used this newly acquired axe at a park party last night and it worked rather well at chopping firewood and such.
My questions are twofold.
1> I used a bench grinder to resharpen the axe. I did pay attention to seeing that the edge would not overheat (turn blue). What I want to know is what shape of the edge is right. I made a concave shape.
2> The handle looks like it would benefit from some wedges inserted to support the axe head on the handle more tightly. I searched some places and did not find any wedges. I suspect that I simply did not look for the right term. Where can I find steel wedges for axes? I know that I could make one, but I would prefer to find something ready made.
I made a wedge out of flat stock.. But, my grandfather would soak his picks and axe's in water after putting the heads on. Wedges usually do come with new handles though. What you can do with the old is make a cut in the head part of the handle then using a piece of hardwood as a wedge. pound that into the handle head after you re install the axe head..
That looks like a pretty old tool. since its cutting edge is pretty straight, rather than curved, I think it would be used more for hewing than for chopping down trees. Its short handle makes me think it might have been used for hewing the ends of logs, as in preparing a piecs of wood for bowl turning. If it's flat on the other side, then it would be used for hewing logs into rectangular cross sections.
Since it is pretty old, the steel welded into the bit area would probably be plain carbon steel, so "blue" may be too high. I'd suggest not going beyond dark straw or red when grinding. I don't suppose its a real big issue, since the axes that I have known aren't left all that hard anyway. we always used to touch them up in the woods with a file.
I guess I should be a little clearer -- there was no color changes when I was grinding the edge. I made sure to move the axe along the edge so that no area spent too long in contact with the grinding wheel.
Thanks. I will check Menards for replacement handles. They should have some.
Something like 30 years ago, I did a wood handle replacement article for Popular Mechanics. At that time, every hardware store had wood handle wedges in a variety of sizes. There are far fewer wood handles out there today, but I'd guess you should still find them at Ace or any local hardware stores, and maybe even at the big box stores.
The axes that I see on sale in stores today look like they are not meant to be actually used (maybe the Chinese who make axes nowaways, do not have a history of axe use like the Russians or Scandinavians do). I hope that the replacement handles are better. I will report once I find anything out.
Fortunately it's an axe, rather than a chisel, so the carbon of the edge steel will be lower and it's thus a bit more resistant to overheating. However an axe of this pattern is probably a carbon steel edge welded into mild steel or iron and not a modern heat-resistant alloy steel. It's just not designed to be sharpened on anything faster or hotter than a slow water-cooled wheel, or by hand.
Concave is _totally_ wrong (and getting to be dangerous). It should have a _very_ slight convex crowning to it for this pattern of axe, possibly with the corners radiused off too, depending on the use you intend to put it to.
Don't grind a convex edge onto an old (i.e. forged) axe of this pattern. If you want a convex-edged axe for carving, find one that was forged that way and intended to be used with a convex edge. Otherwise, if you just grind the edges back too far, the thickness of the forging ends up all over the shop and you've ruined a nice tool that deserved better.
Never wedge the head onto an axe (i.e. steel wedges hammered in afterwards). It's a terrible way to do it, and it doesn't work at all well.
It takes three days to put a handle onto a big axe, although you can do a little one like this in maybe one or two.
Start with a good piece of timber for the handle: hickory, ash, or probably osage orange (I've no experience of osage orange). You need something that's strong in bulk, but also has good crush resistance. it also has to be well-seasoned (at least 5 years old of proper air- drying and seasonal cycling). It also need to have been kept dry for the last month.
I don't care if your grandad did it, you can't fit a green ash handle and expect it to stay in place.
Shape the handle, as you prefer. Then shape the handle to fit the eye of the head _perfectly_. This takes a long time and a lot of care. You might use a drawknife to start, but only a real expert can finish with one - anyone else should switch to a spokeshave or rasp. The split is sawn in afterwards. Then make a wedge to fit, which is itself nearly as careful a fitting job as the handle. Especially watch the taper angle and the length. The timber can well be the same as the handle, although many favour a slightly harder timber (no-one can justify this choice).
