Ash for Hafts

Frank-New Zealand

Frank-New Zealand

Joined
Jan 16, 2012
Messages
333
Has anyone made axe hafts from Ash. Of course there are many varieties. I believe Ash grows quite readily in the States.

With the abundance of Hickory in your part of the world maybe Ash is never used. I'm sure in other parts of the world there are plenty of tools with Ash handles.

We have a big 'Claret Ash' growing in our garden. I have just given it a good prune. Last night I experimented with some freshly cut green wood on the log-fire. The fire did have a bed of hot coals but the green Ash did burn freely.

regards...Frank
 
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Beechwood fires are bright and clear
If the logs are kept a year.
Chestnut's only good, they say,
If for long 'tis laid away.
But Ash new or Ash old
Is fit for a queen with crown of gold.
Birch and fir logs burn too fast
Blaze up bright and do not last.
It is by the Irish said
Hawthorn bakes the sweetest bread.
Elm wood burns like churchyard mould,
E ' en the very flames are cold.
But Ash green or Ash brown
Is fit for a queen with golden crown.
Poplar gives a bitter smoke,
Fills your eyes and makes you choke.
Apple wood will scent your room
With an incense like perfume.
Oaken logs, if dry and old.
Keep away the winter's cold.
But Ash wet or Ash dry
A king shall warm his slippers by.


Oaken logs, if dry and old,
Keep away the winter's cold
Poplar gives a bitter smoke,
Fills your eyes, and makes you choke
Elm wood burns like churchyard mould,
E'en the very flames are cold
Hawthorn bakes the sweetest bread -
Or so it is in Ireland said,
Applewood will scent the room,
Pearwood smells like flowers in bloom,
But Ashwood wet and Ashwood dry,
A King can warm his slippers by.


Beechwood logs burn bright and clear,
If the wood is kept a year
Store your Beech for Christmas-tide,
With new-cut holly laid aside
Chestnut's only good, they say
If for years it's stored away
Birch and Fir wood burn too fast,
Blaze too bright, and do not last
Flames from larch will shoot up high,
And dangerously the sparks will fly...
But Ashwood green,
And Ashwood brown
Are fit for Queen with golden crown.
 
My Stubai broad hatchet has an ash handle. It's fine. I think one of reasons why many European axes have larger eyes is because they use ash instead of hickory. You need a little more wood in there get the needed strength.
 
Frank

Baseball bats are made from ash. They seem to take quite a bit of abuse. I would think that properly seasoned ash would make decent tool handles.

E.DB

Cool poem. Good way to remember what woods are good for fires.
 
We have some wonderful wood here in NZ. Black Maire burns without spark, noise, and very little smoke but will burn out a stove in no time. There are 15 different types of wood in our wood-shed at present.
 
I own both ash and hickory handled tools. I would never choose Ash over Hickory if both were of equal quality. Not that Ash is bad, I just think hickory is much better.
 
In the shops around here there is probably an equal choice of hickory or ash for the handle you want. I use almost exclusively ash, (Fraxinus excelsior), because it's what I can easily access with no cash out-lay and the wood has the qualities I want such as resilience and toughness.

I've got axe handle blanks from this wood always in one stage or another of the seasoning process like these, or this one,
An advantage of ash is also that, unlike hickory, ring orientation as seen from the end-grain has no relevance in terms of strength perpendicular to the length of the wood, the rings lying flat giving more spring or cushion, and the rings vertical, more stiffening.

E.DB.
 
I live in the land of Ash. White and Black ash are the common trees (one in every 4 trees in eastern. Ontario!) that are soon to become extinct thanks to decade-ago introduced Asian insect pest Emerald Ash Borer which is going to kill every n. American ash tree within the next 15 years. Black ash is a swamp tree that Natives used to use to make wood-woven baskets from (by pounding the annual layers apart) and White ash is the one used for tool handles, sleighs and hay carts, snow shoe frames and hockey sticks. White Ash is wonderful to work with as firewood because it seems to want to split clean as soon as it is touched by an axe. This is quite different from any of the Elms, and Ironwood, which refuse to come apart no matter how hard you pound on them. Maple, Red and White Oak and the various Hickories (Bitternut and Shagbark around here) are also more difficult to split than Ash. Matter of fact I'd argue that the sweetest splitting hardwood in the world had got to be White Ash.
But; that Ash splits so readily has always made me very suspicious of using it to make tool handles that are subject to sudden shock. It is beautifully strong wood in every other respect.

