En las entradas anteriores vimos cómo cortar una espiga de madera con la sierra de calar de mesa y cómo cortar una mortaja con el taladro de columna. Así en esta entrada voy a utilizar las dos piezas en las que corté la espiga y la mortaja para hacer una maza de madera uniéndolas y dándoles forma.
Veréis que utilizo una pequeña lijadora de tambor para taladro de columna. Ahora tengo un tambor de lijado casero que hice yo mismo para el taladro de columna.
I’m going to start by drawing a simple shape on the wooden handle of the mallet. I just want to narrow this piece of wood a bit to make the wood mallet easier to hold. And incidentally to make the wood mallet look more nice.
And once I have the drawing I want, I cut the shape of the handle with my jigsaw table.
Los cortes de las curvas quedan bastante brutos, pero con el cilindro de lijado resulta muy fácil dejarlos decentes. Y también voy a aprovechar el cilindro de lijado acoplado al taladro de columna para lijar los cortes rectos del mango.
So now I can use the router table, with a round over router bit with bearing, to round the corners of the handle …
and to round the corners of the wood mallet head.
Actually, the roundover router bit that I use to round the corners of the head of the wooden mallet is larger in diameter than the roundover router bit that I used to round the corners of the handle. And at some time I should have changed the bearing, as it has one that is slightly smaller than it should be. The result is a small step in the wood that fortunately looks quite well.
The bad thing is that with that step the handle does not fit well against the head of the wooden mallet, so I have to draw the shape of the handle where it meets the head of the wood mallet …
and I’m going to use a chisel to get rid a section of the step in the shape of that part of the handle. In addition, I also use the sanding drum on the drill press to sand and shape that part of the handle (as you can watch in the video). This way the transition from the handle to the head of the wooden mallet looks better.
Now, after gluing the mortise and tenon joint, and waiting until the carpenter’s glue is completely dry,
I am going to use the sanding drum to round the head of the wooden mallet. Thus the visible part of the tenon is also slightly rounded.
Now I just have to go back to the router table to round the corners in the area I just sanded with the sanding drum, and so give continuity to the small step I made.
And finally I can sand the whole wood mallet well and apply a couple of coats of varnish.
The result is a pretty nice wooden mallet that will serve as a decoration. And it might also be useful for cracking some walnuts and other nuts, but maybe not for hitting chisels in my small woodworking shop (well, in fact I have used it with some chisels and it works quite well 🙂 ).
