Woodworking hammer: Mjolnir

This hammer is made from hard maple and white oak with two walnut wedges in the handle. If I was making it over again, I would switch out the oak; it has splintered on me a couple of times now, and I have to keep sanding down. The grain is just too pronounced. It is finished with 4 coats of Danish oil, followed by 9 coats of water based poly (sanding between all of the coats) and then a coat of Howard’s beeswax and orange oil.

This project definitely did not go as I had originally envisioned. A quick weekend-long, woodworking-mallet project turned into a much more involved three weeks project. For instance, I was not planning on using any epoxy, but the epoxy did a better job of hiding my lack of carving skills. Even the tools I used were different than the ones I thought I would be using. I thought that I would shape the handle with my spokeshave, but I ended up doing most of the shaping on my spindle sander. Mainly, I ended up thinking a lot about why a good tool feels nice/elegant in your hand. I wasn’t initially planning on doing much beyond a straight handle, and I’m usually a slave to symmetry. I ended up thinking a lot about the shape of a closed hand (very asymmetric) and how to work those contours into the design of the handle. It was actually a lot of fun, and now I’m ready to call down some lightening.