Wetterlings Hatchets and Axes.

[marty123]

There's a brand of hatchets and axes that I want to mention, perhaps for some comment on.
Keep in mind that I'm an amateur, infrequent user of these things.

Wetterlings. These have been briefly discussed here on BF. The ones already discussed seem to be hand-forged. Wetterlings also makes some drop-forged stuff, and these are the ones I'm mentioning. I don't have any, but I've seen them in the store at Lebaron (www.lebaron.ca), and they seem like pretty nice hatchets and axes. No, they're not GB, which I've seen at Lee Valley, but they seem pretty good and are much cheaper. The heads are nicely shaped, not as tapered as GB, but, from looking at them, they seem to have a nice taper to them and a good edge. Nice hickory handles, with good grain and ergonomics, as far as I can tell. Lebaron carries three models: (1) 1 lb. head, 13" handle, CAN$24. (2) 1.25 lb head, 14" handle, CAN$21. (3) 2.25 lb. head, 25" handle, $36. Made in Sweden.

 

[Jimbo]

I believe that the Wetterling axes and hatchet are sold under the name "Black King". I've had a look at a lot of those hatchets - but I've yet to see one with decent grain. Such is my luck because I did want to review one.
I'm not exactly a hatchet snob - my first review was on a $4.95 hatchet - here:
$4.95 hatchet
I've also bought a few Plumb and Norlund hatchets to try - old stuff I got on ebay. After some grinding they've worked out OK.
So more than anything I'd like to find a cheap hatchet to suggest to people.
The problem with most hatchets is that they're too thick - and it's a big job to grind them down even with a belt grinder. Mostly you need an angle grinder and a lot of care. Even then they're too heavy in the head to be ideal.
So far the closest I've been able to come to a GB is a Norlund. The very light hatchet head is close to the weight of a GB and with minimal grinding it chops just as well. The steel is as good, and it makes up into a hatchet with good ergonomics so it's useful as a tool as well as a chopper. Unfortunately people have caught on and it's not much of a saving over getting a Wildlife hatchet. None at all if you don't enjoy all the work. The new production is said to be poor - so you're looking at bidding on old ones.
I took a 1 1/4lb head Hults hatchet and fitted it with a longer handle to make something along the lines of a small forest axe. I was able to do this because of the length of the blade and because of the large handle hole. It works very well for a total of $35 CAN. It was a lot of work though.
When you actually go out and chop a lot with a bunch of different hatchets, it soon becomes apparent that GB and Norlunds far outchop the hatchets weighing a lot more. Naturally if you are into rough work and splitting dirty wood, then you'll appreciate a thicker and cheaper axe. What I'm getting to here is that the next hatchet in line to the GB and Norlund is that $4.95 hatchet. I'd be recommending it highly except that the quality control is so poor. Mine has a reasonably hard blade but the poll is so soft it's almost certainly untempered. Others might well have soft blades.

I'm really interested in hearing how many of the hatchets you saw had vertical handle grain and aligned heads. As I've said I haven't been able to find one Black King that I could bring myself to buy - the handle grain and alignment were that bad.

 

[marty123]

Jimbo: You raise some good points that I didn't think of. First, I only tried one sample of each of the three models in the store. I didn't think of looking at a number of each. Darn, (and smack myself in the head). That might have given me a better idea of head alignment and grain quality. Frankly, I'm not a really good judge of these things at this point. It's something that I have to develop through experience, maybe by looking at a whole bunch of axes and hatchets, and there aren't too many places around here, in Toronto, where I can do that at. And then, I hadn't really thought of doing that until now. Something to work on. Next time I'm at Lebaron, which might not be for a while as it's kind of out the way for me, I'll take a more critical look at things.

I just looked at a web site, forestymall.com, and they have one Black King hatchet there. It looks like it might be a Wessterlings. The sheath has a distinctive look to it, and it looks like the sheath on one of the Wessterlings hatchets at Lebaron. So I'll defer to your judgement, and revise my opinion on the Wessterlings. Maybe the grain isn't that good after all. And head alignment, I don't know, probably not so good if you say so. Darn.

