Okay, so you have a set of brand new beautifully made rosewood handled chisels and you just can’t bear to start smacking them with a metallic hammer and destroy that pristine fresh face on the end. You need a wooden mallet in the next hour and you’ve got a plank of wood. No problem.
Here I have a plank of wood, 6cm wide and about a metre long, I marked out the following pieces
Two blocks 6cmx18cm
Two squares 6cmx6cm
One square 6cmx6cm (with handle)
Here’s the handle, I kept an extra cm on top and chamfered it for bonus style points then quickly rasped the handle smooth a little. This was just cut out with a jigsaw, the handle was traced from another hammer.
Now to cut out the two squares and the two blocks.
Assemble the pieces with the two blocks sandwiching the handle in the centre with the two squares filling the voids.
I then roughed up the surfaces with sandpaper and spread on a little wood glue to stick it together. Put something heavy on top or clamp it while it dries.
Once it’s dry I trimmed the faces with a mitre saw angled 5 degrees or so towards the handle then went swinging away hanging up doors. This mallet can be made to last a lot longer by drilling a hole or three through the side of the mallet body then hammering and gluing a dowel in to stop the pieces wiggling apart. But from board to hammer in under an hour and putting up a door quickly it’ll do!