I don't break handles very much anymore but if this does happen I'm tempted to try something really tough like Apple, Ironwood or even White Oak some time. Hardest part of these is to make or find a blank with no knots and with good grain.
 
What are the characteristics of Ash as a felling tree. We have a native tree here named Tawa. It splits readily. If not treated correctly during felling it will 'Barber Chair' all the way to the top. Best to use the 'bore and release' method.
 
300Six said:
White and Black ash are the common trees (one in every 4 trees in eastern. Ontario!) that are soon to become extinct thanks to decade-ago introduced Asian insect pest Emerald Ash Borer which is going to kill every n.
Click to expand...

There is some hope of developing EAB resistant strains of ash.
http://www.nrs.fs.fed.us/disturbance/invasive_species/eab/control_management/eab_resistent_ash/

We should do a better job of guarding against the introduction of exotic pests. As we import more goods from more places the problems will only get worse.

But once an infestation occurs we need to be careful not to overreact to it. For example, the American Chestnut tree was nearly made extinct by Chestnut blight. Our response was 'salvage logging' to get the remaining wood before it was killed off. Turns out we made the problem worse. Some trees had a natural resistance to the blight but in our rush to log it all off we cut most of those down. Now maybe only 100 or so resistant trees remain in Eastern North America.

Similar misguided efforts lead to the removal of 6000 mistletoe infected Limber Pines in Idaho's Craters of the Moon National Monument.
 
Frank-New Zealand said:
What are the characteristics of Ash as a felling tree. We have a native tree here named Tawa. It splits readily. If not treated correctly during felling it will 'Barber Chair' all the way to the top. Best to use the 'bore and release' method.
Click to expand...
Felling tree? Lucky ash it is no where near as brittle as White Birch which suddenly 'lets go' without warning. To me ash is no different than maple, oak or any of the other hardwoods I've had the opportunity to 'fell'. Few folks get to tangle with trees that are more than 50 cm in diameter anymore and what I was describing are bigger ones. Many hardwood trees invisibly shatter inside when they fall on something hard. You do have to be careful when choosing wood for structural purposes once the tree is milled and I have no particular advice about that other then to avoid seasoned wood with 'no-reason splits or checks' in it.
Ash is a beautiful tree and with lovely grain but it does not like to stay together when an axe is pointed at it.
 
Square_peg said:
There is some hope of developing EAB resistant strains of ash.
http://www.nrs.fs.fed.us/disturbance/invasive_species/eab/control_management/eab_resistent_ash/

We should do a better job of guarding against the introduction of exotic pests. As we import more goods from more places the problems will only get worse.

But once an infestation occurs we need to be careful not to overreact to it. For example, the American Chestnut tree was nearly made extinct by Chestnut blight. Our response was 'salvage logging' to get the remaining wood before it was killed off. Turns out we made the problem worse. Some trees had a natural resistance to the blight but in our rush to log it all off we cut most of those down. Now maybe only 100 or so resistant trees remain in Eastern North America.

Similar misguided efforts lead to the removal of 6000 mistletoe infected Limber Pines in Idaho's Craters of the Moon National Monument.
Click to expand...

