THE Matt Estlea MALLET
Purchase your Leadwood Mallet
2012
The Concept
This is the original mallet I made back in my first year of studying furniture making. It consisted of a Lignum Vitae head, an Ash handle, and Beech dowels whose sole purpose was to hold the head together due to the fact it kept splitting apart due to my dodgy craftsmanship at the time. That said, I used this thing for years and absolutely loved it. It even promted some viewers in my early videos to ask where they could get one, which prompted me to upgrade...
2018
The Upgrade
This Mallet was made for Episode 7 of the late, great Turning Tuesday series I used to run on my YouTube channel, which consisted of a Chacate Preto head and an Ash Handle. In addition to them taking an excessively long time to make due to my terrible woodturning skills, my lack of understanding of pricing at the time caused me to sell them at a huge loss. But conversely, it was incredibly fulfilling knowing people were using my tools and they were always in the back of my mind to bring back to market at some point in the future...
Early 2024
The Prototype
After many years of procrastination, in early 2024 we made the decision to bring the mallets back. But this time in much better materials, a higher level of craftsmanship, and at a price that doesn't bankrupt me and reflects the amount of time, effort and money that went into developing them. We thought we could get a working prototype made in 1-2 months at most. But things didn't work out that way...
mid 2024
The Result
6 months later, we've finally done it. The process has been perfected and the mallets are absolutely beautiful to both use and admire. They pack a serious amount of punch in such a compact and comfortable design and are perfect for small to medium scale joinery and assembly in woodworking. Do you need this mallet? Absolutely not. But there is a certain joy gained from using these things that I'm confident you wont find anywhere else.