The Mallet

The newest project in wood class is a mallet. I'm hoping this is the last one, because we spent entirely too much time in class seeing things demo'd and then working on it. Fortunately I wasn't messing around and as soon as we got the wood and the first demo, I flattened the board and went back to working on my project.

We started with that big block of hickory. It's dense and heavy, and I flattened mine easily. Not sure why it takes others so long, but it went quick for me.

Next we had to cut angles out in the middle with the table saw. It's good to see how this works with a wedge, and I learned a few things that will help me later in my own work. It's so nice to have space and things set up already, and I need to consider that for my own shop at some point.

With both sides cut a bit, I used a chisel to get rid of most of the wood. Not something I'd have done at home, but I can see why the chisel works out well. Project for this week, get my sharpening stuff ready to take to class in some plastic.

The next step had me and a few others at advantages. We'd used router planes before, and I grabbed one ASAP to get mine cleaned up.

Both sides done, and looking good. Back to my project, where I managed to get all my boards cut to the right sizes.

Once we had things lined up, it was about time to glue, but first, the handle.

I wasn't sure how we'd do this, but again, we used the wedge. In fact, we used the same wedge that we'd used earlier to cut the faces. I lined things up on the bandsaw, and managed to cut the pieces down. Of course, it wasn't a great fit, but I could use the jointer to clean up my handle slightly (And a little sandpaper.

I glued things up and that was it for this part. I unclamped it before I left and left it there to dry and cure. It as looking OK, not great, but I'm anxious to see how it does next week when I shape the handle and get things together.

I spent the last part of the night cutting dovetails. The instructor showed me how quickly (amazing how he does) and I went to work. With a chisel and a small saw, I managed to get a few cut. You can see here I have the middle partially chiseled out.

After cutting two, I learned that my main problem is that I can't cut quite square. I'm tilting the saw. The instructor told me to practice vertical cuts, and that's on my list for this week. I'm thinking to take a little time if there's a warm day this week, and cut a few notches and see how I do.