Need ID of Maker on a nice little half hatchet!

Those are neat little hatchets. I don't know why they have the nail notches for square nails. The Vaughan oyster hatchets being manufactured now don't have the nail notch.

My understanding of the use of oyster hatchets is that they are used for culling oysters (processing them into single oysters at the beds during harvesting) rather than for shucking them -- though I may get an oyster hatchet to take to oyster roasts, anyway. ;)

Chris
 
_Land_ said:
Those are neat little hatchets. I don't know why they have the nail notches for square nails. The Vaughan oyster hatchets being manufactured now don't have the nail notch.

My understanding of the use of oyster hatchets is that they are used for culling oysters (processing them into single oysters at the beds during harvesting) rather than for shucking them -- though I may get an oyster hatchet to take to oyster roasts, anyway. ;)

Chris
Click to expand...
Can't see an oyster hatchet being issued at a fancy restaurant, or at the Half Shell Raw Bar in Key West, either!
 
Here is a clip from a Hibbard, Spencer, Bartlett & Co. catalog (ukn date) with two sizes of shingling hatchets offered.





Bob
 
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I grew up ocean/bay fishing, clamming, and collecting muscles. Oysters were something I had to handle in the local cannery. When we ate them, they were usually fresh from the local commercial beds. Handling them at the cannery meant unbunching them and I can see how a small hatchet type thing would be somewhat useful. Tons of them came in embedded in rope or lightweight netting – they were farm raised. Two glove work. Short/stubby/pointed semi-dull knives with blue or green handles are what we used. Quite a bit like Bob’s knife but commercially stamped out. We fresh shucked them for packaging and sale but I think the farms there had distributors that fed them to the local and regional restaurants/markets in shell.

When we would cruise the Broken Islands off of Vancouver (Ucluelet/Tofino/Effingham Island) we would harvest those that were accessible at low tides off of rock beds. Those are actually the tastiest I’ve had (no experience on the east coast).

They are wonderful to eat but kind of hard on your hands to do anything but pick them up. When we would BBQ, one of us would be armed with a glove, a beer, and a tool my dad made from an old 10” kitchen knife. It was more like a pointed/thick putty knife actually. I need to see if he still has it somewhere.

I would like to see one of these hatchets in use. Before some of the ads posted here I had wondered if they were called “Oyster” hatchets simply because they were diminutively sized (about the same as an oyster…) What the nail notch is for I don’t know. The pictured one with the toe and the heel clipped off makes me think of what one would look like if you tried to shuck oysters with them lol. Saltwater is hard on metal tools and I have trouble picturing an appropriate edge for one that would be used heavily in contact with shells, saltwater, and rocks.

Generally, I can imagine them being used to separate the bunches more than shuck them for eating. Maybe I’m clumsy but tightly gripping a sharp/craggy oyster in one and bearing down with something the shape of that hatchet makes me uneasy. Maybe I am missing out on something?

*None of that makes me know anything about oyster hatchets.

Abalone axes? Those are a whole different story.
 
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