Skew Chisel – Skill Builder – Part 5

Richard Findley continues his skew chisel series by making a wooden mallet for use around the workshop

By now, if you’ve followed along with this skew series so far, you should have a growing bond with one of your skew chisels. Hopefully, it will be beginning to feel like one of your favourite tools rather than one to be avoided at all costs.

In the last article I made a couple of different tool handles using the skills I showed in the earlier issues. In this article, I will be taking you through the process of making a turned wooden mallet which is a perfect next step up with your skew usage and will leave you with a tool you will be able to use in your workshop long into the future.

Design

I made a version of this mallet a few years ago that has been in use around the workshop and is beginning to look quite worn. As is often the case, as soon as I’d made this first version, I knew I’d like to eventually make another with some improvements, including having a slightly heavier head and a thicker handle. Otherwise, I’d been very happy with it and enjoyed using it – there is a certain satisfaction around using a tool that you have made yourself.

I had re-handled my Grandpa’s old hammer a year or so ago with a turned handle (controversial, I know) and I love the feel of it, so wanted to use this as the model for the mallet handle. Ash is famously used for handles like these because of its natural flex giving efficiency to the hammering (malleting?) action and some shock absorption too. I’d used a piece of scrap sapele for the head of my original mallet but I recently bought some rather nice beech blanks at a bargain price. Beech is often used for mallet heads because it is tough and reasonably heavy, naturally a little heavier than sapele, so making it a bit bigger from a more dense wood should give me the additional weight I was after in my new mallet.

The shapes involved in making this mallet are all very skew friendly, so this makes a fantastic skew-based project to help build skew skills for this series. The shapes are very similar to what I’ve already covered, using cuts that you will have practised from the earlier articles. The increased diameter of the head can add a little more difficulty because with increased diameter comes increased forces, meaning a cut that is close to a catch on 40mm diameter work can easily become a catch on larger work, but as long as the guidance from the practice exercises is followed, you shouldn’t have too many problems.

Mallet head

The beech head is the best place to start. My aim is for the head to be around 75mm diameter and 130mm long. The beech blanks I have are 93mm square and I cut a piece 160mm long to use – this gave me 15mm of waste at each end, which is ideal. The natural tendency is to try to waste as little wood as possible, but when turning between centres you need to give yourself space to work away from the metal drives and I have found a minimum of 15mm to be ideal.

The first job was to set up an 18mm drill bit in my pillar drill and drill a hole right through the blank. I recently purchased a drill vice which makes holding work on the drill press much easier and safer. The blank was too deep to drill through in one go so I drilled from both sides, but with careful marking this wasn’t a problem. On a blank of this size, the end grain will most likely be running quite straight across the blank. I oriented it so I was drilling horizontally across the grain, rather than vertically through the grain, which will reduce any slight risk there may be of splitting the wood when fitting the handle and in use. If the grain on your blank is more corner-to-corner (sometimes known as rift sawn) don’t worry too much, just pick whichever orientation gives the closest to horizontal grain.

I marked the centres and mounted the blank on the lathe. As before, to show some variety in skew use I opted for my 19mm rolled edge skew for the head and my Signature tool for the handle. I don’t particularly enjoy roughing from square with a skew, especially on larger diameter work, so turned the square into a cylinder with my spindle roughing gouge, but you can use your skew if you prefer. Other than roughing down, everything else was turned with a skew.

With the blank turned to a cylinder, I used a peeling cut combined with callipers to size both ends to 75mm and used a planing cut to reduce the entire blank to this diameter. The hole through the centre of the blank was barely noticeable as I turned – keeping your movements smooth will help to move over the hole without a problem. I turned the mallet head at 960rpm, this was perfect on my lathe. As I turn, I tend to touch the work often to get feedback on the surface. When the work has a hole this needs to be done either with care, avoiding the hole, or not at all as the only real danger of turning things with holes is getting something accidentally stuck in the hole. This won’t happen to the tool during turning but is a potential danger to fingers if you like to touch the spinning work.

Shaping

The next stage was to add some shape to the mallet head. It absolutely could be left as a plain cylinder, but having a bit of a curve adds a touch of refinement and quality to the product, in my opinion. Based on my old mallet, I decided that the ends should be around 10mm less than the main diameter, so around 65mm. This should give a pleasant curve to the mallet but still give a generously sized striking face. I had marked the centre line with the lathe off, and worked in either direction away from the centre, gradually forming the gentle curve with a planing cut. Obviously, more wood needed to be removed from the ends than from the centre, so I started the cuts at the end of the spindle and, as the shape evolved, I came closer and closer to the central mark, eventually turning it away.

