I got the Maul-Making bug

[plinkercases]

While I cant spin out metal parts or wood on a lathe I figured I could stack leather, rasp and shape vertically on my drill press and get as creative as I could with weighting... thick brass fender washers and slices of a marble rolling pin. still noodling around with some other ideas of how to weight them such filling them with bird shot or packing it with duct seal. I got some foster bits after these were all twisted together so the next batch may have recessed hardware on the top. My original Stohlman is 14oz and the new ones are 1.5 and 2 Ibs respectively. It was fun, they work and I want to make some more with different assemblies and bits.

[bikermutt07]

Keep on keeping on.

I have been toying with a few ideas on stuff.

Skiving knife = old sharp planer blade?

Japanese knife = good sharp chisel?

I've just been thinking about them so far.

[zuludog]

Once you put your mind to it, you can make and improvise several leatherwork tools. I have made

A skiving knife from an old decorator's filling knife, a good one with a proper forged blade. It was 50p, about 75 cents, in a car boot sale; dirty & rusty, I cleaned it up, shaped & sharpened it

A skiving knife from a piece of old industrial hacksaw blade, 40mm wide

My clicker/trimming knife is a carbon steel vegetable knife that I no longer use in the kitchen. I've reshaped the tip and wrapped the handle in cord to give a better grip

A Japanese style leather knife from the blade of a cheap & nasty block plane. The body was pressed steel with plastic fittings and difficult to adjust & use, but the blade was quite good. I shaped it on a bench grinder to give the asymmetric shape

I've had a browse round a couple of second hand tool stalls, they sell old wood chisels quite cheaply. A 25mm/1" chisel would probably make a skiving knife, and I've also seen some wider chisels

Sorry, but I don't know how to post pictures, I really must learn, or pin down a friend or two to help me

These sort of things only work if you already have some sort of workshop & tools to do the making, plus a collection of suitable wood. If you had to buy the various files, hacksaws and so on you might just as well buy a decent tool in the first place.

Finally, be careful, this sort of thing can get quite addictive. You might find yourself hoarding assorted bits of steel; rusty old tools; broken kitchen utensils, and all sorts of other stuff that might be useful one day

[bikermutt07]

The way I post pics is like this....

I upload them to Facebook. Then I save them to my device (phone). When uploading here I have the option of choosing from a Facebook folder on my phone. The pictures were automatically resized. Tadaaaa!

[Colt W Knight]

Making mauls is fun.