Mallet?

[Heltor Chasca]

My daughter has a Vango Banshee like yours and I think the pegs are made from an Ali-marshmallow resin. [emoji6]We've roasted the lot over a fire and replaced them with a fiver's worth of decent Y section pegs from Amazon. Either take a mallet or if you are feeling sociable it's a great ice breaker and a way to meet your campsite neighbours....b

[Sweep]

+1 for the plastic mallet recommended above.

Loads around and the wilko cheapo one looks like the standard 1.

Agree that they are surlrisingly effective if you give them a controlled swing and are happy to tap tap a bit. Also minimises the chance of bending pegs.

[4wils]

We carry a leather sailmaker's palm - simply a leather strap with hole for thumb and substantial "thimble" in the middle of the palm - good for most pegs and quite hard ground.
Obviously not good for traditional pegs with the shepherd's crook shape.
The "palm" is small, light and easily packed with the pegs.

[Heltor Chasca]

We carry a leather sailmaker's palm - simply a leather strap with hole for thumb and substantial "thimble" in the middle of the palm - good for most pegs and quite hard ground.
Obviously not good for traditional pegs with the shepherd's crook shape.
The "palm" is small, light and easily packed with the pegs.

Utter genius! I like it. And if the ground is frozen, you ask a fellow camper to jump on your hand[emoji6]

[Vantage]

Inflatable hammer?

My brother and spent our pocket money on inflatable hammers on a family day out to Rhyl.
We couldn't even knock each other out. Useless.
It's been tempting to bop him on the head with my yellow plastic mallet like those mentioned above but I haven't got around to it yet. They are surprisingly effective on tent pegs though.

[robing]

I don't bother. Either the ground is soft enough that you can push them in, or you can find a suitable rock. Or someone will lend you a mallet. It's not worth carrying one around.

[profpointy]

I push pegs in a bit by hand then stand on them to push 'em in.
(best done wearing shoes). Carrying a mallet would be be so far down the list of things to bring - somewhere slightly above a coal scuttle say.

[willem jongman]

i recently borrowed a little hammer form a fellow camper. It was a traditional hammer with a steel head and wooden handle. The first thing I noticed was that it was surprisingly light compared to wooden mallets. The second thing was that the hard steel head was rather more effective than anything of plastic or wood. So I am now looking for an even lighter hammer. I have seen two models by German tool manufacturer Gedore, one with a 50 gram head and one with a 100 gram head. The handles are roughly half of the weight of the head for a combined weight of something like 80 and 150 grams. I wonder if the 50 gram head will be enough, but I guess I could just try. Both of them are a lot lighter than any alternatives that I have seen, other than picking up a stone.

[psmiffy]

Yup - a steel hammer works much better than rubber or wood - better coefficient of restitution - more bang for your bucks - the hammer you describe is very similar to the ones Ive bought a couple of times when camping in regions where very hard ground is prevalent - typically about 2€ to 3€ from a tool stall in a market - there are downsides though - to use it with conventional pegs requires a relatively high degree of hand eye coordination when trying to bluter pegs into a solid surface - damage to fingers or the hand holding the peg is likely -additionally I have found that having managed to apply a high degree of energy to the top of a peg that it was not uncommon for the peg to fly past my ear and land several metres behind me - however a hammer of this sort teamed with a cheap -typically 2€ from same local market - robust phillips screwdriver is a good way of making pilot holes for pegs without the risk of either damaging a appendage or losing an eye.

[andrew_s]

I'm much the same as PH - I take a variety of pegs and use the most suitable for the ground conditions in the most important places.

I've an Akto, and the most important are the 4 end guy pegs, followed by the 2 side guy pegs, and then the 4 inner/groundsheet pegs.

I take 4 Y pegs, 4 Ti nail pegs, and 4 V pegs, which leaves 2 spare.
On hard, rocky ground, the end guys get the nail pegs, on soft or sandy ground they get the V pegs, and the rest of the time they get the Y pegs. The side guys get whatever I consider second best, and the inner corners get the weakest.
If there's a reliable wind direction, that may alter things a bit, with upwind pegs getting priority in the suitability stakes.

Generally, if my hand isn't enough, I find a big rock to beat the pegs in with.
Finding a rock has never been difficult enough to make me consider a mallet worth the luggage space.