Advantage to crooked bit hanging?

T

ThundarStick

Joined
Feb 21, 2010
Messages
171
I recently decided on rehang my little Ft. Megis axe head on longer handle. I fashioned a haft from a black walnut board with another axe a pocket knife and files. It looks great to me, but low and behold, I have the head canted to the right corner of the handle and thought I would surely have to start over,bût decided to try it out first. The only thing I have ever used this axe for was field dressing deer and splitting kindling. My surprise came when I realized how much more accurate my strikes are. It seems the misalignment brings the edge into a straight line in front of my body and its much easier to split a small stick of wood down the middle now!

Does anyone else use an offset hung hatchet?
 
I haven't noticed any significant advantage...but I also haven't noticed any significant disadvantage either. I have a couple of axes with slightly crooked bits relative to the eye that I've used extensively and while they're not mega awful or anything it's a bad enough cant that a customer would consider them defective and it's readily visible. Rather than junking them or sending them back to the manufacturers I decided to keep and use 'em and haven't found a reason to complain about the flaw other than on an aesthetic level. It's nice to have things perfect, but as long as the bit isn't way out of line it seems not to make an appreciable difference because you naturally and subconsciously adjust to compensate as needed--or at least I do.
 
FortyTwoBlades said:
I haven't noticed any significant advantage...but I also haven't noticed any significant disadvantage either. I have a couple of axes with slightly crooked bits relative to the eye that I've used extensively and while they're not mega awful or anything it's a bad enough cant that a customer would consider them defective and it's readily visible. Rather than junking them or sending them back to the manufacturers I decided to keep and use 'em and haven't found a reason to complain about the flaw other than on an aesthetic level. It's nice to have things perfect, but as long as the bit isn't way out of line it seems not to make an appreciable difference because you naturally and subconsciously adjust to compensate as needed--or at least I do.
Click to expand...

This above. People today seem to have this entitlement that everything has to be absolutely perfect for what they are buying, paying, etc. I perfectly understand this, and it makes sense. However, we need to remember that we are talking about an axe, one of the oldest, basic, rudimentary tools known to mankind. If the bit isn't perfectly aligned or crooked, if the bit doesn't have a mirror shine, if the end grain is 36 degrees......it will be ok. Believe me, I had to get myself off those points, and it took awhile. Now I have seen some serious bad stuff quality wise in axes of today, but overall, in the time it takes someone to take pictures, load them, post them, do a write up, you could of probably had a tree down, limbed, bucked, split, stacked, and ready. Use it. See what happens.
 
There's a dynamic of tool adaptation that I like to describe as a triad: either the tool, the user, or the environment may be adapted to optimize the outcome of the task. If adapting the tool, that means either selecting a different tool for the user/environment or modifying the existing tool to bring it closer to ideal specs for that combination. If adapting the environment, it means either selecting a different environment in which the user employs the tools or altering the environment to improve the circumstances of use. If adapting the user to the tool/environment it means adjusting your technique to best employ the given tool in that environment. Your unique circumstances that define the current user/tool/environment will provide varying degrees of opportunity to modify any of those three variables, and if you find that your axe has a slightly crooked hang then it's usually easier to adapt your technique rather than adapting your tool or environment, since the degree of adjustment is usually fairly minimal and near automatic.
 
One of my favorite sayings applies to so many different things.

"Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good".

In other words, some people get hung up on ideals. The mindset is that if it isn't just right, it's crap.
 
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