Leather-faced mallet

[bigern00]

I wanted a nice, heavy mallet I could use for assembling woodworking projects around the shop, but I have a hard time buying things when I know I can just make them and have a lot more fun (if I only had more time).

The head is made from a block of cherry and the handle is alder. I faced it with leather attached with contact cement to prevent it from denting or damaging my work. The handle lines were cut with a skew chisel on the lathe to increase grip. I friction burned with a piece of guitar string (E, A, & D are usually the wound ones that work well due to friction, but that is a tool for another post). Head is secured with a wedge that was glued and driven in.

[kbalch]

Thanks bigern00! I've added your Leather-Faced Mallet to our Woodworking category, as well as to your builder page: bigern00's Homemade Tools. Your receipt:

Leather-Faced Mallet by bigern00

tags: mallet

[Altair]

Beautiful contrast between dark cherry and light alder. Looking forward to your friction burning jig. The results are impressive.

[Christophe Mineau]

Hi,
Nice mallet, I guess you carefully adjusted the tilt of the leather faces according to the position of the hand at the bottom of the handle .

Like you I like to use guitar or mando strings for burning lines on the wood lathe, but you say only the wounded strings, you can use all of them, especially the high E, to get all kinds of line width, and the high E gives nice sharp lines, that contrast very well besides wider lines .
I have an example of that on this spinning top for instance :

Actually, old woodturners advice to use carbon steel for burning lines.

Cheers !

[Altair]

Thanks for the tip Christophe. Those lines are neat.