A Caulking Mallet Odyssey

Here’s the thing: I don’t love caulking. I’ll admit I don’t even like it. I do not profess to be a master of the art of caulking; to me, it’s just a necessary step in building a carvel-planked wooden boat, one of the arduous jobs to do before getting back to the fun stuff. I know a lot of people enjoy it and even find some Zen in the repeated action, but not me. It’s aggressively boring in my book. I can’t even tune out, because it has to be done carefully, and that demands attentiveness.

I am, however, a big fan of vintage tools, and the tools of the caulking trade are among the most esoteric in existence. There is no mistaking a caulking mallet for any other mallet of any other trade on Earth. And caulking irons are elegant in their simplicity. I was instantly attracted to these tools—the mallet, in particular. I was fascinated by its strange proportions, particularly the length of the mallet head, the metal rings binding it, and the slots cut into it. Each one has a distinctive sound of its strike, or “chirp,” as it’s called in the business. All of these characteristics were developed by generations of caulkers. I wondered why.

And then, for the first time, I handled a 000 mallet made by C. Drew & Co., founded in 1837 in Kingston, Massachusetts, where it stayed in operation until 1980. Its chirp sounded like a gunshot to my ears. Its perfectly balanced head was made of a beautiful, jet-black wood, and the mallet was heavy without being unwieldy. Entranced by its perfection, I began what became an odyssey.