In article ,
mac davis wrote:

A friend asked me to do 2 carving mallets for him, and left full size plans.

Not being a carver, I have no idea what woods are preferred or avoided?

He left me some fairly green walnut branch wood, but I'm guessing that for his
mallets I'd want to use something drier, maybe oak or something?

Any suggestions, ideas, flames, etc. welcome as usual..

Feliz Navidad..



mac

Please remove splinters before emailing

IMHO - Not oak - it tends to splinter. I prefer beech, but also make
them from maple, birch, etc. My "ironwood" (hop hornbeam/blue beech -
and there's debate as to whether those are the same, while ironwood is
at least 70 different species across the globe, according to one source)
is usually too small to get a good sized mallet from. Walnut would be a
bit low-density for my taste in a mallet.

I normally make the one-piece style, from the firewood pile. They end up
in the stove when they have been used up.

If making a two piece (either in the same style as the one-piece or in
the two-piece hammer-style) and operating with a big budget, you can dig
out the lignum vitae. Doing a one-piece in LV these days is a flagrant
waste of material unless you go to a lot of effort to trim off usable
chunks from the handle area before starting to turn.

--
Cats, coffee, chocolate...vices to live by