A couple of carving axes.

Camperspecial

Camperspecial

Joined
Jul 10, 2017
Messages
32
Hey all.

Here are a few picks of my first shot at "restoring" and old axe.

Most of my carpentry tools are old things I've revived and I turned to this forum when I wanted to make a carving axe and some axe handles.

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The Wards hatchet turned out to be a terrific carver!
I used it to carve to handle for the other axe above.

The interesting thing about the small box hatchet is the head, which was a waffle pattern and the blade edge are wrapped with steel and tempered to a very hard state.

I had to resort to my Belt sander to profile it to a shape that was usable.
The blade on that is Very hard and very sharp.

The handle turned out a little thin for my liking, but the Vaughn handles that are available for these are clubs.

Just for fun here are the before pics of the handle.

Cheers.
Rob

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Lovely! You've done a wonderful (and tasteful) job of resurrecting a couple of old tools. My compliments.
 
Cool! I really like the look of rough carved handles - so thanks for the pictures showing the progress.

Nice little lathing hatchet you ended up with there and the Wards is a looker too :thumbsup:
 
That wards master quality hatchet turned out great, though I have to warn you that convex cheeks can prove a bit problematic for a carving hatchet. That's why a carving hatchet normally has the back side completely flat.

The lathing hatchet probably has a better profile for carving, but if you can use the wards to carve without issue then I commend you.
 
Camperspecial,excellent job on the both,and each,in it's own right,a neat old tool.Right on.

Not to be a snob,or a bore,but i'm a bit puzzled by the definition "carving".

Even Hickory n steel's remark above is kind of telling...It was from Follansbee's opinion/remarks that side-axes became associated with :carving" per se.F.'s a brilliant craftsman,but with a rather narrow specialisation having to do with certain period furniture,and it's relief detail.

I'd think,and i may easily be entirely overruled by the community,that for clarity the term "carving" is best reserved for a very radiused edge/extremely open configuration type hatchets,an extreme example(to me,again) being Stefan Ronnquist's inimitable axes...

With all due respect,Jake
 
Beachlogger said:
Great job on the handle, what kind of wood did you use?
Click to expand...

The wood is from a 115 year old Norway Maple that had to come down in the city.
I got a lot of it. Mostly the highly figured stuff. If I had known I would want to start making axe handles I would have taken more of the straight grained stuff too. Oh well, plenty of trees out there.

As for the issue of carving. I may be misusing the term. Maybe shaping is a better way of phrasing it. I'm pretty new to the axe game.

I will say this. I'm having a lot of fun "carving" stuff with that little wards axe.
I made this spoon blank. I have never made a spoon before. This is about 10 minutes into it.
Whatever it's called is fine with me. It's great to have a new fascination after woodworking for years.

And as Hickorynsteel mentioned there are even better tools for the job out there. I'm pretty excited about that.

Cheers.

Rob

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Love your work. Very skillful. Just one suggestion, if you will: I take a boxcutter or some other sharp knife and run it around bottom of the eye to clean up any bits of wood that burr up when I tighten the head.
 
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