What are the performance differences between Tomahawk eye vs Axe Wedge eye

[Tamer]

Tomahawk eye advantages = easier to make handle, and also allows the tomahawk head to be removed easily for other uses in the field as a hand tool or splitting wedge.

Axe eye advantages = ??

How come axes didnt adopt the tomahawk style eye? What are the advantages of the Wedge over the Tomahawk eye? Is the wedge design higher performance or something? If so in what way?

 

[Steve Tall]

The issue is pretty much covered in this recent thread:
http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php/1011759-Why-the-axe-design-Why-not-larger-hawks

 

[FortyTwoBlades]

Wedge eye: Allows handle to have just about any shape you want (including having a large flare to the butt), difficult to clear the eye out when rehafting but less woodworking needed to at least get a rudimentary handle back on it.

Slip-fit eye: Easier to remove the head from the handle in cases of breakage, for use of the head on its own or for field-expedient hafting, rehafting, or use of multiple handle lengths for the same head, but the maximum dimensions of the handle are limited to the interior measurements of the eye.

Both have their strengths and weaknesses.

 

[Steve Tall]

Wedge eye: Allows handle to have just about any shape you want (including having a large flare to the butt), difficult to clear the eye out when rehafting but less woodworking needed to at least get a rudimentary handle back on it.

Slip-fit eye: Easier to remove the head from the handle in cases of breakage, for use of the head on its own or for field-expedient hafting, rehafting, or use of multiple handle lengths for the same head, but the maximum dimensions of the handle are limited to the interior measurements of the eye.

Both have their strengths and weaknesses.

Adding to the above... a "Slip-fit eye" can be re-hafted in the field the same way you'd rehaft a "Wedge eye", making a thicker curved handle and/or a large knob possible, if desired. On this factor, there is no major advantage to either type of eye.

However, re-hafting a "Slip-fit eye" this way (with a wedge) would eliminate the advantages of an easily removable haft.

The "Slip-fit eyes" generally have larger openings, usually with a bulged profile of the head that could be less than ideal for chopping larger trees/logs.

 

[300Six]

Whatever it is you're chopping through a round-eye head is going to stop dead (or bounce out) when the blade bottoms out. Might not be a big deal for kindling and limbing but rather disconcerting when trying to make firewood from blocks or trying to fell a half-decent tree. Wrist twist action to assist in splitting isn't likely to work either since keeping a round eye head snug against rotation isn't really possible.

 

[Ugaldie]

I don't agree Steve Tall, yes you can rehaft a wedge eye this way, but it will get loose as soon as you start using it. It seems a good idea but it is very difficult to fit it, hence the need of a wedge in this type of axe.

The problem of a round eye is when the wood handle dries, it looses it fitness and the head can rotate when you try to use it. The same occurs when you try to fit a new handle and it's green or no well fitted.

There is an old solution to this issue, the conic oval handle. You can easily fit a new handle in it (it needs some more work than a round eye but much less than a slip-fit one) and it can't rotate due to its shape. Here you have an example,

 

[Steve Tall]

I think that the terminology is getting muddled. To me, "slip fit" includes "round" and "conic oval" eyes, as long as the handle goes in from the top instead of from the bottom. No wedge required (it's self-wedging).

In contrast, handles inserted from the bottom generally need a wedge, regardless of whether the eye shape is teardrop, round, or conic oval.

 

[Ugaldie]

You are right Steve, I confused the terminology. Were I writted slip-fit I wanted to write wedge. I'll change it.

Thank you.

 

[FortyTwoBlades]

Adding to the above... a "Slip-fit eye" can be re-hafted in the field the same way you'd rehaft a "Wedge eye", making a thicker curved handle and/or a large knob possible, if desired. On this factor, there is no major advantage to either type of eye.

However, re-hafting a "Slip-fit eye" this way (with a wedge) would eliminate the advantages of an easily removable haft.

The "Slip-fit eyes" generally have larger openings, usually with a bulged profile of the head that could be less than ideal for chopping larger trees/logs.

I'd argue that a slip-fit eye's size--when it projects beyond the cheeks of the bit--is usually offset by having a long bit and an offset neck in the handle. That positions is far enough back from the edge that the effect of it on possible deep cuts is drastically minimized.

 

[Square_peg]

I'd argue that a slip-fit eye's size--when it projects beyond the cheeks of the bit--is usually offset by having a long bit and an offset neck in the handle. That positions is far enough back from the edge that the effect of it on possible deep cuts is drastically minimized.

It absolutely isn't. When you start chopping a 10" deep 'V' in a large log that wide eye will be in your way and cause you to cut much less efficiently. As I stated earlier, even the adze end of a pulaski gets in the way of a deep cut. And the angle formed between the bit and adze of a pulaski is a much narrower angle than that formed by a wide-eyed slip fit axe.

