#HTE

The Most Beautiful Brass Mallet (That You Can’t Have), and When to Stick With the Tools You’ve Got

Ever since I learned how to cut dovetails by hand, I’ve been using a simple, inexpensive English carpenter’s mallet to whack the chisel for the chopping part of the process. This type of mallet works great and was a staple of British workshops, both for chisel work and for persuading parts to fit together, for centuries. (“At least 200 years,” Joel Moskowitz, who sold me the mallet, explained. “But probably longer.”)

It’s not a “forever” tool, of course, as the head will eventually wear out; but it’s bound to last for many years, and at less than $20 my cost-per-use will be practically nothing. And even then I can create a new head to pop onto the handle, which doesn’t sustain any damage in normal use.

Last month I was watching a video by UK-based furniture maker David Barron. Barron occasionally creates his own tools for sale, and was demonstrating this gorgeous brass mallet he’d created for chopping dovetails. While the tool looks small and simple, there’s actually a fair amount of design in this thing, check it out:

I was smitten by three things, one aesthetic, two practical: One, the ooh-ahh shiny brass; two, the fact that it can be stood on its head, taking up way less space on a crowded benchtop; and three, that the rounded face can be used to tap the tails into the pins without damaging the workpiece. (With the wooden mallet I always grab a scrap piece of wood to serve as the blow-taking middleman.)

I couldn’t justify buying it, as it was bound to be pricey and my wooden mallet works just fine. But last week, with Christmas looming and my shopping for others completed, I figured I’d treat myself and clicked over to Barron’s website.

Alas, he’s either sold out or has stopped making them. “I only have the [all-wood] mallets in stock now,” reads the product page.

Maybe this is the tool gods telling me to be happy with what I have and to not spend money on redundancies. And in fact, when I look at the business end of my mallet I can see the thing’s hardly got any wear on it at all.

I should keep and use this thing until the end of it starts looking like that butcher block table I saw on Hester Street.

So instead, I ordered some tools that I don’t own versions of and do need. More on those later.

Do you folks ever upgrade to fancy tools, and if so, how do you justify it?