There are no simple answers in this global transport era. Pandora's Box cannot be closed on this latest horrific introduction. Chestnut blight is an Old World-origin organism (a fungus if I recall) for which there might well have been the occasional resistant tree but somehow I doubt it. 100 years later chestnut blight still kills stump shoots as soon as they reach 10-20 feet in height. Wood cutters and private enterprise could never possibly have harvested every last standing tree. Butternut blight (another introduced native tree pestilence) is a relatively recent phenomenon and is so far leaving few survivors either even though no one today can be bothered to go through the forest to accidentally, or deliberately, remove these, living or dead.
Emerald Ash borer is a different kettle of fish in that it is a wood boring flying insect that currently has no natural enemies. They reproduce exponentially and 100s of thousands of them girdling one single tree can quickly overwhelm (ie eat away most of the cambium layer) it. In the native state (seems China is the origin for these bugs) EAB (emerald ash borers) also attacks ash trees but never reach anywhere near the population levels they do here thanks to natural predators. USA and Canada have recently begun to release introduced parasitic wasps in an effort to address this plague but that life cycle is directly related to the host cycle so it will be at least 10 years before we can even hope they catch up, if in fact they do prove to have some sort of an effect.
Whereas private industry made good use of American Chestnuts at no cost to the public the EAB scourge (in Canada) is being handled entirely by gov't who has essentially curtailed the use of ash lumber for anything useful including firewood. There are billions of board feet being cut and mulched, burned or quarantined at public expense.
I would say to anyone seeking to experiment with old growth White/Green/Red/Black Ash lumber had better do it soon.
 
This bearded carving axe has an Ash haft. It was made from scratch by one of our local guys, BD Eye Forge.

BeardedCarvingAxe1_zps2b3d1594.jpg


BeardedCarvingAxe2_zps4142f73b.jpg
 
Buffalohump said:
This bearded carving axe has an Ash haft. It was made from scratch by one of our local guys, BD Eye Forge.
Click to expand...
Perhaps not as pretty to the eye but I can immediately see that the optimum grain orientation on this handle is there.
 
Used for just about all striking tool handles in Korea. They don't even bother to shape it. Just take an appropriately sized branch and fit it to the tool:) Haven't seen any breakage or other problems.
 
By the way in reference to the original excellent poem about qualities of wood for fires the Indians in northern Canada prize ash for firewood. It's just about the only hardwood up there mind you besides scraggly white birches and speckled alders. They told me ash is the only firewood that will burn right away even though green and fresh off the tree! Something to remember if you're cold, lost and desperate!
Every now and again I send Christmas CARE packages of ironwood to friends up in the arctic just so their kids can experience a true hardwood campfire with coals that last overnight. Dry spruce and pine trees in the tundra are all small and knotty and so full of pitch that they burn as if soaked in jet fuel.
 
Hi, Frank.

I don't have much to add, other than to say that I have some axes, hatchets, a hawk, and an adze all with ash handles. They have performed admirably.

In fact, Frank, the big Hytest that you so generously gave to me is on a 32" ash handle from Maine. I used it elk hunting this past weekend. It is a KILLER axe. My dad used it too, and was absolutely green with envy!

That Hytest head is 4 pounds, 8.75 ounces and the ash haft is fine so far. In my experience, it will most likely only break due to operator error.
 
M3mphis said:
Hi, Frank.

I don't have much to add, other than to say that I have some axes, hatchets, a hawk, and an adze all with ash handles. They have performed admirably.

In fact, Frank, the big Hytest that you so generously gave to me is on a 32" ash handle from Maine. I used it elk hunting this past weekend. It is a KILLER axe. My dad used it too, and was absolutely green with envy!

That Hytest head is 4 pounds, 8.75 ounces and the ash haft is fine so far. In my experience, it will most likely only break due to operator error.
Click to expand...

I figured you were chasing elk. How was it? The weather cooled off a little for you. Got a little rain also. Tell me you bugled in a 7x7 And dropped him with your longbow, please.
 
garry3 said:
I figured you were chasing elk. How was it? The weather cooled off a little for you. Got a little rain also. Tell me you bugled in a 7x7 And dropped him with your longbow, please.
Click to expand...

I'm not cool enough to carry a long bow. Someday, maybe. But in the mean time, I've never bagged one with my "cam operated device" so I'm not ready to forego the technological advantages until my skills improve. Now that I've condemned my archery hunting skills, you can probably guess that I didn't call in anything. Not close enough for a shot anyway. The weather was gorgeous, though, and we had a fantastic time. No fire restrictions this year, thank the Lord.
 
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