Satisfied with the curve, my next focus on was the striking faces of the mallet. I wanted a slight curve on these too, rather than dead flat, so I marked a line 3mm from the edge to guide my starting point. Using the very tip of the long point and tilting the edge ever so slightly away from the timber so the edge didn’t touch, only the tip does the cutting here. I made a slicing cut from the top down toward the waste in the centre – 3mm is too big a cut to make in one go, so break it down into thin slices and gradually develop the gentle curve. After I had cut both sides, I decided the 3mm curve was a little too curved so straightened it with some further slicing cuts. During these slicing cuts, it is very important not to push the tool into the end grain of the wood. Any pressure from your front hand should be down into the toolrest. Pressure into the wood can leave marks, usually pale rings on the end grain. Rounding the heel of your bevel, as shown in Part 1, can also help to minimise this bruising and smooth out this slicing action.

Once you are satisfied with the curve of the mallet head and the faces are cleanly cut to a very gentle curve down to a small nub of waste it is time to sand. The only thing to be aware of here beyond a normal sanding exercise is that hole through the mallet head. Notice in picture 9 that I am sanding using the flat of my hand against the abrasive, spreading the pressure over a wide area so nothing can catch in the hole and the abrasive won’t wear the edge of the hole in an unsightly way. I sanded 180, 240 and finished with a red abrasive pad. A tool that will be used and abused around the workshop doesn’t need taking to a high level of finish like your finest display work.

With the mallet sanded smooth, you need to decide whether to part off or remove the waste on the bandsaw. For me, if a piece of work has waste at both ends like this, you can only really part off at one end and the other needs doing with a saw, so there seems little point and I will opt for the bandsaw every time. With the tool handles in the last article, they had waste at only one end and so parting off made sense.

Advanced and improved extra step

It is quite acceptable to leave the hole in the head a straight and clean 18mm (or whatever the closest drill bit to this you have). If you would like to improve the quality of this joint though, it is possible by using a tapered reamer. I have a 6° cello reamer which will open out the straight 18mm hole to a tapered hole. This gives an improved double wedging effect to the joint, making for a mallet head that will never come loose from the handle.

I used my bench vice to hold the mallet head, placed the reamer into the hole and simply twisted with a light downward pressure and it slowly cuts the taper into the hole, so it now tapers from 22mm at the handle to 18mm at the head. This will later be wedged from the end and locked in place. This technique is found on high-end Windsor chairs where the legs attach to the seat and give a superior-quality joint where everyday stresses can lead to a standard turned mortise and tenon working loose over time.

Handle

I ripped a piece of straight grained ash to 38mm square and 325mm long. By my calculations, this should give me enough to go through the head of the mallet and leave around a 230mm long handle with some waste at each end. A mallet doesn’t need a handle quite as long as a hammer as it is usually used more for tapping, driving and persuading rather than full-on hammering. I mounted the ash blank between centres and roughed it down to a cylinder with my roughing gouge, smoothing it with a planing cut of my Signature tool. I set the head end at the tailstock, which seemed most natural to me – perhaps with my left-handed bias it is a little easier for me that way round and may be easier for a right-hander the other way round, but the handle requires cuts in both directions, like most types of spindle work, so there isn’t much in it either way.

My first job was to form the taper to fit into the beech mallet head. If you have a straight hole then planing a parallel surface is your aim. The fit you need for a parallel tenon is what is usually referred to as a ‘friction fit,’ so you shouldn’t need another mallet to drive the tenon through, and it shouldn’t just drop through, there should be some resistance. That way the glue will work well and the wedge that we will fit later will lock it into place. In my case, I’m trying to match the taper in the head. I measured each end of the hole with my Vernier callipers (22mm and 18mm) and the length of the hole with my steel ruler (75mm) and could transfer this to the ash spindle. Initially I just did a peeling cut with callipers at the end to 19mm, erring on the side of caution, and removed some wood with a tapering planing cut. After a few cuts I realised I was still a good way from the required 22mm so added another sizing cut in 80mm from the end at 23mm and joined the two sizing cuts with planing cuts. Satisfied that I was in the right ballpark, I removed the handle from the lathe and test-fitted it in the handle. As expected, I was still a good way from it fitting perfectly, but I was on the right track, so a few more planing cuts and a couple more test fits got me to where I needed to be. My aim was to have the end of the handle just sticking out of the top of the mallet head with a snug fit at both ends. By giving the handle and head a twist while they were together I was able to get a witness mark on the handle to guide my final planing cuts to achieve the best possible fit. You can see in picture 16 there is a shiny band on the tapered part showing a high spot.

