Handmade Impact: Affordably Made Leatherworking Maul

by | May 27, 2025 | Made Inno the Hub, Student Projects

This post was written by Jack Sternberg as part of the Monthly Mini-Grant award. The Monthly Mini-Grant awards individual students up to $50 worth of materials to make something awesome and is centered on multi-disciplinary projects across a range of shops and spaces. Jack was awarded materials and constructed this project in March of 2025. 

"I used several techniques that I hadn't used before, with the main one being the use of a boring bar."

Concept | Inspiration

My mini grant project was a Leatherworking Maul. This traditional leather working tool is used to drive punches and stamps and is significantly different from a typical flat faced hammer. Its round head allows for a more ergonomical wrist motion instead of a full arm motion, and the plastic used for the head allows for a firm impact without damaging metal stamps and punches, like metal-on-metal contact would. I already have a maul; however, my old one is a lot smaller- around 12 oz in weight, while this new one is 20 oz. This additional weight unintuitively reduces arm fatigue, as it allows for the user to use the weight of the maul for more striking power, instead of this having to come from the arm. I wanted a heavier maul for a while, however higher-end mauls cost between 90-120 dollars, meaning making one was significantly cheaper. 

Process | Finished Product

This project was almost entirely a lathe project. I used the metal lathes in Labriola to turn down delrin and aluminum stock into the maul head, the head weight, and both caps for either end of the head. Both the end caps were drilled through, turned down to diameter, and parted off some larger 3″ aluminum stock. The head was faced to size, turned down, and the interior was bored out to a 1.75″ interior diameter so the aluminum weight would press fit in. The handle was drilled through on a drill press in the woodshop and turned down on the wood lathe. 
For assembly, the weight was press fit into the head using an arbor press, and then the rest of the pieces were slid onto the bolt and a cap nut was threaded onto the end. The handle was then treated with a thin coat of wood wax, a sealer often used on cutting boards. 

Things Learned

For this project, I used several techniques that I hadn’t used before, with the main one being the use of a boring bar. The interior diameter of the head was too large to simply be drilled out, which necessitated the use of a boring bar. 

"My favorite part of this project was probably turning the wood handle. It was pretty fun to be able to do more free-form and artistic cuts that are pretty hard to do with a metal lathe."

What’s next?

In the future, I would like to make some more tools, including leatherworking stamps and punches, as well as some other pretty expensive, but within my ability to make, hand tools.