The mallet I made in '94 is still the only one I reach for
Bought a new mallet two years ago. Carved ash head, hickory handle, nice weight to it. It sits on the shelf by the door and I walk past it every single day and pick up the ugly one I turned myself in '94 instead. That head has a chunk out of one face from a bad hit on a cold morning back when I was still renting shop time by the hour. Handle's been replaced twice. The new one is a better tool by every measure I can name. Still not the one in my hand at the end of the day.
I think about this more than the thing probably deserves. You spend years learning a tool, you know where the weight sits before you lift it, you know how it's going to land. That's not sentiment. That's the work being in your hands instead of your head.
Anyway the new mallet's for sale if anyone wants it. Cheap. It's a good tool. I just don't want it.
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This is going to sound strange maybe but I think the ugly one is not the "worse tool," it is just the one your hand already finished learning. I have the same with a pastel stick that is basically a nub now, the wrapper gone, and I keep pushing it around the paper while a fresh full stick sits right there. New tools you have to think about. The old one you don't, you just work, and that frees something.
The chunk out of the face from the cold morning is probably part of why. It's yours in a way the ash one isn't yet. Maybe in ten years it will be. Or it won't, and that's fine too.
Not strange. The nub pastel makes the point better than I did. A stick worn down to nothing has no handle to grab, no weight to adjust, nothing left to think about. Just the mark. That's the whole argument and you got there with a pastel.
The chunk matters, I think you're right. Cold morning, cheap shop, hit it wrong, learned something. That head knows more than the new one does.
It might get there in ten years. Or it won't. Either way I'll keep reaching past it.