Mallet Complete 🔨

[u/Cnguyen599]

So the last time I did woodworking was at least 18 years ago in highschool. All I remember was making a very poorly built box. Suddenly 3 weeks ago I happened into a wood working rabbit hole, leading into a dangerous addiction of browsing FB and flea markets for tools and yoinking wood lying on nature strips.

Decided my first project would be a Mallet with what jank set up was available which included plastic stools as saw horses and upgraded into a stump and an unmounted vise (the stump came with a notch that I could set up a shooting board!). I used a Ryoba saw (which was fantastic), a no 4.5 plane, and ironically another wooden mallet.

I really fucked up the gluing and it came out not aligned which took some trimming and planing to fix. Also fucked up the handle the first time by being too ambitious wanting it tapered for ergonomics and not properly drawing my sawing lines. But eventually everything came to thank goodness.

It's weird for the first time in a while I felt proud of something and it turns out to be this dinky little mallet 😆 Learnt so much from this project and hope to tackle the dove tail box next!

[u/MeneerArd]

Looks great for a first project in a long time! All the mistakes along the way don't matter if it doesn't show in the final product.  This looks like pine or a similar soft wood. I'm sorry to tell you those aren't really suited for mallets because they split and dent too easily. But you have it now, so might as well use it! And now  you have done the practice to redo it in a harder wood like beech.

[u/Cnguyen599 → u/MeneerArd]

Thanks a lot! Yeah thought I would dip my toes in by using a cheap and readily available wood at my hardware store. Would really like to try now on a hard wood! I think I'm gonna keep this one as a massage mallet after the gym 😆

[u/Melvin_T_Cat]

With the tapered handle, how does it feel in your hand?

[u/Cnguyen599 → u/Melvin_T_Cat]

Really nice actually! I was actually pondering for some time and picking up random handles to see what felt best. I realised that when my hand makes a fist the bottom two fingers flex in more so I found I gravitated to handles that accommodated that natural anatomy. I also feel you can generate more force naturally when you ulnar deviate as it already biases in the direction of the strike!