Mallet Madness

Ryan Mooney

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The Gorge Area, Oregon
I might have mentioned I was making mallets.. anyway here they are, with an obligatory spray paint can for scale.

The square ones are pretty obvious, the round ones I find useful for small carving and am planning on giving a couple to my dad for leather carving when we go visit next month.

The heads and all of the round mallets are walnut limb scrap rescued from the fire pit. The handles are mostly (except two from walnut) made from mystery wood salvaged from a friends tree (its hard, tough and works well.. still have no idea what it is :D).

Finished with 3 coats of BLO applied over the coarse of about a week and a half. Could probably use another wipe down in another week or so and then maybe again in a month and ... :rolleyes:
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Here is the end view of one of the square ones. I cut the hole the handle goes through a bit oval towards the outside with a small half round rasp so the wedge really spreads the handle. The heads are slightly green (cut this spring and left with the bark on) and the handles are really dry so the heads should shrink on even tighter over the next few months. If we're lucky none will split.
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Great batch of mallets for sure. Such a simple classic design yet so hard to create for some of my students, proportions isn't in their brains yet. Will be showing them this group later in the year when we get to that assignment.
 
Great batch of mallets for sure. Such a simple classic design yet so hard to create for some of my students, proportions isn't in their brains yet. Will be showing them this group later in the year when we get to that assignment.

That's so true on proportions, I ended up re-cutting a couple of the square ones to made the heads smaller after I put them together. I'm not totally happy with all of the round ones but a couple are just about right so I figure the rest were at least good for practice and are still mostly usable :D Its kind of cool when you hit it just right because not only do they look good, they "feel" good and those features do seem to go hand it hand. Hard to explain until you actually get one right.
 
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