Hello everyone picking up this thread, and thanks a lot for your warm welcomes. As the Scotland Yard murder chief said to a worried gathering: 'There is no typical murderer profile.' Guess that goes for wood carvers too! No typical profile that is! (Almost gotcha then.) And I suppose that applies to ages, aspirations, budgets, time slots available for work, resource availabilities, and of course skills and abilities and experiences. Wow, no need to warn me about Toni as one look at his avatar says it all!!!
That said, please bear with me if I pose questions that seem elementary to you, even idiotic on occasion, because to me it is all a wonderment (I think I have just made up a word) and one of the reasons why I have turned to this art form and wood activity. Remains to be seen how one progresses.
Meantime, I had to pick up a couple of pine PRC-made workbenches from my local farmshop. These were offered on a special promotion to reflect the austerity here in France at just under €40 so I bought two of the three on offer. They were offered in Australia for A$100, equivalent to around €77 so you will understand why this buy was unavoidable! I was looking to make my own workbench but firstly I couldn't find a suitable woodworker vice, expensive here even on ebay, and secondly the price of timber factored in just didn't make it worth it. As it is I have to strengthen these benches as they are somewhat lightweight for a heavy fella like me.
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I hope the uploaded pix are clear; along with the workbench is a pix of some Mallet heads I am considering. Maybe someone can help, not only on the usefulness or otherwise of the workbenches, but also on the common usage of the various types of mallets I have seen in various photos or videos. These vary from the piece of log of the High Wycombe chair bodger deep in the woods, to the very sophisticated brass or bronze circular mallet heads I've seen in catalogs, via simple axe heads used throughout Asia in Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, China et al, to the well known carpenter's wooden mallet.
My pix shows a selection of 15X5cm circular beech heads which I picked up for less than €5 for a set of four, as they were originally turned out to fit as feet on beds. They come with an average weight of 266grams, including their ready-fitted threaded screws to take a handle, which I will simply cut from a mop handle bought for $1. The threaded 'tube' to fit into the handle is relatively inexpensive so the whole package of mallets should be laughable in cost terms. The beech is supposed to be a suitable hard-wood for the job and in any case this can be protected well by covering the strike surface in rubber, a ploy which Cecil C. Carstenson recommends in his The Craft & Creation of Wood Sculpture book.
Here is what he says about mallets: "You will need a mallet to hit these chisels and gouges with. As with other tools, get a good grade carving mallet of
lignum vitae or hickory. An important consideration here is the size of the mallet. If you are young and masculine you will think that you should get a big one. The typical healthy 19-year-old makes the mistake of thinking that sculpture is a violent battle of brawn and he gets a big heavy mallet. He is wrong on at least two counts. The tool edges will not hold up under that constant big bang. Neither will his arm.
"You should conserve energy, no matter how young and virile you assume yourself to be. If you become serious about sculpturing you are going to be raising and lowering that mallet hundreds of thousands of times. Be smart and get a moderate sized one. Mallets cost from $2 to $3. (in 1971)
"I wrap my mallets with rubber tape. After years and years of listening to the sharp rapping of the mallet against chisel handle I began to develop what is referred to as 'boilermaker's ear'. It affected my hearing. This worried me, and I wrapped tape around my mallets hoping to deaden the sound. It works beautifully. It also extends the life of my mallets indefinitely. I have never worn one out since wrapping them, and that has been more than 10 years. I also wrap my chisel and gouge handles in ordinary masking tape. If I don't, I find myself changing handles after eight or ten hours of tool usage. The constant pounding causes them to fray and split. I now lose handles after eight or ten years. The minute that it takes to wrap the handles is worth it."
Could you please advise what is your favoured mallet for a given purpose, its head weight, assuming you can unscrew the handle, and its total weight, and how often you make use of a mallet on your projects. I imagine that Toni and other relief carvers use the palm more often than not. Best wishes, David Bowie