anything done or omitted to be done by any such person in reliance, whether whole or partial, upon the whole or any part of the contents of this website. Please exercise caution when working with any tools or machinery. Follow common safety rules and precautions as outlined in any manuals related to the equipment being used. If advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought.
Use of Canadian Woodworking site and Forum
By posting on this site and forum, the poster grants to Canadian Woodworking Magazine/Website the unrestricted rights to use of the content of the post for any purpose, including, but not limited to, publishing the posted material, including images, in print or electronic form in a future issue or issues of Canadian Woodworking magazine or related Canadian Woodworking products, and to use the post for promotional purposes without further compensation, as well as the right to use the poster's name in a credit along with the post.
CanadianWoodworking never shares, sells or rents your information to any third party without your permission.
This statement explains how we collect information from you and what we do with that information.
What this Privacy Policy Covers
This Privacy Policy covers CanadianWoodworking.com's treatment of personally identifiable information that CanadianWoodworking.com collects when you are on the CanadianWoodworking.com site, and when you use CanadianWoodworking.com's services. This policy also covers CanadianWoodworking.com's treatment of any personally identifiable information that CanadianWoodworking.com's business partners share with CanadianWoodworking.com.
This policy does not apply to the practices of companies that CanadianWoodworking.com does not own or control, or to people that CanadianWoodworking.com does not employ or manage.
Information Requests and Use
CanadianWoodworking.com collects personally identifiable information when you use certain CanadianWoodworking.com services, when you visit CanadianWoodworking.com pages, and when you enter promotions or sweepstakes. CanadianWoodworking.com may also receive personally identifiable information from our business partners.
Personally identifying information is information that can be used to identify who you are such as: name, mailing address, email address. To enter certain areas of the site, you will be required to register and provide information about yourself. This information is for the purposes of Canadian Woodworking and helps us to tailor the site to best meet the needs of our audience.
CanadianWoodworking.com also automatically receives and records information on our server logs from your browser including your IP address, CanadianWoodworking.com cookie information and the page you requested.
CanadianWoodworking.com uses information for three general purposes: to customize the advertising and content you see, and to fulfill your requests for certain products and services.
Promotions
The personal information that we retain is what is provided by you voluntarily. We use it to send you information about Canadian Woodworking and its products or to correspond with you regarding your subscription. If you are a subscriber we need this information to be able to deliver you our product(s) and service your subscription.
By completing a form on this website, you will be able to receive email correspondence from Canadian Woodworking. These emails may include information on upcoming events or special offers for subscribers. If you do not wish to receive email correspondence please email [email protected] and ask to be removed from our email list. Every email that we send to you will include an "opt-out" from receiving future email correspondence.
Aggregate information is information that cannot identify you personally. We collect information on our subscribers that may be used in summary reports presented to our advertisers. This information helps them to better understand our audience and provide advertisements that are more likely to be of interest to you and your organization.
Our intention is always to gather information that will help us serve you better and never to gather information without your knowledge.
As with most websites, we do log web visits. This information, however, does not have a link to you personally. These logs help us understand the needs of our audience and the areas of our site that you do or do not find useful. When you simply browse our site, no personal information is being collected. We may disclose this non-personal information to third parties such as sponsors, clients or advertisers.
Information Sharing and Disclosure
CanadianWoodworking.com will not sell or rent your personally identifiable information to anyone.
CanadianWoodworking.com will send personally identifiable information about you to other companies or people when:
We have your consent to share the information;
We need to share your information to provide the product or service you have requested;
We need to send the information to companies who work on behalf of CanadianWoodworking.com to provide a product or service to you. (Unless we tell you differently, these companies do not have any right to use the personally identifiable information we provide to them beyond what is necessary to assist us.);
We respond to subpoenas, court orders or legal process; or
We find that your actions on our web sites violate the CanadianWoodworking.com Terms of Service or any of our usage guidelines for specific products or services.
Cookies
CanadianWoodworking.com may set and access CanadianWoodworking.com cookies on your computer.
Cookies are small text files that most Web sites, including canadianwoodworking.com place on your computer. Cookies help us identify your interests. They also prevent you from having to register repeatedly on canadianwoodworking.com or from repeatedly seeing the same ads.
Canadianwoodworking.com is not able, and does not wish, to use cookies to track your activities on the Web outside of our site. And no cookie delivered by us will interfere with the operation of your computer.
In cases where there are links to other sites, Canadian Woodworking recommends that you review their organization's privacy policy, as once you have left our site you become subject to the privacy and security policies of the new site.
Third party advertising
If you submit your name through a form on our website to request information from an advertiser or third party, canadianwoodworking.com is not responsible for any marketing or other use of your name by that third party.
Security
In certain areas CanadianWoodworking.com uses industry-standard SSL-encryption to protect data transmissions.
Changes to this Privacy Policy
CanadianWoodworking.com may amend this policy from time to time. By using this site, you agree to the terms of this Privacy Policy. Canadian Woodworking reserves the right to make changes to this policy at any time. Please check back periodically to review any changes.
Questions or Suggestions
If you have questions or suggestions please contact us.