Once Upon A Carving Mallet
“Once upon a time there was a guy with a mullet who wanted to make a carving mallet, with his bare hands…”, Jill just said. She’s right, I’ve been wanting to make a decent, or better, carving mallet then the one I made a few months back.
One of the things I made sure I brought with me from the US to New Zealand was Peter Follansbees 17th century carving video. Granted, I didn’t realize I could just buy it online back then, which you can now. And when I knew work was drying up with my last employer in the US. I threw in the money to get a good set of carving chisels you could hit with a mallet. I probably would have bought these flexcut chisels years ago if I knew they were made only 2 hours away from where I was living. Heck, I probably would have tried to get a job there.
The wood, Kowahi:
A piece of pine firewood was used for the previous carving mallet and it was crudely shaped but comfortable. I actually like the dents/distress that pine gets on it. Still, I knew that something heavier would be a 100 times better to use. So when a couple of people that Jill knows offered a tree to me I jumped at it. Now, I’m not one to go cutting a tree down in the woods, hurt or not. This tree was a decorative tree in a garden that lined a driveway and was hit by a moving van a few years back. When the husband of the house walked out to show me the tree he grabbed it with one hand and pushed it over. The root ball and all came with it. Half of it was dead the other half wasn’t budding.
My lathe is in the middle of Pennsylvania so I went at this with a drawknife, spokeshave, some whittle knives and sandpaper. It turned out pretty nice and wow am I pleased with the weight of this thing. It makes a massive difference.
Here’s the video!
You can find the video and others like it over at my Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/cleanphilwanted
Or watch the video of it right here!
Thanks!
CPW