As a retailer of this type of head you have a vested interest in people believing that these heads are just as useful as wedge-eye axe heads. For small stuff this may be the case but it surely isn't for cutting large stuff.

Additionally, I have not seen any slip fit axes that had substantial enough polls to give an axe the proper balance. Not to say that one couldn't be made. Just that I've never seen one.

Lastly, a slip fit axe could be made with a longer narrower eye. This could give some advantage in ease of re-handling without adversely effect the cutting ability too drastically. But with this narrow eye you'd have essentially no swell on your haft.

These things have been thought of and tried a century ago. There are reasons why the current design prevailed.

One more thing - there are removable wedge systems for standard axe eyes. I'll elaborate on this further at some time in the future.

 

[Ugaldie]

Square_peg Basque axe pattern was settled very long ago, at least my grandfather told us he allways knew it as we know today. This type of axe has a slip fit eye, I have never heard nobody concerning about its poll absence neither about lack of balance. They are the standart working axes here, Basque racing axers use internationally standard pattern ones in their competitions, but at home they use traditional ones.

Those axes don't have any eye issues doing any type of cutting. I'll post two photos of 2.5kg Basque axes, I have already posted one of them, but I think it needs to be reposted to show the eye.




About removable axes, you are speaking about Helko axes?

 

[FortyTwoBlades]

It absolutely isn't. When you start chopping a 10" deep 'V' in a large log that wide eye will be in your way and cause you to cut much less efficiently. As I stated earlier, even the adze end of a pulaski gets in the way of a deep cut. And the angle formed between the bit and adze of a pulaski is a much narrower angle than that formed by a wide-eyed slip fit axe.

As a retailer of this type of head you have a vested interest in people believing that these heads are just as useful as wedge-eye axe heads. For small stuff this may be the case but it surely isn't for cutting large stuff.

Additionally, I have not seen any slip fit axes that had substantial enough polls to give an axe the proper balance. Not to say that one couldn't be made. Just that I've never seen one.

Lastly, a slip fit axe could be made with a longer narrower eye. This could give some advantage in ease of re-handling without adversely effect the cutting ability too drastically. But with this narrow eye you'd have essentially no swell on your haft.

These things have been thought of and tried a century ago. There are reasons why the current design prevailed.

One more thing - there are removable wedge systems for standard axe eyes. I'll elaborate on this further at some time in the future.

The only reason why I bother with carrying the slip-fit axes is because they actually do work, and much better than you'd expect. If I don't personally like a product or think it's well-thought-out then I won't carry it. I've gotten samples in of many different knife and tool designs over the years to assess and concluded that I didn't want to carry them, in spite of their potential salability.

The "wide eye" thing you're mentioning is WAY overblown. I have a "superior" vintage Spiller Jersey-pattern axe right here in front of me that's 38.55mm at the poll (its thickest point) compared to the 39.12mm maximum diameter of a large Trento pattern Italian axe. The Spiller reaches this thickness 6 3/8" back from the edge, while the Trento reaches its maximum thickness 8 1/4" back from the edge. So much for that argument.

The offset in the neck of the handles allows the hands to sit either along or very close to the axis of rotational balance, and so the small poll is not a problem. The balance point of the Trento axe in question is only 1 3/4" forward of where the front edge of the handle is at the eye and the line of the lower portion of the handle intersects with a point 3/4" out from the eye.

How much experience do you have using this style of axe...? Maybe I'll just have to go cut some 10"+ stuff with one to demonstrate.

 

[thunderstick]

The Basque axe photos show a wedge-shaped friction eye not the round "tomahawk" eye being discussed in this thread. The Basque axe is simply a wedge-shaped handle with a slip-friction fit on a traditionally profiled axe head. Its more traditional profile is certainly superior to the round tomahawk profile. However, this handle would be just as hard to make in the woods as any other axe handle--the only advantage of this style is the ease to remove a broken handle. All the references to obscure designs that work pretty good simply point out the fact that the superior designs are not obscure. The fact that the slip fit today is more of a novelty than a commonality, simply proves the point that most of the world has moved on to designs which secure the head better.
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Speaking to the thread in general:

The tomahawk design with a friction fit round or oblong eye does not come close to having the usability of a belt axe with a wedged-shaped and center wedged handle for real work. As pointed out the round head does not split wood nearly as well as a belt axe, the head impedes the angle when chopping, the handle rotates in your hand when chopping, and the handle is shaped better for throwing, rather than secure gripping for working. The tomahawk was designed primarily as a fighting/thowing tool with some light trail usage. Among the native Americans who only had primitive wood tools, this type of handle would have been preferable for them to make. The Colonials still used the more more traditional style axes for a work tool.

