Making leather working Mauls

[Colt W Knight]

I have really been trying to improve my tooling lately, and when I broke it down, I had 2 serious problems I needed to fix before I can make any progress.

1. My beveling is choppy

2. My arm gets fatigued on bigger pieces

I think, what it boils down to is my Al Stohlman maul is damned heavy. I did some testing, and I think the heavy maul is definitely a culprit.

The normal UHMW Polyethylene white heads on most mauls I have seen just doesn't hold up that well over time, so I decided to try out 2 different materials. Plus, I wanted to dust off my grandpa's old wood working lathe, and get it back up and running.

I am going to experiment with handle size, maul head material, and maul head angle. I have finished 2 so far. Waiting for a some lathe parts to come so I can do some turning on the head material.

Lacquered figured maple and walnut handle, 1/2" Stainless steel threaded rod, black head, and brass retainer

Lacquered cherry and maple handle, 1/2" stainless steel threaded rod, beige head, and brass retainer

Handle is drying at the moment

 

[bikermutt07]

The handles look really nice.

[Troy I]

Very impressive...really nice...let us know how they work out...maybe you found a new hobby/business to support your leather working, which can be very expensive.

[billybopp]

Lookin' pretty darned good, Colt!   I'm always a bit jealous when I see folks making cool stuff like this on here in their workshop .. since I live in a city row house and don't have room for one!  (even leatherwork is primarily done in my living room, when the other half lets me).

  It occurs to me that making your own maul, you have a great opportunity to do some experimentation with materials, designs, and techniques.  You could make interchangeable heads to experiment with round vs. varying degrees of taper.  While it might mess a bit with balance, you may be able to make some "add-on" weights to fit under the brass end cap (or possibly different weight caps).. and possibly some way to weight the butt-end of the handle to help balance.  

Just a thought!

Bill 

[Colt W Knight]

2 hours ago, billybopp said:

Lookin' pretty darned good, Colt!   I'm always a bit jealous when I see folks making cool stuff like this on here in their workshop .. since I live in a city row house and don't have room for one!  (even leatherwork is primarily done in my living room, when the other half lets me).

  It occurs to me that making your own maul, you have a great opportunity to do some experimentation with materials, designs, and techniques.  You could make interchangeable heads to experiment with round vs. varying degrees of taper.  While it might mess a bit with balance, you may be able to make some "add-on" weights to fit under the brass end cap (or possibly different weight caps).. and possibly some way to weight the butt-end of the handle to help balance.  

Just a thought!

Bill 

One step ahead of you Bill. The handles are drilled all the way through and tapped to accept weights if need be. Originally, I thought I would use various thicknesses of brass to cut the retainer nuts. The problem with that is that the brass is expensive. 

 

[bikermutt07]

Just use lead. Lol

[Colt W Knight]

I cut some lead out today, but I don't really like the way I got it setup now. I'd much rather streamline the hole thing with as little dead space and parts as possible. 

These little mauls are working really well so far. 

 

[Colt W Knight]

Here is a tapeered maul with mahogany handle. Still needs finished, but with the humidity so high today, it's not really suitable for spraying lacquer. 

[TomG]

What did you use for the end caps?

 

[Colt W Knight]

1 hour ago, TomG said:

What did you use for the end caps?

 

I made them from brass