DISCLAIMER: This was an experiment for my own use. I am not advising these techniques for others to try based on my work. Proceed at your own risk.
Some inexplicable part of me desperately wanted to make myself an axe, so I took inspiration from my friend's Gransfors Bruk Small Forest Axe and made this one. It’s a 1 pound 9 ounce head hung on a hickory 19.5” haft with a cherry wedge.
If I was going to make my own axe from scratch, I didn't want it to be just any axe, but one with the best steel possible for the bit. After a bunch of research (lots of credit goes to knifesteelnerds.com) I settled on 8670 steel at HRC59. It’s fairly similar to 5160 but is even tougher allowing me to run it harder for better edge retention without sacrificing edge stability at thinner angles. I made the rest of the head from 4140 intending on leaving the poll hard.
That’s all conventional enough, but not having access to a forge I had to use a highly unconventional method for fixing the bit to the body of the head. I chose to TIG weld it with ER70S-2 filler rod, using a pre- and post-heat protocol commonly used for 4140. I had considered ER80S-2 and 309 filler rods, but I didn’t want the poorer ductility of the ER80S-2 or the stainless of the 309.
After welding I did all the shaping on my belt grinder prior to heat treat. That part was fairly miserable, having so much steel to remove, but I got through it using only two 36 grit ceramic belts. I made the eye by drilling out as much material I could on the drill press before cleaning up the rest and adding a slight taper with a die grinder and a carbide burr. I normalized the head 3 times and then hardened it by heating it to 1525˚F and quenching in oil followed by two 2-hour tempering cycles 400˚F. At that point I just needed to clean up the surface, sharpen it, and hang it.
This is the first axe haft I’ve ever made from scratch (I've made a few hammer handles over the years), so there’s lots to improve upon, but I really love how it feels in my hands. The swell at the end is the part I’m least happy with. It fits my hand well but looks too square and inelegant. Sometime soon I’ll reshape it once I have a good idea of what I want to do with it.
I could have just made the entire handle on my belt sander, but I like to work with hand tools so I cut the blank out of a large piece of hickory with Japanese pull saws and roughed in the shape with a spoke shave. I only did the final smoothing and contouring at 220 grit on the belt sander. The finish is just boiled linseed oil.
I leaned so much through the process that I’m sorely temped to make another, probably more along the lines of a 2-1/4 pound head on a 26-28” haft. We’ll see when I get around to that.
I’ll leave it here; please feel free to ask me any and all questions that you have, I’ll try to answer them. But for now, I’m going outside to play with it!
Some inexplicable part of me desperately wanted to make myself an axe, so I took inspiration from my friend's Gransfors Bruk Small Forest Axe and made this one. It’s a 1 pound 9 ounce head hung on a hickory 19.5” haft with a cherry wedge.
If I was going to make my own axe from scratch, I didn't want it to be just any axe, but one with the best steel possible for the bit. After a bunch of research (lots of credit goes to knifesteelnerds.com) I settled on 8670 steel at HRC59. It’s fairly similar to 5160 but is even tougher allowing me to run it harder for better edge retention without sacrificing edge stability at thinner angles. I made the rest of the head from 4140 intending on leaving the poll hard.
That’s all conventional enough, but not having access to a forge I had to use a highly unconventional method for fixing the bit to the body of the head. I chose to TIG weld it with ER70S-2 filler rod, using a pre- and post-heat protocol commonly used for 4140. I had considered ER80S-2 and 309 filler rods, but I didn’t want the poorer ductility of the ER80S-2 or the stainless of the 309.
After welding I did all the shaping on my belt grinder prior to heat treat. That part was fairly miserable, having so much steel to remove, but I got through it using only two 36 grit ceramic belts. I made the eye by drilling out as much material I could on the drill press before cleaning up the rest and adding a slight taper with a die grinder and a carbide burr. I normalized the head 3 times and then hardened it by heating it to 1525˚F and quenching in oil followed by two 2-hour tempering cycles 400˚F. At that point I just needed to clean up the surface, sharpen it, and hang it.
This is the first axe haft I’ve ever made from scratch (I've made a few hammer handles over the years), so there’s lots to improve upon, but I really love how it feels in my hands. The swell at the end is the part I’m least happy with. It fits my hand well but looks too square and inelegant. Sometime soon I’ll reshape it once I have a good idea of what I want to do with it.
I could have just made the entire handle on my belt sander, but I like to work with hand tools so I cut the blank out of a large piece of hickory with Japanese pull saws and roughed in the shape with a spoke shave. I only did the final smoothing and contouring at 220 grit on the belt sander. The finish is just boiled linseed oil.
I leaned so much through the process that I’m sorely temped to make another, probably more along the lines of a 2-1/4 pound head on a 26-28” haft. We’ll see when I get around to that.
I’ll leave it here; please feel free to ask me any and all questions that you have, I’ll try to answer them. But for now, I’m going outside to play with it!
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