Mallet
The Encyclopedia of Founding (1892)
A wooden hammer for service in the foundry, where the marks produced by the smaller iron-faced hammer is objectionable. Besides the ordinary wood mallets, with heads 3 1/2 inches long, 2 inches diameter at the ends, there are now made for the trade raw-hide mallets from 1 inch to 2 3/4 inches diameter at the head; they are made entirely of hide, except the handle, and are especially valuable where light thin castings are made, as they are not as likely to damage the patterns. Manganese is one of the heavy metals, of which iron may be taken as the representative. Its color is grayish white, of high metallic brilliancy, it takes a fine polish, is non-magnetic, fuses at a white heat only, and is so hard that steel and glass may be scratched by it. As spiegeleisen, or white iron, it contains 8 to 15 per cent of manganese. Ferro-manganese, another regular article of commerce, contains from 25 to 75 per cent of manganese. These alloys of manganese, with carbon and iron, along with certain small proportions of other elements, constituting either spiegeleisen or ferro-manganese, according to the percentage of manganese contained in the alloy, are in dispensable for the manufacture of steel by the Siemens, the Bessemer, or the crucible modes of procedure. Manganese combines with carbon and silica, forming unimportant compounds. One of its principal uses is chemical, under the form of an oxide; it is employed in this state for decomposing hydrochloric acid, in the manufacture of chlorine, as a cheap source of oxygen, and as coloring material in the manufacture of glass and enamels. See SPIEGELEISEN; FERO-MANGANESE; STEEL.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
When the Encyclopedia of Founding wrote this in 1892, the mallet choices for a pattern shop were wood or the then-novel rawhide head, valued because it would not bruise a delicate pattern. Both are still sold, but the workshop standard since the mid-20th century is the soft-faced mallet with replaceable inserts of nylon, polyurethane or rubber, and dead-blow heads filled with steel shot or sand to stop rebound. The change in foundry practice matters more than the tool: the wooden patterns these mallets were designed to spare have largely given way to metal, resin and 3D-printed patterns, and to processes such as lost-foam and investment casting that need no rapping at all. The entry's stray paragraphs on manganese, spiegeleisen and ferro-manganese are an artefact of the original page layout rather than part of the mallet article.
Written for this edition, 2026.