Mallet

How it works

The head is broad and made of a material softer than the tool or work it strikes. A wooden head delivers a blow to the handle of a chisel without splitting it, and a rawhide, lead or rubber head can strike finished metal without marking it. Cassell’s Carpentry and Joinery says mallets are used for driving wood chisels, for knocking light framing together, and in cases where a hammer would probably damage both tools and material.

The blow, not the push, drives the chisel in carpentry. Moxon, in the later seventeenth century, says the joiner presses the edge of the blade into the stuff with the strength of his shoulders, while the carpenter drives his socket chisel with the force of blows from the mallet. Cassell’s adds that firmer chisels are used with a mallet and lighter bevel-edged chisels generally without one.

In the machine shop a mallet is a soft hammer. Leonard says soft hammers of copper, Babbitt metal or rawhide are used for driving mandrels, adjusting work in the lathe and wherever marring of finished work is to be avoided, and that they should be used more often than they are.

Anatomy

Head: Beech, hickory or lignum vitae in wood; also rawhide, lead, rubber or copper. Cassell’s describes the American pattern as having all sharp edges chamfered.
Face: The striking end. On Leonard’s rawhide mallet the faces are detachable and held in a metal part of the hammer; on his lead mallet the lead is held in dovetail openings in an iron body.
Handle: Round in the American pattern, which Cassell’s considers easier to grasp. In some American mallets the handle screws into the head.
Socket or mortise: The joint between head and handle. Petrie finds an inserted handle in a socket in Egypt only from Greek times; before that the head and handle were cut in one block.

Variants

One-piece wooden mallet: The Egyptian form: a large head and cylindrical handle cut from one block of wood. Petrie lists conical, bulbous, oblong and cylindrical heads.
English joiner’s mallet: An English beech mallet is pictured by Cassell’s; the Science Museum Group holds a beech joiner’s mallet, 5 in., credited to C. Nurse and Co. (object 1926-763).
American hickory or lignum vitae mallet: With chamfered edges and a round handle, according to Cassell’s.
Commander: In Moxon, a very great wooden mallet with a handle about three feet long, used with both hands to knock framed work together and to drive wooden piles into the ground.
Maul and beetle: In Knight’s dictionary, a large wooden hammer for driving wedges, sometimes called a beetle; the knot-maul is made from a tough knot cut from a log.
Rawhide and lead mallets: Machine-shop soft hammers with replaceable faces, described by Leonard.
Rubber mallet: Widman’s 1931 patent mounts a rubber mallet beside a metal hammer on one handle, for roofing, siding and automobile fender work. Estwing makes rubber mallets, including a bounce-resistant model with a hickory handle.
Mallet cap: A soft cap that fits over the face of a hammer; Stiletto says each cap fits only the hammer model it is made for.

Specifications

Head size · cm or in: Petrie in 1897 reported the Deshasheh mallets as 28 to 33 cm; a Wellcome Museum accession record quoted by Liverpool gives a Twelfth Dynasty mason’s mallet as 12 in. high and 5 1/4 in. in diameter.

Made to

ASME B107.400

Safety and care

Safety

Replace a handle that is cracked, splintered or loose in the head; OSHA 29 CFR 1926.301(d) requires wooden handles to be kept tight and free of cracks.
CCOHS says hammers and other striking tools are widely used and often abused, and advises safety glasses and a look behind and above before swinging.

Care

Replace worn or damaged detachable faces; Leonard says extra rawhide faces are supplied cheaply by machinery supply houses.

Tips

Strike wood chisels with a mallet, not a hammer
Cassell’s lists driving wood chisels first among the uses of a mallet, and says firmer chisels are used with one while lighter bevel-edged chisels are generally used without. A hammer would probably damage both the tool and the handle.1
Look for chamfered edges and a round handle
Cassell’s prefers the American hickory or lignum vitae pattern to the English beech mallet because all its sharp edges are chamfered and its round handle is easier to grasp.1
Use a mallet to set framed work
Moxon’s commander, a very great mallet swung with both hands, is used to knock the corners of framed work into position. Cassell’s says a mallet is used for knocking light framing together where a hammer would damage the work.1 2
Use a soft hammer on finished machine work
Leonard recommends copper, Babbitt metal or rawhide hammers for driving mandrels and adjusting work in the lathe. Where none is at hand, he says a block of hard wood may be used with an ordinary hammer.1
Keep the mallet cap with its own hammer
Stiletto says its mallet caps are not interchangeable between hammer models because the face profiles differ.1

History

Earliest documented

Fifth Dynasty, about 2500–2350 BCE

Deshasheh, Egypt

Penn Museum catalogs a fragment of a wooden mallet from Deshasheh, dated to the Fifth Dynasty, 2500–2350 BCE. National Museums Liverpool holds a complete wooden mallet from grave 86 at Deshasheh, excavated by the Egypt Exploration Fund in 1897 and dated by Petrie to the Fifth Dynasty; Petrie reported several mallets and wooden chisels there, used to dig the gravel of an unfinished grave. Petrie’s 1917 catalog calls the wooden mallet a primitive tool not yet superseded and lists examples from the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties.1 2 3

