Joiner's Mallet

A wooden joiner's mallet is a very useful shop tool for project assembly, chiseling, and general purpose pounding operations. Keep one (or more) near your workbench and you'll likely find yourself reaching for it all the time. The mallet design was derived from plans in Issue #2 of Shop Notes.

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I started to make a "couple" joiners mallets as holiday gifts and got a bit carried away...

Close-Up View

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The mallet heads are made from three pieces of laminated maple with a rectangular hole left in the middle for the handle. Hard maple and padauk were used for the handles (the padauk is actually much redder than shown in the photo). For extra heft, steel rod 5/8" dia. by 2" long is glued into holes drilled in the faces of the head. I used two pieces of rod for some mallets and four pieces for other ones. You could also use 1/2" dia. rod.

Rough Sketch

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The Shop Notes plans contain lots of useful tips such as how to accurately cut the wedges that secure the handle into the mallet head. The plans also contain a full-size template for the handles. I made these handles slightly longer than the specs as that seemed to make for a more balanced feel.