Today there are no real benefits to a wood handled tomahawk design other than for throwing them. I went thru the tomahawk phase pretty quickly when I put them to work. I still enjoy throwing them. The "survivalists" which use them are seldom more than weekend or extended weekend campers or hikers, so replacing handles is not really an issue of survival. Usually they are not that far from their SUV. Its seldom that a good handle will break when making a campfire if used properly. If the Tomahawk profile is preferred, a Hudson Bay belt axe has all the benefits of this design along with a superior handle. There is good reason why trappers and hunters of the far north use the Hudson Bay design instead of the tomahawk design. If the handle breaks in the woods, you could burn out the eye in a campfire and fashion another one that is either wedged or friction fit. However most woodsmen would do this in the evening at their trapper's cabin and not spend the day trying to fashion a new handle in the woods. If a person wanted to prepare for this event while trekking, you would simply have a backup pre-fit handle along in the pack. This would serve far better than a crude handle made from unseasoned wood of most likely the wrong species.

Finally I would never choose a woodsman's tool on the basis of "how quickly I can make a new handle" to the disregard of "which design will provide the most efficient work." I take a tool into the woods to use it, not to replace its handle! I can give plenty of real experiences where a belt axe out-performed a tomahawk hands down. Can anyone tell me of a personal life and death survival event where replacing the tomahawk handle in the woods saved their bacon?

 

[Square_peg]

The "wide eye" thing you're mentioning is WAY overblown. I have a "superior" vintage Spiller Jersey-pattern axe right here in front of me that's 38.55mm at the poll (its thickest point) compared to the 39.12mm maximum diameter of a large Trento pattern Italian axe. The Spiller reaches this thickness 6 3/8" back from the edge, while the Trento reaches its maximum thickness 8 1/4" back from the edge. So much for that argument.

I stand corrected. Please accept my apology.

I've been looking at some axe geometry and here's what I've found. A typical pulaski makes about a 15° angle from bit to adze. The Basque axe that Ugaldie posted makes a 14° angle, wide enough that it would cause me concern. A typical American axe (I used a True Temper Dayton) makes a 12° angle. A Falci Calibria from Baryonyx makes an identical 12° angle. The long bit makes that possible as you stated in your earlier post.

Pulaski

Basque

Dayton

Falci

That Falci is the narrowest slip eye full size axe I've seen. But it's still lacking a swell and a poll. One of those problems could be fixed, the poll. In any case it's a viable alternative - giving up the swell for ease of haft removal.

 

[Square_peg]

Just for fun I measured the angle of my favorite long-bitted American axe, my Plumb rafting axe. It made a 7° angle.

A Collins Legitimus Connecticut made a 10° angle.

 

[300Six]

Novel "can of worms" you've opened here. Hearing about and seeing axes from the other side of the 'pond' is definitely enlightening in this. Basques were the ultimate explorers and equipment improvisers before Chris Columbus and the like ever set sail to find the New World. Every culture seems to embrace familiarity and this seems to guide the evolution of the implements they use. Obviously north American axes have gradually become dissimilar to Basque versions over the past 500 years.
If you have routine want of a squared-off poll (for pounding on tree wedges, fence posts, knocking livestock foreheads etc) this defeats the efficiency/economy of manufacturing an axe head with a round eye. Folding a piece of flat bar around a mandrel and laminating two ends into a blade is no big deal but trying to incorporate an equally-weighted poll (for tool balance and for end use) at the other end all of sudden becomes that much more complicated.
I suspect that this is in large part the answer to the question; round eye vs tight oval eye.

 

[thunderstick]

S-P
Thanks for putting angles and measurements to the discussion. I did not notice how wedge-shaped the head of the Basque axe really is. It might be OK for a splitter, but it would be far from a first choice for a chopper.

I lived in Ukraine, near Russia, for a few months in 2001 and noticed their axes were very wedge-shaped and head-heavy in their balance for the length of their handle. The local woodcutters where I lived still were primarily using hand tools for taking timber for wood heat or construction. They cut most everything with crosscuts and used axes primarily for splitting. I assume chopping axes would have wasted too much wood over a saw. Across the Atlantic, land and resources are very limited and so time and efficiency is less of an issue than initial cost and conservation of materials.

I would agree with your basic premise that in America many different designs were brought here from many different countries and tried--and in time the cream came to the top (at least for our trees) for performance efficiency, leaving many old world designs behind and they simply became part of our historical progress.

