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• Lead is a very soft metal, as you can clearly see from the beat up head of this home-made lead hammer. It’s also easy to melt down and cast into a new head any time it gets too bad.

• If you wanted to seriously bonk someone, this huge wooden masher would be a good tool.

• A mallet like this should not be used on nails: the flared lip is too delicate and could splinter, sending razor-sharp fragments into your eyes.

• I paid a lot for this odd square-headed hammer at an auction. Not sure why.

• These mallets look exactly like sledge hammers, just smaller.

• Mallets made of leather are often used in making things out of leather.

• Brass mallets have two advantages: they won’t scratch or mar steel parts, and they won’t create sparks that might ignite flammable gasses.

• Deadblow Hammer

• A caulking iron used with a caulking mallet to hammer hemp rope between the boards of a wooden ship hull to make it waterproof.

• Wood is a material, until you turn it into a mallet. Then it’s a tool, until it’s old and broken, when it becomes material again, maybe for a fire, or to make shims. Which are again tools, unless you use them to square a door frame and nail them in place, which puts them back in the materials column.

• Judges and auctioneers “bring down the hammer” using a mallet like this to signal finality.

• This extra-long wooden mallet has steel bands to hold it together. The flea market seller and I were equally ignorant of its original purpose, but research indicates it is an antique caulking mallet, used with a caulking iron to hammer hemp rope between the boards of a wooden ship hull to make it waterproof.

• A plastic dead blow hammer will gently knock wood or metal parts into place. Don’t use it on anything much smaller than the face of the hammer or it could split open.

• This hammer comes with four interchangeable striking faces, steel, plus soft, medium, and hard plastic.

• A steel head on a dead blow hammer makes it much tougher, but it still delivers more of a thud than a knock.

• Meat Tenderizer

• This specialized socket wrench/hammer does one thing: it turns the nut at the top of a standard Morse taper milling machine spindle. The brass hammer side is to gently tap the top of the threaded rod after loosening the nut. This knocks the collet or bit holder out the bottom of the spindle. OK I guess it does two things.

• This hammer has a hard plastic face on one side and soft rubber on the other.

• Sledge Hammer.

• This over-sized wooden mallet (the head alone is as long as most hammers) was clearly used to hit something too hard and too sharp for it, ruining the head.

• Mashers are like hammers, except you are meant to pound straight down, not swing sideways. They can be used to crush grapes, beans, the spirit of your enemies, or anything else softer than wood.

Do you have a better example of this kind of tool? Let me know by leaving a comment, and include a picture of it if you can so everyone can see!