Prairie Sundance

Sounds like you’re going in a great direction.

One thing that I would strongly consider is reducing your square footage, especially if you are concerned about heat flow etc... Now is the only time you can make your home smaller, and with careful planning you probably can, but if you design with the possibility in mind you can easily make it bigger when you need to.

I avoided full cathedral ceilings when we added on to our round wood timber frame house, I found them difficult to insulate and address moisture issues with natural materials, and all your heat hangs out up there, maybe not a bad idea in the south, but not Wisconsin or NY.

Ditto on using well cured wood- wish we’d cut ours sooner.

Where we are insulated blinds are essential for passive solar to be a net gain, too little sun in the winter to have all these great big holes in your walls

I liked the earlier post about balance and weight, and would add that it makes sense to me to spend a few more minutes making a really comfortable handle. Even if my tool were to disintegrate after 8 hrs use, that’s a lot of time whacking, we need to take care of our sensitive wrist/ carpal connections if we are to have lifetime of working with hand tools.

One thing I’ve found that helps is having a slight knob on the butt end, ( too large will rub against your wrist) and a slight taper from the butt end towards the club. Any other tips/experiences out there?

Also, they may stick around longer than you think. The first mallet I made for greenwood working 10 years ago transitioned to the garden shed when I considered it too bear up for fro use. It still comes out once a year for pounding in tomato stakes and such.

To this end I like the one I saw that used a limby chunk for the club end. A good bit harder to shape but the crotchwood club I made way outlasted my first try, all that twisty grain is much harder to delaminate. The next one I need will come from an ironwood rootball. Anyone have experience with this? I’m not sure what diameter tree I’m going to need to cut to dig up the root ball size I’d need. While we’re making tools that last, species makes a huge difference, ironwood it is for me, as it has way outlasted my first mallet head, (locust). I’d be happy for any recommendations there

This is exciting. Is there any recommendation as to when this should be done? We’ve been using our locust for fencing and other exterior crafts here in sw Wisconsin for the last 10 years, sometimes girdling them in mid summer to try and keep them from suckering. The only definite difference in longevity we’ve noticed is that denser, slower growing posts last longer than similar sized posts with large growth rings