As Americans we have made the efficiency of design and labor time and effort a big part of our measure of worth. In many other parts of the world people value simplicity of design, a low initial cost of the tool, and the conservation of material resources. Many of those people when working on their own, will work twice as long if it saves any bottomline material cost. In Ukraine if a village farmer was fortunate enough to own a tractor he would rather have one that he could have someone local make parts for, than to own a modern one that he could not afford to service if it broke. This philosophy carried right down to their hand tools. Simple axe designs made less costly tools--they were like wedges with an eye. Their handles were pretty straight and easy to duplicate for replacement. We would look at them and say things haven't changed much. They say its cheap and it works--I have little money and plenty of time--so I'm just glad I have an axe.

 

[FortyTwoBlades]

I think that thicker bitted axes just need to be used with more of a chip-popping method because of the increased side-load it's able to generate. It limits the depth of the blow, but increases the splitting force, so a thicker bit will pop a chip a lot easier than a narrow-bitted axe, which works best by paring material from the sides of the notch. Different designs for different methods, and judging one design on the characteristics of the other would give a fellow a poor opinion of the tool.

Thunderstick--the OP did not say specifically the shape of the eye in question, and it seems to be actually indicating slip-fit vs. wedge fit rather than eye shape. Slip-fit axes and hammers are still quite common in Italy and France, and made both domestically and by foreign nations for French and Italian markets. A slip-fit handle is NOT easier to make because you have to thin the entire length sufficiently to pass through the eye. It does increase packability and decreases dependence on other tools, as well as allowing the same head to be used with multiple handles (for instance, a short handle for crafting and a long handle for felling or splitting.) It's true that a thin bit is a poor splitter, but that has less to do with the eye design and more to do with the bit design. Take a given eye on paper and you can draw a bit to contain it that transitions smoothly.

As far as the swell issue, it depends on the size and style of the particular eye. In the case of the Calabria axes a fore/aft flare can be a viable solution, even though a lateral one is less so. This isn't much different from inexpensive conventional wedged handles that use saw-cut flat forms rather than lathe-turned. Zero side flare, but the presence of a fore/aft one. I did such with my personal 700g Calabria.

 

[thunderstick]

The thread says "tomahawk" eye so I was just going by what it says ...

If you are going to one of the more technical slip fit styles than this negates the whole argument of being easier to replace a slip fit handle if it breaks while trekking. When working any length of time with a slip fit handle there is the tendency to come loose--I prefer to have mine secure at the handle length I want for that tool regardless of what the Italians and French may prefer. When the slip fits works loose it tends to gouge the handle below the tight seating depth. This somewhat negates wrapping the handle with any type of protection unless you plan to wrap and unwrap. I don't have any desire to interchange handles as I would want the proper length handle for the usage securely attached to each tool. Any head that I would want for crafting would not be the head I would want for felling or splitting. I also prefer a slight curve on an axe handle unless its a double bit. I've never heard of any professional loggers that would prefer a slip fit over a secure fit. Getting back to the "tomahawk" size of things an 18"-19" Hudson Bay or traditional axe will do everything and more than a trail tomahawk.

In summary I don't any see any real advantages of a slip fit handle and plenty of disadvantages.

Regarding head profiles ... a thin bit with a higher center gives the best balance of penetration, chip popping, and bind prevention for any given weight of head, making it better for all-round tree work. If you want your belt axe to be used for fashioning, shaping, or hewing things the flatter and wider bit profile of a Hudson Bay is preferable.

 

[Square_peg]

One more thing - there are removable wedge systems for standard axe eyes. I'll elaborate on this further at some time in the future.

About removable axes, you are speaking about Helko axes?

Can anyone tell me of a personal life and death survival event where replacing the tomahawk handle in the woods saved their bacon?

It does increase packability and decreases dependence on other tools, as well as allowing the same head to be used with multiple handles (for instance, a short handle for crafting and a long handle for felling or splitting.)

I want to address all of these at once.

Ugaldie, I'm not talking about the Helko Vario 2000. I'm talking about a removable wedging system that works with any standard American axe or hatchet.

Thunderstick, you raise a great point here. At the base of this whole discussion is an unspoken scenario - that you're isolated in the wilderness and have broken your axe handle. You need a functioning axe to save your life. We know this is never really gonna happen but for the sake of argument let's go with this scenario.

FortyTwo, what I'm talking about allows switching handles to other tools or having multiple handles for one tool.

There is a wedging system that allows for the quick and easy removal of the handle from virtually any American style axe, broadaxe or hatchet. This system replaces the standard kerf and wedge system. For someone who is making a purchase based on the scenario outlined above, this system allows easy field replacement of a handle like you can do with a tomahawk. But it does it with regular axe-eyed tools.

I've mentioned this system here on Bladeforums before, even posted pictures. But it went largely unnoticed. This surprised me considering what a ground breaking - nay! - EARTH SHATTERING! discovery this is.

I'll start a new thread for this topic but here's a teaser.

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Edit: New thread explaining this wedging system
http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/s...dging-system-for-axes?p=14306516#post14306516