In this episode of tool making on the Art of Boat Building I make a shipwright’s caulking mallet. If you google shipwright tools most likely one of the first things that comes up is a caulking mallet and these strange looking mallets are very specific to caulking a boat. They have this very long head and these longitudinal slots. From my reading, the slots are to reduce the fatigue and add a little bit of springiness to the mallet when it’s being hit on a caulking iron. The other thing I’ve read is it gives the mallet a nice ring. You can imagine the number of taps you have to make on this over the day you’d want a pleasant sound. This may be ship lore but I’ve also read that when there’s a large ship being caulked they tune the mallets so all of the shipwrights’ mallets were ringing in the same tone. Either way, I hope you enjoy this build of a shipwright’s mallet on the Art of Boat Building.