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

[MADMAX22]

Nicely done. What materials are you trying out for the heads? 

By the way is that an old Atlas bandsaw ya got there? I have one of the smaller 10" or 12" (cant remember) that I replaced bearings on, just need to mount my motor and replace the blade guide inserts. 

[Colt W Knight]

The red saw is an old cast aluminum craftsman I refurbished and painted red. The green one is just a harbor freight central machinery. 

I'm trying out some high impact strength ABS plastic and Nylon( Remington made rifle stocks with the same material). 

[Colt W Knight]

7 hours ago, MADMAX22 said:

Nicely done. What materials are you trying out for the heads? 

By the way is that an old Atlas bandsaw ya got there? I have one of the smaller 10" or 12" (cant remember) that I replaced bearings on, just need to mount my motor and replace the blade guide inserts. 

By the way, if you got blocktype blade guides, you can make hard dense wood blocks instead of those fancy plastic ones they sell. I use maple, and soak it in oil. 

[MADMAX22]

2 hours ago, Colt W Knight said:

By the way, if you got blocktype blade guides, you can make hard dense wood blocks instead of those fancy plastic ones they sell. I use maple, and soak it in oil. 

Thanks, I read about that and was considering it. The original ones are bronze I think, could be brass also. Not sure what I  will go with, need to do something it tracks very well and is a nice size for cutting patterns and what not. 

[Colt W Knight]

I thought I would show some of my process.

First, I cut the wood out on the table saw

Then take it over to the lathe

I am going to add some decorative rings to this one

Using epoxy

 

[Colt W Knight]

Cutting out the rod isn't as easy as sliding it over the table saw, I had to make a jig to hold the round stock at 90 degrees and clamp it tight so it doesn't move.

I forgot to take a picture of how I find the centers on this nylon rod. I drilled a 2" hole in a piece of scrap walnut with a 2" forstner bit, Then I clamped the wood to the drill press table. Now the center of the hole and the drill chuck are cowitnessed. I can put the rod in the hole, and change the bit to whatever size I need to drill centered holes. Without a metal lathe or nice wood lathe, this is about the most accurate way I can do this.

I cut the recesses for the handle and brass retainer using forstner bits

I don't really like cutting these angled heads on my lathe because the plastic/nylon curls wrap around my lathe chucks. I am afraid some of those curls are going to over heat and burn up the bearings on my live center, so I stop frequently to clean off the curls

I drill the center hole using a 27/64" bit, then ream it out with a 1/2" bit. The tails like to get hot and mar the hole. Doing it in two stages leaves a nice clean hole of the right diameter

Mock up -  The heads gets sanded with coarse sand paper so it doesn't glance off the stamps

[Colt W Knight]

Drilling out the handle to take the threaded SS rod

Tapping the hole

Installing the rod, and trimming it down to make it more wieldy whilst working on it

[Colt W Knight]

So far, I like working with the Nylon better than the plastics. The plastics get hot and melt while drilling and turning if you aren't very careful. A non-lazy man would take the time to change the belts on all his machines to their slowest RPMs and work very slowly to prevent this, but what do I look like? A guy who isn't lazy?

The nylon is pretty cool on the lathe, when you have your tool really sharp, and you move with the right pressure and speed, the extra material come off in one single piece/tail. That also make it get stuck around the chuck. I tried to setup my dust collector to catch it and suck it up, but it just can't keep up with the rpms of the lathe.

Edited July 25, 2016 by Colt W Knight

[bikermutt07]

Ha!

[Colt W Knight]

Time to trim up that handle

[Colt W Knight]

Mixed up some dye, and gave them a little color.

Sprayed some lacquer as well. Ill check in on it in the morning.

[bikermutt07]

I foresee a sticky thread in your future.

[Colt W Knight]

Originally, I planned on using this brass round stock I have had since I was a teenager to make the retaining nut for the mauls. I was going to cut it thicker to make a heavy nut to have a heavier maul. Well, this isn't regular old soft brass. Its pretty tough stuff, and might actually be some kind of bronze. Anyway, I can't cut it straight with a hack saw or my portaband, I have tried. I cut the first nut from this, and it took me over an hour to cut it, flatten it on my belt sander, drill, tap and clean up. I decided that was too much work

I racked my brain trying to come up with something I could buy off the shelf that would 1. I could thread 2. would have weight 3. would look relatively nice. I couldn't think of anything, I was becoming frustrated, then I thought to myself, just buy a damn hole saw.

Hole saws are measured by OD, and aren't super accurate, The ID comes out to about 1-9/16", and I can't find a forstner bit that size without buying an entire kit. Anyone know where I can buy just the 1-9/16"

Ream it out for the tap

On material like this that is thin, you can't just hand tap it, It will come out crooked and wont lay on the maul flat. So I hand guide it with the drill press

Buff it up pretty

Fit it all together

I haven't decided if I am going to continue to use a retaining nut, or just get some Stainless steel and solder the rod and cap  together to make a bolt. Polish it up nice, and then I would have a nice maul with no visible joins or nuts or anything.

[billybopp]

Pretty ingenious use of materials!  And darned nice looking results.  

 

[Colt W Knight]

21 minutes ago, billybopp said:

Pretty ingenious use of materials!  And darned nice looking results.  

 

Thanks Billy