They offer a felling axe, it has a 3.3 lbs head, 4 1/2" across the face of the bit. The handle is either 31 or 35". I think I will pick up one for the summer. I severely doubt that I will take down a majority of the winter wood with it, but it will be interesting to work with.
The axe book is excellent and is actually one of the very nice aspects about Gransfors Brux. A lot of the threads in various forums are asking questions like "What is XXX model designed for?" and such. The axe book goes into detail on exactly such questions as well as giving a lot of information on basics of axe use. Shelters, Shacks and Shanties by Beard is another nice reference.
Concerning the Hatchet vs a khukuri. An 18" khukuri will readily outchop the hatchet on wood up to about 4x4 in size (roughly). As you start to get to bigger wood the contact area on the khukuri edge grows in proportion and thus reduces the impact pressure and thus the depth of the cut.
However there is a very big factor which is exactly how you are chopping. If you chop with a lot of power and a strong follow through you will get much better results out of a khukuri (or any large knife). If on the other hand you chop with more speed and use a lot of wrist snap, you will tend to do better with the axe.
The basic reason is that because the axe head is so far out compared to where you are gripping the handle, you can't actually power it into the wood by driving down. All you will do is just bend the handle down. Unless of course you actually have the wrist strength to resist the force you are driving with. There are a few people that can do this, but it is far from commom.
Back to the hatchet, the primary reason it chops as well as it does is the very thin edge grind (about 10-12 degrees, lightly convex). The downside to this is that it is not overly durable. I dented it up on a knot in a piece of scrap and recently when I got it back from a friend the whole face of the bit was covered in dents from about 1-3 mm long and about .5 to 1.5 mm deep.
I checked the scrap that it was used on, and it did contain many nails (construction debris), but I could not see any cuts. And the user was very experienced and there is a high probability he would have noticed it as it is hard to miss. As well give the size of some of the dents, it would point to a large nail and I think that a hard chop into a large nail would really ding the face of the bit significantly.
Using the flat end of a file I did manage to get rid of all but two of the larger dents as the steel there was compacted to such a degree that parts of it broke away when it was being pushed back into place. The largest dent was in the same region I remember denting it in before. I sharpened it lightly with a worn 800 grit ceramic rod and a loarded strop (CrO) and the non-damaged parts shaved easily. So basically unless you damage it, you should have little concern with sharpening.
However I don't have a strong regard for its durability on hard woods, especially if used for hard chopping, full range of motion heavy swings for example. Now it is easy to make the edge stronger just by making it a bit more obtuse but this will have a large effect on the cutting ability. If the bevels were raised up to say 15" across the face of the edge I would assume that you would have little problems with even the hardest of woods, but the hatchet would then be readily outperformed by a decent knife even on decent sized wood.
Of course the thicker primary grind on the hatchet does make it bind a lot less which can be a significant benefit on a lot of woods. For soft woods like Pine it is not that much of a problem, but binding in harder woods, especially around knots can actually increase chopping time by a factor of 2-3 with thin blades.
Hopefully I will be able to do more chopping soon and can eliminate much of the loose estimates in the above.
-Cliff
[This message has been edited by Cliff Stamp (edited 03-15-2001).]