With the taper cut and the head fitting well, the next step was to reduce the flared detail at the top of the handle, planing a slight curve down to the taper. This cut takes a little practice so you could always put a bit of your practice pine back in the lathe if you need to try it out. The final exercise in Part 2 was to plane a sweeping, hollow curve and this detail is the same but in a smaller space. The shape I’m aiming for here is about as close to a cove (or half a cove) as you will be able to form with a planing cut with a skew. The cut remains on the edge of the tool, around the middle or just below, perhaps a little higher than you might ideally cut for a standard planing cut, and as you move forward through the tapered planing cut, there is a roll of the handle, in this case to the left in something of a scooping action to achieve the hollow curve. This cut is probably a little easier with a narrow skew but with practice, perfectly possible with any skew. This detail is useful, especially if you have a parallel tenon as this will give a small amount of the wedging effect achieved by the tapered joint.

Happy with the top portion of the handle, I moved down to the other end to shape the rounded end. I did a peeling cut to give some waste and then began to shape the half bead. I took the corner off, forming a chamfer with an angled slicing cut using the tip of the tool before using a slicing, rolling cut on the tip of the tool to roll the half bead.

Happy with both ends of the handle, it was just a case of joining the dots, taking a series of planing cuts downhill toward the narrowest point. Here, I took my measurements from my hammer handle as I am very happy with this. The thickest part at the bottom of the handle is 33mm in diameter, the thinnest part is 23mm with the flare at the shoulder thickening to 32mm before heading down to the taper into the head. As with the handles in the last article, the real test is all about feel for a handle, rather than pre-described measurements, so while I aimed to roughly match the hammer design, I could take this handle from the lathe, fit the head and heft it to see how it felt.

Once satisfied with the flow of the curves and the fit in my hand, I sanded to the same 240 grit level as the head and finished with a red abrasive pad. I could have parted the handle from the lathe but had skimped a little on the wastage that I had allowed (I had ignored my own 15mm rule explained earlier) so decided to nip off the waste on the bandsaw.

Fitting the head

The next step was to cut into the handle for the wedge. I have found that the easiest way to do this is to simply make a single cut with the bandsaw. To achieve the best joint between the head and the handle, I want the grain to run in opposite directions: so the head runs from face to face along the head, looking at the end grain of the handle, I want the end grain to run side to side across the head. This will protect against any movement that might happen in the wood, although I wouldn’t expect this to be a problem here in the UK. The live centre mark in the end of the handle guided my cut easily along the centre line to around half the depth of the mallet head. Next I needed to cut some wedges. I chose to use sapele just to give a bit of colour contrast, but any reasonably dense timber works as a wedge. I pushed an offcut of sapele past my tablesaw to achieve 18mm, the same as the diameter of the hole at the top of the mallet. I then freehand cut some wedges on the bandsaw. The first few are always a bit wonky but once I’d cut a few I chose one I was happy with.

This double taper joint technically doesn’t need glue but I’m a belt and braces kind of woodworker so mixed up some of my Aerolite wood glue and spread a liberal amount in the tapered hole. I pushed the handle into the hole and lined up the grain and the wedge cut before firmly seating the handle in place. Happy with it so far, I added some glue to my wedge and hammered it home with my hammer. I wiped off the excess glue and left it overnight to dry. The next morning I cut off the waste wood on the bandsaw – the fact that the wedge and the two ash parts were firmly fixed together was reassuring to see. I sanded the joint clean with my sanding disc on the lathe and oiled the mallet. Beech is quite a thirsty wood so it needed four coats of hardwax oil before I was happy with it.

Conclusion

I really enjoy making things that I am going to use. The fact that this particular tool was made as part of this skew skill-building series and will hopefully have helped you to develop your skew skills further is a bonus. I hope you enjoy making a mallet with your skew, feel like your skew skills are increasing and that you will enjoy using your new mallet.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY RICHARD FINDLEY