Lixie Dead Blow Mallet - Popular Woodworking Magazine

by Brendan Gaffney
web page 14

Nicely-match joinery (not too unfastened, not too tight) and well-deliberate glue-ups not often want a lot persuasion – however I"m not all the time fortunate sufficient to seek out myself with both of these. Prior to now, I’ve used huge rubber mallets, small sledges and framing hammers (with a block of wood, in fact) to convey house tight joints or break aside a glue joint.

Throughout a current glue-up, I slipped and ended up with a hammerhead-formed ding in a workpiece from a glue-up gone improper. I’ve seen quite a few really helpful rubber and lifeless-blow  mallets, however I remembered one we had at School of the Redwoods (now the Krenov Faculty) – the Lixie Dead Blow Mallet. This messy glue-up was what I wanted to lastly get round to ordering one.

Lixie makes a variety of mallets, from a small 10 ounce to an enormous one hundred ten ounce “Mjölnir” of types. I went with a cushty measurement, a 30-ounce mallet with 11⁄2“-diameter heads. I’ve discovered discover this to be a cushty weight for basic furnishings meeting.

What I like most concerning the Lixie mallets is the varied kinds of replaceable heads. The usual mallet ships with black (hard) and inexperienced (medium) heads, however I ordered the orange-purple (smooth) head as well (for a further $10.ninety five). The orange head may be swung with critical drive with out leaving a hint of the blow (even in pine) – no extra picket block to overlook when swinging the mallet. All the heads are very sturdy, as well.

The grooved hickory deal with is novel and the grooves assist with the grip, however I felt I nonetheless wanted to tough up the slick end a bit with some coarse sandpaper to get a very strong grip on it.

The hammers are made within the U.S., and the metal shot within the head means there"s little to no rebound, even when swinging for the fences. I’ll present these cranky joints who’s boss, now!

Web site: lixiehammers.com
Video: Watch a brief video the place we check the totally different heads on numerous woods.

From the February 2018 situation