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Wooden Mallet

A

T LEAST ONE WOODENcarpenter’s mallet belongs in every
wood worker’s tool chest. The advantages of wood over steel are
obvious—less damage to tools, work, thumbs, and eyes. For the price
of one steel hammer, you can make a dozen mallets, each tailored to a
particular job.
The traditional mallet has a solid-wood head mortised through for
the wedge-shaped handle. My laminated head design is just as strong
and much easier to make. Begin by cutting the handle and two center
laminations for the head from the same 1-in.-thick board (this saves a
lot of fitting later). Copy the handle’s wedge angle (no more than^1 ⁄ 2 in.
of taper) onto one of the side laminations. Then glue up the head
block, carefully aligning the center laminations with the wedge-angle
pencil lines. When the glue has cured, bandsaw the head to shape.
Then chamfer all the edges to reduce the chances of splitting and
insert the handle.
—DANIELARNOLD,Viroqua,Wisc.

CHAPTER THREE

Laminate head

Wedge handle

Shape handle,

Taper handle chamfer edges

through head