I have a nice little rubber mallet. I'm ashamed to say that I can't remember who gave it to me. If it was you, Thank You, I enjoy using it, it's great for assembling small projects.
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There was a small split in the handle when I got it and over the last few years that split has got bigger and bigger. A couple of weeks ago, as I was assembling Stuart's casket, a chunk flew off over to the other side of the workshop. It was a shame, I like that mallet.
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So I decided to make a new handle. But in separating the head and handle, I discovered thatt he head was also split.
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Now superglue is excellent on rubber, but I figured that this was perishing anyway, so perhaps I should replace the head, too.
I cadged a piece of ash off Roger (thanks, Roger) and glued two pieces together to form a head blank, which was then morticed and the mortice flared out.
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I cut the handle blank on the tablesaw, but all the tenon work was done entirely by hand. Saw and chisel.
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I shaped the handle also by hand. Spokeshave and rasp, sandpaper.
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I cut a couple of bog oak wedges and began assembly
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This turned out to be a bit of a mistake. This bog oak gets everywhere, and later on the ash got very grubby very quickly. I should have finished all the ash before touching the bog oak. Next time, eh?
The main problem with using wood for a small mallet head is that it's not very heavy. Certainly it is lighter in feel than the rubber head. So I decided to increase its density by embedding some lead into it.
First of all I had the idea of drilling a cavity and filling it full of lead fishing weights and epoxy. I went to two fishing shops and neither had lead line weights, They were all labelled "non-toxic". I don't know what they are made of, but they certainly don't have the heft of lead. But they did have the larger weights, so I bought one of those, 12oz.
My first approach was to drill a couple of holes in a block, melt the lead and cast it. But I'd only just got going when my gas ran out. I do think that it would have worked quite well. But no gas equals no casting, so I got a big hammer and just beat the living daylights out of it until it would fit. Fun, but hard work, my arm was shaking by the end of it. The two ingots were glued in with epoxy.
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Then it was a case of adding a couple of bog oak faces and cleaning up. It was at this stage I realised how beneficial it would have been to seal the ash first.
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But it did clean up and I added a couple of leather faces. It's not hide, it was from an old sofa that one of my neighbours was trying to burn in the garden (that's how we get rid of stuff in Kirkby, we set fire to toxic material in the back garden), I think it is the leather equivalent of MDF.
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So now I have a very nicely repaired mallet. New handle, new head, two new wedges.
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Trigger would be proud.