Just remember when using it to strike against the rings and not parallel. I recently split a tropical hardwood mallet (from foxmaple.com), which is a similar design, because I picked it up and was hitting parallel. I did glue it back to together and it's still usable.
Your mallet looks very nice! Where did you get Lignam Vitae?
One of the local suppliers...they had two pieces in (this was the smaller of the two) Quite expensive.
I made another one out of Eastern Hophornbeam (iron wood) It's a small tree (just grows to a certain size and falls over) It's tough wood...and heavier than maple or elm...but because you can't set a free of heart wood piece...it checks. I doubt it will effect the structural integrity...I guess I'll find out once I use it.
I have some hard maple as well...I'll turn another one next week and see how they all stack up against each other.
I much prefer this style of mallet for timber framing...but that's probably because it's what I used on my original training course. I've tried everything (split head, poly head, dead blow) and I keep coming back to these...
