Bontz Mallet

[MattP]

Jim, I have been using a urethane mallet for years and at least the one I use does not have much bounce back at all. The urethane on the Wood Is Good brand mallets is not real thick though. The bulk of the mallet is wood with a relatively thin urethane sleeve over the head. With the Blue Spruce mallet I did have issues with it glancing off my work though. It has a fairly small head that tapers in both directions. This makes the mallet attractive but the sweat spot is very small when using it. When I am using a mallet I am looking at the tip of my chisel and not at the handle so it was really easy to miss the sweat spot and hit the chisel with a glancing blow and damage my work. I tried wrapping the mallet but I ended up constantly re wrapping the mallet and eventually stopped using it for chisel work. When I carve I tend to palm the head of the mallet so the Blue Spruce mallet worked well for that since it has a small dense head. The mallet Ron sent me has a totally different shaped head and a different overall feel. For starters the swell in the middle of the handle lets it rest perfectly on my palm. It is also significantly larger without being bulky which is nice. The biggest difference though is the shape of the head. The head is larger and the taper is totally different. Based on my use so far I have not found it to have a problem with glancing off my chisels. Tape would be one extra step to make sure that doesn’t happen but so far it hasn’t seemed necessary for me.

Ron sent me a mallet as well (he calls it a "second" because it has some ridiculously tiny imperfection that he had to point out to me or I never would have noticed). It is light years ahead of the mallet that I had previously been using. I'm not sure who made that mallet. I got it at Woodcraft maybe 15 years ago when I bought my carving gouges. The mallet I'm used to is maple, and the head is concave. I always thought it was a pretty good mallet. I carved lots of stuff with it. Then Ron sent me his mallet, and with literally the first blow on a carving gouge I could tell that it was better.  I think most of the difference I was feeling was that the mallet was heavier, and, therefore, was giving me smoother cuts. But it was also more comfortable to use and was also better at hitting clean blows on the gouge without glancing. The shape of the head really does make a huge difference.

I LOVE my Bontz mallet. Some here had expressed concern that it looked too heavy and tiring to use. That is most certainly not the case. For the past few weeks I have been suffering from a vicious case of tennis elbow (from planing, I don't play tennis). I find it difficult to hold a coffee cup, but I was able to spend over half a day carving with Ron's mallet. So, if it wasn't too heavy for me in my temporarily suboptimal state, I don't believe anybody hale and hardy will have any issue with it at all.