As to the heads on the hatchets, you did have some remarks on hatchet heads in general, what with them being too thick and such, but you didn't specifically refer to the Black King (Wessterlings?) heads. Are they too thick? Is the metal okay? The Wessterlings heads weren't as tapered as GB heads, and the GB's that I've seen at Lee Valley sure do look nice, but The Wessterlings seemed to have a nice taper and edge to them. That's something that I have a better sense of, that seems more apparent to me than the subtleties of handle grain and alignment. I have seen some pretty bad heads on other brands, such the Canadian Tire US-made hatchets and axes, as well as another few brands of US-made axes which I've seen recently, the names of which escape me now. Those were really crappy. But the Wessterlings heads looked nicely done, and not particularly in need of any modification. Comment?

Finally, there's another brand that I want to mention, Garant, a Canadian, Quebec-based company, but I'll do that in another post.

And thanks, Jimbo, for some good ideas to consider for the future.

Also, Jimbo has a very interesting website, everybody.

 

[Jimbo]

The Black King hatchet heads are a little thick but looked OK for use after a bit of grinding. The only major problem is that they're heavy. They are supposed to be tempered hard, and that's what I wanted to see.
Handle grain should be vertical. Who knows with this? I've looked at some lots of axes where all were horizontal - but the next shipment might contain just axes with vertical grain. Head alignment is the same - variable. The Iltis axes often have head alignment problems now, where the edge really points off the line of the handle. This is often a sign of misalignment of the hole through the head so fitting a new handle is fun. I re-handled one Iltis where I found a shim inside the head - but the new handle went on with perfect alignment (without the shim) - so I'm still guessing about the shim.
I guess the bottom line is looking at a lot of hatchets, taking a file along for quick instore tests, a square for checking for warped heads.. It's worth looking at a Gransfors after looking at a few dozen other hatchets - you begin to see what quality control is all about.
Garants don't make axes - they do put handles on imported heads though. They're the main importer for a bunch of brands.
Neolyth just emailed me, and is going to send a write up and pics of creating a new long handled light hatchet by majorly regrinding a regular one. That should be interesting! You can see one of his hatchets in an earlier thread here - and my pages. It's sure a lot of work though, to create an axe through stock removal!

All in all - if you can find a decent Wetterling, or even an old boy scout hatchet - it's interesting to try it then re-try after grinding decent bevels. The performance gain is amazing. Without a thin blade though, you are just not going to get the performance of a GB. The biggest problem still remains the fact that a head weight of 12/13 oz is ideal for a wilderness hatchet - and most commercial hatchets are 20oz heads.

 

[Cliff Stamp]

In regards to grinding, I have found that it is very difficult to actually grind bevels with an angle grinder, even with constant water cooling, as one pass is enough to overheat the metal once it gets edge-thin. I tried this on cheap hatchets, so the more expensive ones might be a bit more tolerant, but I doubt it significantly so. And you don't want to do a few hours work and then take the temper out of the edge and have to get it hardened again. I would recommend staying just a little clear of the edge with the angle grinder and leaving it a bit thicker than the rest of the bevel that you are working on.

Once you have the rough work done, you have a lip of thickened steel along the edge and the sides of the bit that you have to remove. This can be done with a file but is time consuming. However a Dremel with a coarse sanding drum works very well and doesn't build up a significant amount of heat. It will make short work of that narrow strip of thickened steel. Then you clean it up with a bastard file and sharpen with decent hones.

Of critical importance is the edge bevel. After grinding it down you have the performance very close to maximum. Grinding the body of the axe down (the primary grind), will make a difference, but the amount of time and effort it takes is a many to one difference over grinding the edge bevel. There is just so much steel to remove. And of course you keep losing weight as you grind which acts against increasing the overall performance. I have ground the Hults down past the stamp, and have noticed no real increase in performance. Of course performance/weight has increased.

If you really want to go into grinding I would strongly suggest that you get a GB product just so you can know where to aim for. Thanks for the info on Black King, I had seen them referenced as Wetterling before and was curious as to the make, as the forged Wetterling I have used is close to the Bruks products.

-Cliff