The mallet is older than the hafted metal hammer. Petrie, surveying ancient tools in 1917, calls it a primitive tool not yet superseded and observes that the Egyptians used it regularly for masonry but never made a similar tool for hammering metal. The earliest Egyptian form was a piece of branch thinned at one end to give a hold. Penn Museum dates a Deshasheh fragment to 2500–2350 BCE. The Deshasheh mallets varied between 28 and 33 cm according to Petrie’s 1897 report as quoted by Liverpool, and a Wellcome record quoted there gives a Twelfth Dynasty mason’s mallet as 12 in. high.

The form changed at the handle. In the Twelfth to Nineteenth Dynasties the usual mallet had a large head with a cylindrical handle cut in one block. Petrie finds the handle inserted in a socket in Egypt only from Greek times, and says that was the usual form in Italy, and in Europe from Roman times to the present, for both masons and carpenters. A long handle cut from stem and branch is as old as the Fifth Dynasty in Egypt.

Trades divided the tool by the blow it takes. Petrie’s 1897 report, quoted by National Museums Liverpool, distinguishes the little-worn mallets of the Deshasheh grave from masons’ mallets, which become deeply cut away by working on metal chisels. Moxon’s seventeenth-century text sets the carpenter, who drives his socket chisel with mallet blows, against the joiner, who presses the blade with his shoulders. Cassell’s in 1907 treats the mallet as the carpenter’s and joiner’s companion to the chisel.

Materials changed with the work. Machine shops added rawhide, lead and copper soft hammers, which Leonard describes with detachable faces, to avoid marring finished work. Widman’s 1931 patent introduces a rubber mallet for roofing, siding and automobile fender work, and modern makers sell rubber and replaceable-tip mallets in a range of hardnesses. Estwing offers a rubber mallet described as bounce resistant; its catalog does not say how.

O*NET’s Tools Used table lists the mallet commodity class in 35 occupations and the rubber mallet class in 30, including trades far from carpentry.

Timeline

c. 2500–2350 BCE
Wooden mallets, with the Fifth Dynasty example from Deshasheh in the Penn Museum, show the earliest dated form: a branch thinned at one end for a hold.1 2
Twelfth Dynasty
The usual Egyptian mallet has a large conical, bulbous, oblong or cylindrical head cut with its handle from one block of wood; a mason’s mallet from the sand around the pyramid of Senusret II is dated by Petrie to this dynasty.1 2
Greek period
The inserted handle in a socket appears in Egypt, in examples from the tomb of Aba at Thebes and from the Fayum, according to Petrie.1
Roman period
The socketed mallet is the usual form in Italy and Europe from Roman times to the present, for masons and carpenters, according to Petrie, who also lists a long-handled mallet of Roman age from Slesvig.1
Old English period
The word slecg is recorded for a sledge-hammer or mallet; the dictionary entry gives no dates.1
1677 onward
Moxon describes carpenters driving the socket chisel with mallet blows, and the commander, a great wooden mallet with a three foot handle.1
1870s
Knight’s American Mechanical Dictionary defines the mallet as a hammer of wood smaller than a maul and the maul as a large wooden hammer for driving wedges.1
1906–1908
Leonard’s Machine-Shop Tools and Methods describes rawhide and lead mallets with replaceable faces for machine-shop use.1
1907
Cassell’s Carpentry and Joinery describes the English beech mallet and the American hickory or lignum vitae pattern.1
1931
Joseph Widman of Los Angeles is granted US 1,823,016 (filed 1929) for a rubber mallet combined with a metal hammer on one handle.1

Where the sources disagree

For which trade were the Deshasheh grave 86 mallets made?

A wooden mallet of the type used by carpenters and stonemasons.1
National Museums Liverpool catalog description
The mallets from the unfinished grave were used with wooden chisels to dig gravel, and were quite different from the masons’ mallets, which become deeply cut away by working on metal chisels.1
Flinders Petrie, 1897, as quoted by National Museums Liverpool

Gaps in the record (6)

Removed for sourcing: the face-hardness specification, the replace-only-the-tip care item and the pick-the-face-hardness tip, all of which cited the NUPLA catalog hosted on a distributor’s site (nafeco.com); nupla.com and archived copies could not be fetched from this machine, so the claims about NUPLA’s replaceable tips are unsupported.
No museum record of a Roman mallet with a stated findspot and date has been located; the Roman evidence is Petrie’s typology, which gives no findspots in the text read.
The dates of the Old English sources cited in the Bosworth-Toller entry are not stated there.
The Knight’s dictionary copy read is a 1876 printing; the first edition is reported to be 1874 and was not read.
Whether ASME B107.400 covers mallets has not been established; its text was not read, so the standard slug is unverified.
No published test or failure data has been located to judge head materials, so buying is null.