Yet another mallet

After seeing the many recent posted mallets… I felt inspired.

I read the many excellent posts and links regarding solid head mallets but I did not have a good solid piece to use. That and my mortises are kind of shaky. I read about the laminates and decide this was the way to go for me. I wish I had taken some pictures during the build as this was made with minimal measuring.

I had a nice planed scrap of 7/8” white oak about 6” wide, ~16” long. I trimmed off a segment with a 3-degree taper (taper jig) to form the handle. I cut the remaining piece into 2 5” pieces and 2 3” pieces. I sanded the head end of the handle square(ish) on the sander. I put the handle on one of the 5” pieces, roughly centered and used this as a guide to clamp/glue the 2.5” pieces in place creating a nice mortise slot exactly fir to the taper of my handle. While the glue was setting I did a bit of sanding on the handle so that it is comfortable to hold. Then I laminated the other 5” piece on.

Since nothing had actually been cut to match the mortise, rather the wood was placed to create the mortise, everything need to be trimmed to make the top/bottom parallel. The angled faces were cut based on gestimates from randomly hammering while waiting for the glue to dry.

Once the glue set, the handle slide nicely into the mortise and with a few wacks it is solid (no glue).

Probably only about an hour of actual working time including some quick sanding. I did all the cuts on the bandsaw. The angled faces make a big difference as compared to the flat ones on my rubber mallet. My kids are now heckling me because they want a project that they can use it on…