It’s richened by people, I know that. It’s not lonely, that’s for certain. If you’re lonely when you come, it won’t last. Friendships happen when tools cut mistakes and someone next to your bench cracks a joke that jerks you out of what you just did. You’re serious about what you just made, smile, look…
Day four goes well again! Today passed quickly yet again and before we knew it we were sweeping masses of hand plane shavings from the workshop floor and benches. It’s amazing how many shavings you get from a few guys using a hand plane. My day was a little easier today as I decided not…
To finish off the corners of the mallet I created an all-around chamfer with the spokeshave. I also used a flat file to crispen up some more awkward grain as needed. You could use a flat file for all of this if you want to or you don’t have a spokeshave. The spokeshave and file…
Another precious day of progress Day three passed more quickly than two and one and the rest will get swallowed up with work too. We are enjoying the successes and absorbing the failures as we ,move ever nearer to our goals. The boxes are done. Today we start our wall shelves and then we will…
Shaping oak is not hard at all. In fact, it’s a pleasant experience to saw it and plane it and it’s easy work with hand tools – especially easy. My mallet needs a quite a bit of aerodynamic streamlining to give it perfect balance and good centre of percussion. Shaping needs only a few sharp…
My oak piece for the head is straight grained, but it will work for a mallet and also to show how to make it. I first planed up the rough-sawn facets and didn’t spend too much time worrying about perfect squareness because when done and shaped, there really won’t be much of any visual angular…
TodayI didn’t quite make it to the river as I planned earlier. Time escaped me, but I felt refreshed walking along the front of the castle to the shop. We are somewhat international today I think. One American-born living in Sweden, one German-born living in Dubai, one from the Netherlands, one home-based here from Wales…
Making My Wooden Mallet My hands flipped over a chunk of wood that fell as an offcut from the chopsaw a few weeks ago. It’s a 3” x 6” and just long enough for the mallet head. As per my usual, I thought it would be good to make one for a future blog and…
I turned for a living at one time, combining my furniture making skills with lathe turning gave me bread and butter turnings I sold from the studio at my workshop and this gave me additional small-scale products I sold for income. I chose my home and workshop on a tourist route and that brought in…
Who said, “Speak softly and carry a big mallet.”? I forgot to give details of this some time back when I promised to give details of the best wooden mallet I ever came across. An elderly woodsman from Cheshire showed me a beautiful mallet that’s now buried somewhere in my monstrous collection of user woodworking…