Monday, November 28, 2011

Mystery Mallet With Roy Underhill


What? It's the end of November already! Okay, okay, here's the Mystery Mallet post that was supposed to be up about three weeks ago! Sheesh!

In an effort to actually post this tonight, I'm going to keep the text to a minimum. This class was the Saturday after the Friday dovetail class. It was quite a bit smaller, and more relaxed, for me anyway. It was awesome!

The Mystery Mallet - of myth and legend - dovetailed in all directions, guaranteed to never come apart - or go together...


The beginnings of mine. Roy provided the stock, with the hickory (or was it ash?) handle already turned.


The first through mortise:


The double rising dovetails:


Jonathan, wielding his fantastic Wenzloff tenon saw:


The completed mallet head - bottom view:


And top view:


The Master, fine tuning a handle:


Due to the crazy stresses involved in assembly, clamping the handle to reduce the chance of epic failure is advised:




Layout complete - starting on my handle:


And the handle complete:


Roy, and Scott driving Scott's handle home with his "Osage Commander". His survived and gave hope to all still laboring in fear of heading home with jagged shards in a box as the day's final outcome.


My handle and head ready to go!


Roy giving my work the once over:


A very trusting Woodwright and El Kabong!


Success! Yeah baby!


Mugging in triumph!


The best day in a long, long time!

Oh, and one more shot of the mallet after cleaning it up a bit:



9 comments:

  1. I saw that class on the website. Looks like a lot of fun!

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  2. Thanks for the post Dan Sure was a fun weekend. Dohnn

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  3. Joe - It was great - I highly recommend it!

    Dohnn - Thank you for making it all happen! I hope to see you again soon at another fun gathering.

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  4. Just now getting to your post, after being computer-less for a while. And a couple/few weeks ago I took this class with Roy in his NC school.

    Great fun! I'll probably post near-identical pics in the near future. :D

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  5. This is a remarkably well done blog. My hat is off to you Sir.

    We are in Winston Salem and just might have to make a Mallet Pilgrimage to P'boro to do as you have done.

    David Rodwell

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    1. David - Thanks for the compliment! As for the pilgrimage, I say do it. You simply cannot beat a class with Roy!

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  6. Sadly, It appears Roy has removed the Mystery Mallet from his teaching repertoire. It looks pretty fabulous.

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    Replies
    1. Bummer! It is fabulous, but I think I could understand removing it - they seem to have a pretty high failure rate...

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