Thread: Axe, Spokeshave and Auger

Somebody'll pipe up and say; what about the chainsaw used to cut the tree down? But not me , I reckon that's terrific.

Yes, down to the basics at last, love the approach and the result

Hmmph.....metal blades, bit fancy are we?


Nicely done.

Good one Ray!

Yes, as a kid of about 6, I remember watching my dad make a 3-legged milking stool in what seemed like a few minutes, with a brace and a small axe. He shaved the legs as cleanly as I could do (now) with a well-tuned spokeshave.

He was amazingly accurate with any sort of axe. Not long before he died (well into his 90s) I was chatting with him while he cut some kindling wood. He was using a sharp axe and striking the wood less thaan 20mm from the fingers holding it. That's ok, but it was almost dark, & I know his eyesight wasn't the best those last few years. I said to him "dad, you silly b*gg*r, you'll lop your bleedin' fingers off any minute!". He looked up at me and said "Whaat? - what did you say", and just kept on slicing off slivers without looking at the board! .

I don't recommend Josh try to emulate that just yet, but it's nice to see the old skills carried on.....
Cheers,

Hi Ian,

I've been wondering just how sharp an axe should be, I've seen all those stories of professional axemen shaving with their racing axes before a woodchop competition, but I think it's more showmanship than practicality. I think the edge can be too fragile if you aim for razor sharp, but I don't really know.

That little axe, probably more correctly called a hatchet, has the head shaped so that you can grip directly over the head, and you can use it like a scraper or a paring chisel.

The only other tool you really would want is a saw, (naturally) axes aren't real good at croscutting

But for splitting and shaping... with a bit of practice...

Regards
Ray

I remember many years ago reading of a couple who were renovating a cottage and wanted some exposed beams. They contracted an old bloke to trim them specifying an adze was to be used. They were quite disappointed when, instead of the finished they'd expected, the beams looked as if they had been planed!
Cheers,
Jim

Originally Posted by RayG

....I've been wondering just how sharp an axe should be, I've seen all those stories of professional axemen shaving with their racing axes before a woodchop competition, but I think it's more showmanship than practicality. I think the edge can be too fragile if you aim for razor sharp, but I don't really know.

Well, Ray, I should say they need to be pretty damn sharp. I knew a bloke that won the national woodchop championship in 1962, and his racing axes were wicked-looking things, alright. My dad & uncle used ordinary workaday axes (Dad swore by Kellys & uncle by Plumbs!). Not sure if you could have shaved with any of these, but you would at least have dented a few whiskers with them.

A good axe is a marvel of metallurgy - tough as hell and able to hold an edge remarkably well, as long as they don't hit dirt & grit. Remember that they were mostly used on green wood, which is a very different animal from the dry stuff we woodies work with, and that makes a big difference.

My own axemanship is legendary in the family - they called me 'lightning,' because I rarely hit the same place twice. I was persistent, though, so eventually the trees I attacked fell over.......laughing, probably.

Cheers,

Originally Posted by IanW

My own axemanship is legendary in the family - they called me 'lightning,' because I rarely hit the same place twice. I was persistent, though, so eventually the trees I attacked fell over.......laughing, probably.

Cheers,

Hi Ian,

I might be able to give you a run for your money one of my jobs every day was to split the firewood and cut the kindling, we had a slow combustion stove that doubled as a water heater, and in the winter we had an open fire, I remember freezing cold rainy days at the wood pile swinging a block splitter, it hardly qualifies as axemanship, but I could generally keep my eye on on a spot and hit it (mostly).. The trick, that was learned early was to check for obstructions in the backswing and watch out where your feet were. That was all dry firewood, by comparison green timber is lovely stuff to work with a sharp axe.

Regards
Ray

Originally Posted by RayG

......we had a slow combustion stove that doubled as a water heater....

Yairs, the joys of country life! We didn't get a slow-combustion job til I was 13, and the old black stove that preceded it ran 16 hours a day to feed our (very large) family. Lots of arguments between myself & younger brother about whose turn it was to fill the woodbox each day......

But at least the wood that was favoured for the stove was she-oak, which is so easy to split you could do it with a hatchet. In fact, it generally split itself as it dried. Probably explains why I never developed my axe-weilding skills to any great extent.

I guess the other big event was the arrival of the first decent chainsaw on the place, when I was about 16. Unlike the old 'Blue Streak' it replaced, I could actually lift it. It started on the first or second pull, and had about 3 times the cutting power. I thought it was a gift from heaven.......

Cheers,

How many of us were called lightning, that's certainly what my dad called me, in a friendly manner, of course.
What was really annoying about him was that he was ambidexterous and could bowl a tree without changing his stance and I (totally undexterous) would be hopping from one side of my tree to the other.
But good days, got a hatchet for my birthday when I was 8 or 9.
Dad would have been 100 this November.
Time,
Geoff.

Originally Posted by Boringgeoff

.......What was really annoying about him was that he was ambidexterous and could bowl a tree without changing his stance and I (totally undexterous) would be hopping from one side of my tree to the other.

Sounds remarkably familiar, Geoff! My father was a couple of years younger, but made of the same stuff, it seems. He was a natural leftie, but of course in his day, they thought that left-handed people were deviants, so he was belted into using his right hand at school. Although he prerferred to use his southern paw for fine stuff, he could switch from one to t'other for almost anything, including writing, and you would not have known it wasn't natural.

It's interesting that like a good monkey, I must have copied him from a very young age, so I hold axes and shovels and a cricket bat like a left-hander, yet am an otherwise stolidly right-handed clod. Later, when my reversed axe & shovel holding was pointed out, I tried to switch, but it never felt right, so I persist with the 'left-handed' holds. Maybe if I'd switched sooner, I could have competeed with the old pot.....

Sorry for the hijack Ray - this is degenerating into an old folks' reminiscence page.

Cheers,

Originally Posted by IanW

He was a natural leftie, but of course in his day, they thought that left-handed people were deviants, so he was belted into using his right hand at school.
Cheers,

Ian

Left hand preference becomes an issue with tools like the broad axe and probably others too. Incidentally a left handed person was thought to be evil not just a deviant.

The latin word for left-handed is "sinistra" from which we derive our word "sinister." Just a measure of the regard in which a left handed person used to be held .

Regards
Paul

RayG

Nice bench and a good exercise.

There is a bloke at Moonan in the Upper Hunter, Howard Archibald, who runs weekend courses on building furniture using only hand tools. Much of it is in green timber and the tools used are more akin to the bodgers tools: Drawknives, spoke shaves and the like.

Regards
Paul

I'm shortly due to start a green furniture course with the LBT.
Hand tools only including cutting up the blackwood log.

[OT: I used a spoke shave today for the first time since high school. Huon pine floors for a dinghy we're restoring. Another tool I have to add to the list ]