Home Defense Mace

Let me preface this 'ible by assuring you that I am not crazy. I feel the need to say that because whenever I tell people that I am making a mace, they look at me sideways.

I find a certain elegance to some old weaponry. Some of them seem like more work of art than instrument of death. Despite the title this mace is not meant to be an actual functioning weapon. It is intended more as a sculpture.

That being said, consider this, the sound of a shotgun racking could be a terrifying sound for a burglar to hear in the darkness. However, a gun lacks that certain crazy factor to instill confusion and terror. Nothing can make a person say "holy crap, i have made horrible life choices" like being confronted by a crazy eyed home owner holding a mace in their living room. Seriously, its a mace! Who does that?!

Materials and Tools

5" wood sphere

3" wood cones

1 1/8" wood dowel

3/8" wood dowel

3/4" board

Wood glue

Leather Strap

Clear coat spray

Cardboard

Drill press

Table saw

Scroll saw

Wood Burner

Wood Stain

Sand paper

I did very little research about how to find uniform points around a sphere. The first method i tried was to just take a measuring tape and quarter the circumference of my sphere to mark out the poles. This proved to be harder than it seemed because the measuring tape veered off center enough to be noticeable when all the marks were made.

The second method proved to be much better. I made a 5" x 5" cardboard box with holes poked in the exact center of each side. I just dropped the ball inside and made a pencil mark at all six sides. This worked like a charm.

It didn't seem like such a difficult thing when i set out to do it but drilling a straight hole from exact pole to exact pole on a sphere is exceedingly difficult. Even using a drill press it is difficult to find the exact spot parallel to the axis and perpendicular to the tangent plane that touches that axis point (i didn't even have to google that sh%t. Take that old age). Meaning, anyone can drill a straight hole through a ball, but its hard to drill a straight hole through a ball that is exactly at its axis.

To fix this i had to make a box/jig similar to the cardboard box. This time I used the 3/4" board to make a box with a 5 1/4" x 5 1/4" x 5 1/4" space in the middle and drilled 3/16" holes in the center of each side. I lined up my pencil marks and put a screw in the four sides. This held the ball in place perfectly. I next went from corner to corner on the box to find the center axis of my sphere. My original mark from the cardboard box was about 3/16" off from this center.

I lined up my center and started the first side of the center hole. Unfortunately my drill press only has about 3 inches of travel so a little more than halfway through i had to rotate my sphere in the jig. This put my jig to the test. After removing two of the screws holding it in place I rotated the sphere and reinserted those screws. When i continued the center hole the two bore holes lined up almost perfectly.

Aside from the spikes at the poles i wanted eight more spikes, one in each quarter hemisphere. To get these locations i took the sphere from the jig and reinserted the screws. I then ran a piece of string from each screw to the next along every axis. This made eight triangles. I laid out the perpendicular bisectors of each side of the triangles to locate the center point of each quarter hemisphere.

The spikes/cones I ordered were 3" tall with a 2" base. This would have made the total width of the mace 11". I thought this a bit unwieldy so I decided to cut the cones down about an inch. Again, cutting an irregular shape on typical woodworking tools proved difficult. The solution i came up with is to mount the cones in a row on a thin strip of wood and setting the fence on my table saw so that i could run the cones across the blade like cutting normal board. Worked like a champ. This would make to total width about 9".

At each of my marks i drilled a 3/8" hole about 1/2" deep and inserted a 1" long dowel. Next drilled a similar hole in the bottom of each cone. I noticed that the cones weren't going to sit flush with the curved surface of the sphere which meant i wouldn't get a good area to glue them on. To fix this I used my 6" bench grinder wheel to cove out the bottom of each cone. I'm sorry i don't have a picture of this. It would have been better if i had a 5" wheel to match the radius of the sphere exactly, but the six worked ok.

The hole in the first picture on the equator of the sphere is drilled clear through. There is a corresponding hole drilled through the handle. I drove a 3/8" dowel through both the sphere and the handle in order to lock them together.

I chose to add some squiggly line decorations on alternating hemispheres. Wood burning requires a steady hand and patience. Two things that I sorely lack but I think i managed ok. I drew the desing in pencil first and then went over it with the burner. It took about 4 hours to finish the burning.

I had initially thought about giving it a faux hammered bronze look but instead went with wood stain. Next I added some light color to the spike tips and some random dots around some of the spikes. After the paint dried I clear coated the whole thing.

I always knew that I wanted a leather handle for the mace. I did some limited research on weaving a leather strap handle and went with a simple four strand weave. I won't go into that process because there are some other instructables that cover it much better than I ever could. I haven't quite got the hang of finishing off the weave at the end so its just a series of tucked knots at this point.

So, there you have it. I am very pleased with the aesthetics of it all even with the end of the weave in its current state. This may end up being hung up in the front of my office with a NO SOLICITING sign under it.