Last weekend, while doing some trail building work with a friend, we noticed that her smaller axe had a head that was ready to come off. Since she knows how much I like playing with these things, and that I'll do a more patient and thorough job than she would, she gave it to me to rehang. For those who will be curious, that axe is a Hultafors Agdor felling axe, 2.5#, on a 28-inch handle.
Even though the head was pretty loose that didn't mean it was ready to come completely off, at least not in a safe fashion, so I spent a while working the pieces of the wooden wedge out. Pieces, you say? Yeah, pieces, because Hultafors uses those steel ring wedges when they assemble the axe, and they're kind of a pain in the butt to get out. Eventually I had the two, outer pieces of the wood wedge removed, and then I drilled out the core of the ring wedge since the handle wood left in there was nothing to speak of.
Either from the initial assembly or through hard use on the trail there was some splitting of the handle, front and back, as well as a little damage to the lower front from over strikes. Consequently I decided to set the head about a quarter inch lower than where it had originally been at. I managed this through a little work with a rasp. I then cut the slot for the wedge lower as well.
With that all done I soaked a new wooden wedge and some wedge pieces in boiled linseed oil and then hammered them home.
It's now sitting in BLO, wrapped up in paper towels and plastic, until tomorrow afternoon when I'll trim the wedges and proud down to a reasonable length. After that I'll let the freshly revealed wood soak in BLO again and then I'll clean it up, fine tune the bit, and give it back to her.