Thread: Axe talk

I got interested in the Fiskars X10 hatchet, for car camping - both to make kindling and potentially hammer in tent pegs. Contacting Fiskars Australia about whether the poll was hardened, the reply was they'd never heard the term poll and didn't know what I was asking.

After clearing that up the answer was no.

These guys are in the axe and splitter business for heaven's sake.

I have however ordered one of their picaroons - XA22 - to give my back a rest.

By the way I have a spare bottle of the elasticiser you treat the eye end of the haft after fitting. Bernie Weisgerber recommends using it and that's good enough for me. If someone is coming up to a rehafting you can have it for the cost of postage and putting up a pic of your work.

Originally Posted by rsser

These guys are in the axe and splitter business for heaven's sake.

Actually they are in the selling business and axes just happens to be what they sell, tomorrow it might be hambergers

Originally Posted by Bohdan

Actually they are in the selling business and axes just happens to be what they sell, tomorrow it might be hambergers

Yeah, I don't get the sense that they take so much pride in the product as they do running a business. The stuff is pretty fugly!! Sort of a new age thing of telling everyone about how hard all of the old things are to use, cook something up with lots of plastic parts and unhardened metal and then send a bunch of free ones out to everyone on youtube for stealth marketing.

I use the X25 splitter and it works well. Don't care about appearance. The fibre composite handle lies easy in the hands and transmits less shock than hardwood. The bit is most certainly hardened.

A plumb 3-2 that I just hung today:


https://postimg.org/gallery/2drlt12t8/

There was a discussion on another forum a couple of weeks ago about how to bring a hatchet into shape, and my thought on most of these is that you'll do your heavy sharpening work filing, so if you have access to a good file to do heavy work draw filing, that's a good way to go (next time you sharpen , there won't be any correction of how the sharpening was done prior to get an edge that is in shape for you to hand file).

This is one of two axe heads I have around that aren't handled. Kelly true temper is relatively local here so it's generally what I have in other axes and hatchets (handled or not), I'm not sure where plumb was made - I'm sure google could tell me -, but it can be found here often, too.

To my surprise, this one is an absolute file destroyer. Hard enough to total two nicholson mill bastard USA files, and I had to resort to a low speed belt sander to avoid knocking off any more $10 files after i did about 2/3rds of the filing, and then just finish file it and stone it with a carborundum stone and then a carborundum razor hone. If I get a chance to use it much, hopefully the profile will thin a little more, but there's no sharp transitions left on it.

Last picture of the edge shows either I have a bit of wire (probably not) or just a bit more file work to do. I haven't put it in wood yet, I have to haul axes to my parents' house to be able to get them into trees. Kelly and plumb stuff is inexpensive here, I just wish I had more local opportunities to use the axes.

In my casual axe tests I was looking at three aspects: penetration, chip ejection and edge retention.

Clearly in bit geometry the design has to achieve an appropriate trade-off between these three. You could get a high degree of penetration at the risk of the bit sticking or the edge chipping out or even bending. And vice versa: low penetration and high edge retention. (By bit I mean that part of the bit from the cutting edge back to the point that doesn't enter the wood.)

Chip ejection influences are exercising me at the moment. You can have a so-called chisel bit (flat bevel) or the traditional convex bit with greater or lesser included angles and varying convexity.

I can see why a convex bit might be better at chip ejection since as it penetrates it also pushes more in a sideways direction helping to break fibre adhesion to form and push out a chip.

In terms of the rough tests mentioned in #144 and later however, I don't see much evidence in practice that there's a simple correlation.

It may be a matter of how the edge is presented. There must be a more restricted range of effective angle of approach. Outside of this you're either going too square-on or else the bevel contacts the wood first and bounces sideways.

What does the brains trust think?

Ern; the following attachment was posted on this forum site some time ago. https://www.woodworkforums.com/attach...7&d=1454707960

regards Stewie;

Thanks Stewie.

Yes, I remember it. Interesting reading.

What's the bearing on chip ejection do you think?

The 4WD club did some volunteer track clearing in the Vic Alpine National Park last week. I got a Fiskars picaroon for the work and must say it worked superbly. Meant a huge reduction in bending and in effort - just spike the end grain of a cut length of log and lift and swivel it away or else use the hook to roll the log. One of the old bushies in the group was impressed enough to decide to make his own.

Hi axe people.

I've had a number of Plumb axes pass through my hands over the last year, and I've just acquired a 4&1/2 with an odd little "eye" dead centre in the reverse face. Just a little circular hole about 3ml in diameter and a couple of ml deep. I had seen a photograph of a Plumb with the same eye in it and had assumed it was damage or something odd done to it by a past owner.

The best guess I can find on the subject in internet land, and it was clearly a guess, is that the eye is a fixing point for a clamp of some type when sharpening. Sounds like a clunky kind of idea though.

Anyone here know about axes with eyes?

Sounds like a possibility.

Didn't take off obviously.

Looking for hatchets with a hardened poll I came across the Wetterlings Bushman axe (with a hammer head) and the Council Tools Pack axe (19" & 24").
Interestingly both are contemporary designs.

I saw an interesting item for sale which I think fits best in this thread. It's described as a forester's hammer and has the initials of the forester so that he can mark his logs. It looks collectible to me, but the asking price is a bit high for me to just buy it as a curiosity.

Tools - Antique forester'''s hammer, initials RFV, forestry hammer, circa 1920/30, Southern Germany, Austria for sale in Johannesburg (ID:256076642)

Oh! It's little and fits in the palm of your hand. Not what I was expecting .

Regards
Paul