The axe thread

[Dave Shepard]

Sad to see the butt mashed on that axe. My favorite axe, a Collins Legitimus, still has the 3 1/2 visible, and I feel lucky that it, too, hasn't been mashed. I should go to the garage and put the new handle on it.

 

[flushcut]

Let the steel swing again.

 

[davidwyby]

You are hard on axes, my friend .

Wasn’t hard on it…bad grain.

 

[flushcut]

Cough; cough; overswing cough; cough!

 

[davidwyby]

Cough; cough; overswing cough; cough!

On my little backwards banger i was just beating wedges into mushy palm

On the maul he took a vid and it just broke on impact. Granted, it was some nasty desert hardened Aleppo pine…

 

[Nutball]

I quit trying to smash wedges, I just give them a moderate tap, and add more wedges if the ones in use snug up without advancing. I'd rather not mushroom the wedged or ax if I can avoid it.

 

[davidwyby]

If you don’t have to hit them hard enough to mushroom, you’re not really wedging 😁

I do agree on multiples…but a timber faller can only carry so many. Maybe you saw my 4’ back weighted oak…I think I had 10 in it, 5 double stacked.

 

[Nutball]

5 is a good number, I tend to keep 5 handy. Once you divide the work between 5, it gets a lot easier on you, the axe, and the wedges. Plus, by the time you cycle through a hit or 2 on 5 wedges, the tree has had enough time to move and decompress off of the 1st. Otherwise you could end up driving 1 or 2 in faster than the tree wants to go. Accelerating something as heavy as a tree with poor leverage, coupled with wood compression and the hinge fatigue, can be a slow process. Once I wedged over a 20ft tall 3ftDBH log over to a steep angle. I ran out of wedges to double stack, and they were driven in as far as I could get them. The hinge fatigued 10min later and it fell. It already had what I thought was a dangerously thin hinge under 1", and I didn't want the side lean to send it towards some valuables.

 

[flushcut]

You need to start playing with a jack.

 

[Burnham]

You'll never mushroom an axe or maul on plastic or hardhead falling wedges, no matter how hard you drive them. That will only happen with steel wedges, most usually when splitting rounds or making posts or rails.

An axe is not forged with hitting steel as a normal use in mind. Mauls and sledges are. Hitting a steel splitting wedge with an axe really is an improper use of the tool.

 

[davidwyby]

I think some of the old rafting pattern axes had hardened polls, but I won’t be getting any of my axes near steel.

 

[Burnham]

That's true. They were designed for driving steel components to secure cables holding the log rafts together for downstream floats. There were purpose made "staples" and often railroad rail spikes were used.

 

[cory]

 

[BIGTWIG]

You rolling with one of those $850 axes @cory ?

 

[cory]

No but the build process looked awesome.

I haven't used an axe in decades. I use a hatchet for kindling and use a hammer for pounding wedges and a sledge hammer for knocking out large face cuts.

 

[BIGTWIG]

Right on, Cool video.

 

[CurSedVoyce]

I've always wanted to play with some smithing. Just dont have all the goodies. Buddy of mine could let me play in his shop, just never found a time we could. Both of us are busy creatures

 

[cory]

Oh, and a splitting maul for firewood

 

[davidwyby]

One of my favorite axes (I have another one like it) getting tested before going to a young man as a prize for a fundraiser.

 

[davidwyby]

(My hang passed) it’s a wedge banger, but splitting seems to be a good test.