A Pair of Mallets

I have wanted to make myself a mallet for a awhile now, so that is the next project I'm going to share here. I decided to do a small one and a larger one. Below is the drawing I made before I started.

To begin, I glued up 3 pieces of leftover walnut from last project and put it in the lath.

Then I turned it till I had a cylinder. 

My wood was long enough to make both mallets out of the same piece. In order to maximize the use of the wood and to prevent mistakes, I laid out some guidelines to help make the shapes. I worked on the larger mallet first then moved over and did the smaller one. 

I finished it with a beeswax based finish.

I got a leather strap for the smaller mallet and will hang it above my mini-workbench once I've set that up. Stay tuned, I plan to post pictures of my small at-home work area once it's set up. 

Tissue Box

So  my next project was to make a tissue box cover that could hold pencils and have a little shelf. Here is the design.

I decided to do the box in walnut. Walnut is one of my favorite woods. I started by doing the box, I did all the dovetails by hand.

My dovetails were so small I had to order two new Two Cherries chisels a 2mm and 4mm.

Then I moved on to the top I drilled all the holes and the slot for the tissues to come out of. I used a drill press for the holes and I used a mortising machine for the slot. Then I hand did the dovetails.

The finish is a bees wax based finish. Which darkens up the color of the walnut.