Assemble. Do it right, get it perfect, because it's the only chance you've got and you'll be living with it for 10 years. Assembly is easy - you did the hard part when you fitted it.
Fit the wedge. Leave it long.
Now another important bit. Leave it alone. Leave it overnight. Come back tomorrow and drive the wedge in again, just that bit further.
For a felling axe (4-5lb upwards) do that again for a second day. That's why it takes 3 days to fit a handle.
_Then_ trim the wedge down.
There's no need to soak a handle on a well-fitted axe. Ever. It doesn't need it because it shrank (it was dry when you fitted it). If it does need it, then the handle is possibly worn out, because you either used too soft a timber or else you've been using your axe as a prybar. Possibly you fitted the handle carelessly and it was only ever bearing on a couple of points.
The handle hasn't "dried out and shrunk". It can't do this, because of the care you took in choosing and making it in the first place. So if it's not moisture shrinkage that's causing it, soaking isn't going to put it back right for you. If you've crushed the timber instead, then soaking does little to aid that - the wood swells, but the structure is now softened and it'll be loose again by lunchtime. Time for a new handle.
OK, so it _might_ need soaking if you move to somewhere extremely hot and the eye expands, but this still isn't because the timber shrank. Don't fit handles to cold heads in winter.
Don't use steel wedges. They damage the timber and they reduce the handle's strength inside the eye such that the handle's fit no longer lasts well. They're a quick hack for crude hammers (hammers aren't used by levering as axes tend to be), they've no place in an axe handle.
There might be another reason to not soak it. It looks like the head is quite old. There may be some stress cracks that you can't see. Soaking the handle after a snug fitting will cause the wood to expand, indeed, it may expand so much that it breaks the head. The power of expanding wet wood is well illustrated by the old technique of quarrying stone with wooden wedges. The quarrymen would chisel holes along the line of desired breaking, pound in dry wooden wedges, then soak the wedges in place. The swelling wood would put so much pressure on the rock it would split it right off.
Also, when wetted and confined, wood can expand so much that the fibers are crushed, and when the wood dries out again it is looser than when it started. This is one of the primary reason that wood joints fail over time in climates that have large seasonal humidity changes.
I would suggest drying the wedge (and the handle too, if it will fit) in a oven at maybe 150 F, before assembly.
That way it will get tighter as the moisture content rises to ambient, instead of looser as it drops to ambient.
My guess is that your grandmother didn't allow your grandfather access to the oven...
As someone else noted, it looks like a broad axe, used for hewing a flat side on a log. The original bezel would have been one-sided like a chisel and the original handle curved to one side to reduce the risk of barking your knuckles.
The few that I have seen that had the original bezel and handle were shaped for right-hand use.
High carbon low alloy steel anneals at ~ 325 F. Ideally it should be honed with a hand stone or with a wet low-speed wheel.
Your picture is what appears to be a "broad axe" or for the size shown, a "broad hatchet" This is not a general purpose wood-chopping hatchet, but was used to hand-form logs into boards and beams. A series of cuts perpendicular to the log surface is made, spaced a few to several inches apart. The cuts are made all more or less to the same depth. Then the broad axe is used parallel to the log, to slice off the sections. The perpendicualr cuts keep the split from moving in an unwanted direction and also keep the broad axe from getting "stuck" if the log splits only partially.
Most axes can be sharpened with a good quality flat mill file. They are generally not hardened to the degree that a grinder is necessary for sharpening, though a grinder can certainly be used to get the initial shape of the edge or to remove large chips or defects.
I'm not sure what the classic edge shape for a broad axe is, but the usual run of the mill chopping/splitting axe often has a "cannel" shape rather than the more common hollow or convex grind. It is a stronger than a hollow ground edge simply because there is more metal there, and it is more likely to split a log than get stuck in it. The tradeoff is that it is not as efficient at cutting or perhaps chopping as would be done in chopping down a tree, compared to splitting a log. However, nowadays a saw is usally used for crosscutting, though the axe is still favored by most for splitting.
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