Info Needed-Making A Maul

[Riem]

16 hours ago, Winterman said:

I'm in the same boat JD50

Here's an idea I'm going to try:

I got the wild idea that I could form my own poly head to use for a maul. Drill a hole in it and fit it with a hardwood handle. I confirmed a process on YouTube on how to recycle plastic milk jugs

by cutting them into strips, grinding them in a blender, then melting them into a mold. The material is high-density polyethylene (HDPE) or No. 2 plastic.

I saw one craftsman make a head for a jointered mallet and although it was smaller than the wooden one he has it was heavier due to it's higher density. Pretty cool.

So, I'm saving plastic jugs of this type (and asking friends to save theirs for me as well), I'll grind them up, melt them down (melting point 248 to 356 F (120 to 180 C) in a mold,

finish it off with some sawing and sanding, drill it and fit it with an oak or hickory handle. Sounds like it might be weird, er, fun.

I'll try to keep you updated on it. Wish me luck

What you describe is what I did to make my "homebake maul". Only, I don't have a lathe, and used a water pipe I pushed through the molten hdpe plastic to make a "proto handle" of sorts. Still not satisfied with it although the maul works fine for the limited amount of tooling I do.

A couple of points:

• The plastic should be clean with no milk residue clinging to it.
• The more uniform you can get the pieces you are going to melt, the better you will be able to get a tight lump of plastic.
• You don't need to use a blender to grind up the jugs, but it will be helpful if you can. If you use your wife's new blender, you might just have to add the cost of a new blender to your budget... I cut the jugs into small pieces of roughly 1 cm by 1 cm with kitchen scissors and a carpet cutter.
• The plastic will not attain a liquid state when heated but the pieces will fuse together. You may have to use some heavy object to press it into your mold else you might end up with air pockets in the lump.
• Sounds obvious but use a metal mold with smooth sides.
• It takes a long time to melt the plastic - took me about three hours to get the mass I wanted. The hdpe does not stink badly - the smell was gone before my wife returned from work...
• Temperature - I worked at 180°C. Higher than that and the hdpe plastic might start smoking and charring.

Hope this helps.