So after hammering away at a mortise a minute ago, it occured to me I haven’t posted my mallet.
pics:

I took a mulberry log, which is on of my fav woods these days, from a fallen tree last spring, and cut a section of it out. Mulberry is surprisingly stable and resistant to rot and impact. Also tough to saw through. Pics 2 shows the log, and 3 the wedge. I ended up using a power tool in this project, a drill, to bore a hole through the chunk, after I had squared off the sides with a drawknife and planes. The handle I made with hand tools out of some unknown chunk from somebody’s rotten pile of firewood, which I was throwing into the compost, and noticed this interesting and stable piece of wood. I actually had two pieces, the other became my froe mallet. This I shaped roughly to my handaxe pattern. I tried a poly glue on this project, and probably paid the price for it when the handle twisted slightly when driving it home. Of course, the glue is like steel…it’s there for life. Pic 4 shows it completed the next day…notice the yellow circle of heartwood in that shot. Pic 5 shows the final mallet several weeks later, and yes, while it has had some tung oil and wax to protect it, 90% of that color is the wonderful thing exposure to UV does to mulberry wood! That golden colored circle has become a deep, rich gold/brown, and really the only color added by the tung oil is seen on the sides of the mallet.

The mallet is pretty big, about 2-3 times the face size of a “normal” mallet used with a chisel. It’s also very heavy, coming in well over 5-6 lbs. It’s tiring for most people to wield, but I like it’s heft, and I certainly won’t miss the blow with that face size.

Not the most exciting thing, perhaps, but I do love tools, and refinishing them.

[first three pics are the “after”, and the last is the only “before” I had. Yes that’s yellow electrical tape around the neck, for some reason.]

For my entire life, my mother has had this handaxe knocking around the house, and she abuses it terribly. Hacking at roots into the dirt, beating on rocks, and generally just doing everything you probably should never do with it. Well, after 30+ years of this abuse, the head had become one giant block of not just rust, but dark, blackened rust. The handle was looking like it was going to rot in half, and had long since loosened enough that the head would slide off if you simply held it upside down. Inspired (I assume) by my taking a small handaxe head I found under the beat-to-hell workbench in the garage (that’s right….under) and taking it from rust to shiny and sharp with an entirely hand made handle, she asked if I could do something with her old beater. So, I set off…

A quick clean and polish of the head revealed a lot of pitting (eh, looks rustic) but a nice usable head underneath the rust, of which there was quite a lot. Also, some interesting symbols on the head, which on the large version of the first pic you might be able to get a closer look at..japanese, perhaps? The handle took to sanding nicely, and wasn’t in fact as rotten as first glance would suggest. After sanding, and applying 3 coats of arm-r-seal, finishing with rubbed wax on both handle and head after a quick visit to the grinding wheel to give it an edge, it was done. The symbols remain a mystery, as nobody can quite make heads or tails of them, and after wedging the head on tight with slivers of oak, it looks and feels great…so good in fact, she’s stood it up near her desk, and it’s not been used since! Oh well…at least it’s saved from beating on dirt for awhile.

The slivering of the outside, that is to say between the tenon and the head as opposed to a wedge inside a split of the handle is something I’ve taken to doing after watching some videos of old swedish craftsman posted on here months ago from around 1920’s-1930’s. I’ve put on a few handles this way so far, and they all seem super tight. My other handaxe gets regular (4-5 times a week) serious use hacking at logs and blanks for rough shaping, so far so good.