A fine handle that's comming together with a fantastic axe

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Ernest DuBois

Joined
Mar 2, 2013
Messages
1,772
That handle is beech which we can expect for an axe coming out of the central high Alps, the form suited to left handed use only.
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For the friends out in the USA I include a measuring stick you will be familiar with.
 
Looks pretty rough on the eye end but the shoulder is plenty long to just seat the axe lower and trim off the worn end. What axe will you be hanging on this haft?
 
Thanks Keven. Most of the old axes I have out of Austria are beech handled with a minority in ash. There was not so long ago a tool manufacturer down there, Fiener - morphed now into something less, offering to provide you with your choice, no handle, (my preference personally), beech, or ash.
Square_peg said:
Looks pretty rough on the eye end but the shoulder is plenty long to just seat the axe lower and trim off the worn end. What axe will you be hanging on this haft?
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It looks and it is frayed up there Square, not that I care because the rest is solid. I'm hoping to keep as much length as possible. Still while I have the handle and head separated I will make up a reserve from some ash I have set aside. The axe that gets mounted on there I have given a preview of in the lapping entry. Since I don't like to spoil any surprises I'll be waiting till everything is in order and put back together for showing off.:)
 
Looks like a offset for a right handed broadaxe not a left hand hang. A right hander puts his left hand on the bottom and right hand under the head. This is different for axes than with a hatchet held with one hand. I have both right and left handed broadaxes. I am a lefty, but chop more righty because when we did a axe training, most (90-93% I think) of humans are righty.
 
Old Axeman said:
Looks like a offset for a right handed broadaxe not a left hand hang. A right hander puts his left hand on the bottom and right hand under the head. This is different for axes than with a hatchet held with one hand.
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This is what I've always been told. But as a right-hander I do just the opposite. My right hand goes at the bottom of the broadaxe haft. After so many years of swinging a hammer right-handed this just feels right to me. I've tried it the other. I can swing it either way (as I can a hammer) but 'left-handed' just feels right to me.
 
The technique is surfacing from on top the log. You can see that the handle comes inward in that instance, or towards the flat side of the single beveled bit, indeed the opposite from the broadaxe used standing beside the log, this will help maintaining balance up there instead of being forced to reach out beyond the center of gravity and having to off-set by sticking your but out the other way.
 
Ernest, your tools are always impressive and your working knowledge is amazing but I also enjoy and appreciate the views of your shop. It is obvious that you take great pride in your tools and your work area. I am about 2 years from retirement and I hope to spend more time in my shop. Thanks for posting
 
What the two videos show him doing from the top of the log is the scoring, or in this case juggling process. The axe he is using has a longer straight handle, not with a offset. The finish surfacing, hewing, he shows a broadaxe with a shorter offset handle. He uses his broadaxe from the ground, as I was taught, not from on top of the log. The only difference in the videos from the techniques I describe, are the tools themselves. The heads are of Europe design instead of American. A efficient, traditional (not somebody's idea of how it is done, but following many generations of experience) and safe technique is the same no matter where you live. As for American hewing, I have, and museums have, many broadaxes with short offset handles. Many of these date to our Colonial period and do not differ very much from the broadaxes from Europe. That is where the designs and many of these axes came from. You can not use these short, offset handled broadaxes standing on the top of the log.
 
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S. P.-- As to using an axe either right or left handed, think about it like how a baseball bat is used, and rather the batter is classed right or left. The swing technique is exactly the same. I understand what you said about years with the hammer and why you put your right hand on the butt. If you swing an axe all day for a living, you want your power arm (hand) on the slide position under the axe head. Like with baseball, this allows you push the axe forward with the most muscle.
 
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Yes he used a technique where he scores/notches, and then juggles all from the same position a top the log and using a single axe suitable for both processes. In fact this, along with the staging height, down low, are indicative of early squaring techniques up through and beyond the middle ages in cent. & north Euro., (with sporadic pockets holding onto the forms right up through the demise of hand squared timbers earlier in the last century). Only at some point later on did the handles get shortened, the work positioned higher and carried out from the ground along side the log. It could be interesting to speculate why but the Czech carpenter has looked into and documented the transition based on analysis of tool marks left behind on old timbers. All that said, once the log is squared up the technical work is done and what comes after is just making it look different depending on taste and preferences. The carpenters in these videos may or may not have gone further on these particular timbers to refine their surfaces even to the point of planing, though I doubt it, it's all speculative and so beside the point. There is also the consideration - if we are to make universal and sweeping claims
Old Axeman said:
A efficient, traditional (not somebody's idea of how it is done, but following many generations of experience) and safe technique is the same no matter where you live.
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- of the well known Japanese technique of surfacing from on top using great swinging motions with the intention of producing a clean faceted or wavy or scalloped effect. No, there is no right or wrong when it comes to approach, let's not be silly about it.
Here is my take on this newer technique of surfacing up higher from along side. I go with Square-peg on this one all the way, though he is right and I am left. It's much more rational gripping the broadaxe as he explains it with the dominant hand not up under the axe head but down at the end of the grip. The whole idea that the sweep of the handle is to position the hand with its knuckles which is closest to the log further away is getting it wrong from the outset. The sweep is to keep the shoulders aligned more perpendicular to the work surface. Gripping with the outside hand down low means that you are not reaching across your body with all that twisting and dipping required. This rational that the sweep is to prevent your knuckles banging on the wood makes no sense at all since it hardly ever happens. It also has the opposite effect of being efficient if you must make these extra contortions to accommodate using the outside hand to reach up under the axe head. With the outside hand down low the rest of your body is in-line and compatible with the work at hand not in contradiction to it and so the work less taxing in the long run.
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Peck Price said:
Ernest, your tools are always impressive and your working knowledge is amazing but I also enjoy and appreciate the views of your shop...
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Thank you Peck Price. I'm never comfortable with a lot of tools, but I have a hard time passing them on once they are in my grubby hands. It's more a matter of refining an understanding of what's suitable for the work I like doing and how it gets done. Luckily my workshop has been around a while and has a long history of continuous use.
 
So in essence what you are saying is that it is more powerful and accurate and efficient to reach from the opposite side of your body, in this particular instance, adjust your movements so that this hand reaching across transforms this leftward reach into a vertical motion and this will, increase power - assuming that is desirable - accuracy and efficiency? And your rational is, "It's the way our body works best naturally"? What I have posted is quite simple without going into bio metrics at all, which is your hand closest to the vertical surface is best positioned to lift the axe also vertically while gripping with the outside hand eliminates a twist or tendency for twisting and maintains a perpendicular relationship. This way we have the two critical planes, plumb and square that we are trying to transfer to the work at hand, embodied in the technique. What could be more natural?. Can you give us your idea of the mechanics involved in the situation at hand because I don't see this theory you give translates to our topic, just the opposite in fact. As I see it - believe me I am trying to see it - there is no way to rationalize that grip - outside hand up high - other than to say, "It feels right" which has no meaning, or to say "protect knuckles" which is pure b.s..

Moonw said:
Besides the interesting discussion this sparked, can't wait to see the whole axe put together.
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Eventually I'll get to it. Be patient.
 
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