Project Information
I had been wanting to make myself a rawhide mallet for some time and when the mallet swap came up, I joined. Rawhide mallets are hard, but not hard enough to mar a project. I've seen them in use in forging for shaping hot, delicate pieces of steel.
I went to Walmart and picked up some rawhide dog chews which I soaked in water and cut into 4 1/2" wide strips.
I rolled them up wet to see how it would work and had enough for 2 mallet heads.
Then they were unrolled and kept in the proper order, placed in a ziplock bag with shellac and left overnight to soak.
I re-rolled them as tightly as possible, wrapped them with thin waxed plastic from a milk jug and secured with 4 pipe clamps for a few days. I should have used shiny steel flashing for this because the plastic didn't slip over itself well when tightening the clamps leaving a slight wrinkle along the side. I also wished I had used amber shellac because they came out pretty white.
Then I took them to the bandsaw to square up the ends and did a poor job on one because they weren't quite the same diameter on each end. One ended up being quite a bit shorter than the other, so that one was mine
You can see I had already started laying out the handle mortise.
Cutting the mortises was a mess because the inside was still wet and rawhide boogers were coming off the drill bit.
A brad point bit eventually did the best job and I let them dry a few more days. Still, cleaning up the mortises was painfully slow using a coping saw and chisels, with skew chisels working the best. As they continued to dry, rasps worked pretty well. The blue tape is to even out the difference in diameter so I could drill straight holes.
All I had for handles in the correct thickness was tight grained oak when I wanted mahogany, so I couldn't put lipstick on these pigs. Oh well, sigh. I got the handles fit and put copious amounts of amber shellac on the surfaces of the heads to color them a little. Handles got blo.
Then I saw on youtube a guy making a Damascus mallet out of hdpe plastic. So I picked up some containers from work and started to cut them up. Man, were these things tough! I ended up using a hand saw and the band saw to get them cut into strips.
Then spent hours that evening using metal shears to cut them up into little pieces. I used a cheap mug and a tin can to heat the pieces to melting in a toaster oven at 350 degrees. It required little layers at a time and a large dowel to smash them into a solid mass to minimize voids. There were a few voids on the outside, but as they were turned, seemed to mostly disappear.
I took them to my friend LJ Putty who put them in his lathe and also turned the handle. Thanks Putty!!
The mortise in the head was roughed up with a round rasp and the handle put in with epoxy.
My recipient was GrantA, who was also my sender and sent me this awesome hammer.
Thanks Grant!
Also, a thank you goes to Keebler for running this swap!
Thanks for looking!
I went to Walmart and picked up some rawhide dog chews which I soaked in water and cut into 4 1/2" wide strips.
I rolled them up wet to see how it would work and had enough for 2 mallet heads.
Then they were unrolled and kept in the proper order, placed in a ziplock bag with shellac and left overnight to soak.
I re-rolled them as tightly as possible, wrapped them with thin waxed plastic from a milk jug and secured with 4 pipe clamps for a few days. I should have used shiny steel flashing for this because the plastic didn't slip over itself well when tightening the clamps leaving a slight wrinkle along the side. I also wished I had used amber shellac because they came out pretty white.
Then I took them to the bandsaw to square up the ends and did a poor job on one because they weren't quite the same diameter on each end. One ended up being quite a bit shorter than the other, so that one was mine
You can see I had already started laying out the handle mortise.
Cutting the mortises was a mess because the inside was still wet and rawhide boogers were coming off the drill bit.
A brad point bit eventually did the best job and I let them dry a few more days. Still, cleaning up the mortises was painfully slow using a coping saw and chisels, with skew chisels working the best. As they continued to dry, rasps worked pretty well. The blue tape is to even out the difference in diameter so I could drill straight holes.
All I had for handles in the correct thickness was tight grained oak when I wanted mahogany, so I couldn't put lipstick on these pigs. Oh well, sigh. I got the handles fit and put copious amounts of amber shellac on the surfaces of the heads to color them a little. Handles got blo.
Then I saw on youtube a guy making a Damascus mallet out of hdpe plastic. So I picked up some containers from work and started to cut them up. Man, were these things tough! I ended up using a hand saw and the band saw to get them cut into strips.
Then spent hours that evening using metal shears to cut them up into little pieces. I used a cheap mug and a tin can to heat the pieces to melting in a toaster oven at 350 degrees. It required little layers at a time and a large dowel to smash them into a solid mass to minimize voids. There were a few voids on the outside, but as they were turned, seemed to mostly disappear.
I took them to my friend LJ Putty who put them in his lathe and also turned the handle. Thanks Putty!!
The mortise in the head was roughed up with a round rasp and the handle put in with epoxy.
My recipient was GrantA, who was also my sender and sent me this awesome hammer.
Thanks Grant!
Also, a thank you goes to Keebler for running this swap!
Thanks for looking!