Wooden mallets, carving mallets and soft-face mallets for driving chisels, seating joints and persuading parts together without marking them. Power Tool Services stocks Narex joiner, carpenter and carving mallets from the Czech Republic and Real Steel mallet hammers with non-marking and urethane faces. If you have ever hit a chisel with a steel hammer and mushroomed the handle, this is the fix.
Choosing a wooden mallet
- Joiner's mallet: the classic rectangular head with angled faces so it lands square on a chisel. Narex offers 336g and 540g; the lighter one for paring and fine chopping, the heavier for mortising.
- Carpenter's mallet: Narex 442g and 726g have larger heads for knocking frames and casework together and for heavy chopping.
- Carving mallet: round-headed so you can strike from any angle without looking. Narex premium carving mallets come in several sizes, and the 500g brass carving mallet packs weight into a small head for detail work.
- Soft-face: Real Steel mallet hammers (350g and 450g, hickory or graphite handle) and the 38mm urethane-face hammer give a controlled strike for assembling joints, setting dowels and tapping laminate without marks.
- Weight: go lighter than you think for chisel work; control beats force. Choose heavy only for mortising and timber framing.
Rubber mallet vs wooden mallet vs mallet hammer
A rubber mallet bounces and can leave black marks; the Real Steel white and urethane faces give the same soft strike without the marks, so they stand in for a rubber mallet on paving, tent pegs and tyre work. A wooden mallet is purely for chisels and joinery, where a hard face would split the handle. Browse hammers for claw, ball-pein and club hammers, the full Narex range of chisels and mallets, or the wider hand tools collection.
In stock in Cape Town with nationwide courier delivery, free on orders over R2000. Call 021 674 2119 for advice on mallet weight for your chisels.
