I promised a friend
on the Spyderco Forums I would post some pics of my hatchet, and in researching I came upon this thread. I figured some of you might be interested in the story. I did sharpen it today, but decided to leave that small chip towards the bottom; it cuts well, and will sharpen out eventually.
When I was a teenager, I worked at a YMCA Summer Camp in the Sierra Nevada. We'd take kids up to the mountains for the week, and do your standard camp stuff like nature hikes, arts + crafts, etc, then do a 3-day overnight backpacking trip where we'd take them out into the backcountry. A lot of the kids were foster children from the city, and had never had a chance to experience nature up close & personal before. Needless to say, the backpacking trip was usually the most rewarding part of the week.
One week, I had some older boys and we hiked out to Kennedy Lake. We camped in a meadow about a mile or 2 from the lake, and after dinner the fog set in so thick you could barely see your hand in front of you. If that wasn't spooky enough, I'd been perfecting my scary stories that year, and had the tale of the Hatchet Man down pat.
One night back in the 70s, John and Mike were out backpacking out here at Kennedy Meadow. They were strong hikers, and made good time on the way in. Since they had the time, they decided to head the extra mile-or-two in to enjoy an afternoon of swimming, cliff jumping, and relaxing in the Sierra sunshine.
Just as they were getting ready to pack up and head back to camp, they heard a rather unsettling howl. As their eyes focused on a lone man standing on a rock on the far side of the lake, the howl turned to laughter. An uncouth-looking man, he was dressed in dirty denim overalls held up with only one suspender, and no undershirt. As they watched on, he started hopping up and down, hooting and hollering, and waving a small hatchet around above his head. before taking off into the woods behind the lake.
Disturbed, the buddies turned around and hurried back to camp. Around their campfire, the two talked through their experience, and agreed that it was probably just some old drunk old-timer trying to get a rise out of them. They'd see tomorrow, as in order to bag Kennedy Peak the next day they'd have to
Sometime in the middle of the night, Mike awakes to a shrill cackle followed by a steady thud, thud, thud. As he opens his eyes, he sees the figure of the old-timer from the day before. Mike bolts upright when he realizes that the man is swinging his hatchet again and again into John's now-limp body. He runs, and he runs, and he runs until he reaches the trailhead, a pack station thankfully-equipped with a working phone.
Later the next day, Mike returns with a team of rangers. There is no sign of the old timer, and nothing left in their tent but a pile of torn and bloody sleeping bags. In the days that followed, it was announced that a dangerous man had escaped from the local mental institution. Search and rescue teams scoured the area, but were unable to uncover any signs of the Hatchet Man.
Needless to say, the kids (middle school/early high-school age) were pretty spooked. I may have gone a bit overboard; at least two slept with their shoes on, just in case they awoke to their friends being murdered in the middle of the night.
The next day, I was walking up the hill away from camp to relieve myself, when I kicked something heavy in the jeffery pine duff which littered the hillside. I bent over and found this old hatchet, rusted over and with no handle. I took it back with me as a souvenir, though I hid it under my arm as to not raise alarm with the boys.
Later, I heard them arguing about something:
"I went back and it's not there! Someone took it!" It turns out the boys had found the hatchet while digging in the woods the day before, then briefly buried it so as to not get in trouble (we had a strict no weapons policy in those days, the boys couldn't even have Swiss Army Knives). Unbeknownst to me, the rusty hatchet found in the woods added another dimension to the fear factor of my story the night before; I genuine felt bad for the kids, and I spent the rest of our trip reassuring them that I had in fact made the whole thing up.
Fast-forward to the end of the week, I soaked the hatchet in a mixture of Apple Cider Vinegar and Molasses for about 10 days until the rust was mostly eaten away. Then I scrubbed it down with steel wool. With the help of my father, I put it in a vice to straighten out the handle, polished the head (well, somewhat) and put a halfway-decent edge on it, cut out some scales from scrap pieces of oak, mounted with t-nuts, and then spent a week applying Danish oil to the scales. That was about 15 years ago, and it's been with me on every camping trip (and several backpacking trips) since.
Last time I searched, I wasn't able to find much on it. I found
a useful article on ScoutKnives.net about a very similar Boy Scout Hatchet. While mine is not a BSA hatchet, it looks like the non-BSA version of the same hatchet. ScoutKnives has a copy of an ad from 1954 when it was sold for $3.75!
I'm under the impression that this type of hatchet is referred to as a Box Hatchet, and is uniquely suited to unpacking wooden crates. The poll is well-suited as a hammer, the full-tang construction means the whole thing is a prybar, and the nail puller is a nice touch. Steel seems to be pretty good, though I really don't have a lot to compare it to.
