Woodworking Easy to Build: mallet

?I bought a vise at Harbor Freight with another 20% off coupon. Its another one of those small projects that
ended up being more work than I expected.
Its not the best one in the world but it is definitely better than no vise. I hate having no vises....

The clamping mechanism ended up being a little smaller than I expected.

I placed the vice in position and marked where the lower clamp needed to go in.

The lower mech is 1" wide so I used a 1.25" Forstner bit to make a hole.

I opened the bottom with my cordless jigsaw.

I tried to square it off with my jigsaw and then a file. I put a corded jigsaw on my Christmas list along with a dado set for my tablesaw.

This is what it looks like from the inside.

I screwed in a piece of 2x4 to brace the part where I cut and to have extra support for where I screw vice down into the top of the workbench.

I predrilled the mounting holes down into the extra 2x4 brace.

Not neccessarily my cleanest install but it will do the job.

I pre drilled the holes into the 2x4 brace but not into the the workbench itself. This bit shattered when the screw hit the workbench wood. I drilled out the remaining 3 holes into the workbench and had no more issues.

Installed and ready for use. I am debating on whether I want to mount some pieces of wood to the inside of the vice or not. I will probably end up doing it just because I get bored.

New episode of The Woodpecker

Have I mentioned that this guy is my woodworking hero?

The mallet is really starting to take shape

I was able to go out and spend some time on the mallet yesterday and it is really starting to take shape. Like most of my projects this involved doing a lot of things for the first time. I removed the safety guards on the tablesaw for the first time (I made sure the kids were inside) and made a tenon on the tablesaw.

This is how the head started out looking.

I cut the end to make it uniform and then realized that the mitre saw was still set to 2 degrees from when I made the wedge from inside the mallet head.

Now the head is all squared up.

I set the tablesaw at a 15 degree angle to chop off the corners of the head.

Checking to make sure the angle was set up correctly.

I drew on the end of the head so that I could verify that the blade and the fence were setup correctly before I cut the corners off.

I placed the head on the end of the handle so I could mark how much to nibble off.

I used a spacer block to help avoid kickback. Thats what all the woodworkers on YouTube do so I figured that I would play it safe and do the same thing.

I cut a smaller section first to fine tune the fit before I did the whole section.

Just verifying the mark that I made earlier. I ended up starting on the top of the mark so that I could have a little bit sticking out of the top of the head.

Halfchoice there.

Checking to see how much I need to take off the sides.

I started on the inside and worked my choice out. I also took a file and smoothed out the tenon to get it to fit into the handle properly.

The handle is choice too big and square for my hand but it is starting to look like a mallet!

Now I just need to figure out how I am going to shape the handle.

Its Friday so that means a new WWMM video!

The sheer ingenuity of this guy is amazing

When the world comes to an end I want to go live with this guy.

The Mallet is almost done! Finally

I was finally able to work a little bit more on the mallet this past weekend.? All I need to do now is cut off the excess wood from the wedges and give it a final sanding and then apply some boiled linseed oil and it will be finished!

I made a quick jig to cut the slots for the wedges to go into.

I cut the wedges for the top of the handle at 5 degrees. Next time I think that I will try 3 or 4 degrees.
5 ended up being just a little too big.

I bought enough wood to make 2 mallets so this is the piece that I am going to
use to make the head of the 2nd mallet. It is the same species that I used for the handle of
my current mallet.

I bought a drum sander kit at Lowes to shape the handle. It is amazing what 50 grit sandpaper can do!
I shaped it with the 50 and then smoothed it with 80 and then 120.