Austrian Bundaxt (Grübenhacke) Renewal

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Ernest DuBois

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Mar 2, 2013
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Starting by choosing a few roughed out and seasoned billets of ash that have been prepared years earlier.
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Getting it trimmed down initially with an axe then drawknife
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And then a good distance into shaping I notice something not so fine, and do some probing at a certain point.
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And then give it a good whack over a stump.
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The discoloration confirms that the split of unknown origins was substantial and would inevitably have failed in use so cutting loss out of an inclination for caution, despite the hours of work to no end ends up being the right course of action and I go to the reserve billet I'd brought with me
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And it looks promising, moderate ring spacing and very fibrous, a sign of good resilience and of course because it's a riven quarter the fibers are continuous and I find a section that even conforms to the shape I want
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Working it and fitting the head I get a sense the wood is exceptional.
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Which might be a good thing for the axe head it goes with
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Very massively polled like that. An axe that could be a good notcher in the end with that fish-tail bit like that
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Square_peg said:
It will put a lot of power behind a small narrow bit. Good for cutting across the grain.
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I guess this is the expedient/mass-production answer to the traditional bandhacke where the mass was contained in a more elaborate collared mounting with extended poll. We can see the axe here is a product of Stubai manufacture and in earlier threads such axes have popped up on the pages of these old catalogues. Well in the search for cutting corners much was sacrificed and time will tell if the narrow contact surface of such an eye can stand up in a decent way to the forces required.
 
I'm sure that you're right,this was built using most expedient,economical methods,probably slit and drifted using a good-size machine hammer.I imagine out of a solid chunk of some appropriate,hardenable steel.
But it's still an elegant axe,with much thought invested,a simpler,more streamlined elegance of the later,more technological age.
You did a wonderful job matching that handle to it's lines,it's very harmonious together somehow.
Ernest DuBois said:
Well in the search for cutting corners much was sacrificed and time will tell if the narrow contact surface of such an eye can stand up in a decent way to the forces required.
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I don't know much about the European ash,but i can only imagine that whoever produced the axe has gone about the design adaptation responsibly.
In appearance,at least,it is very competent,and that D-eye wide and voluminous.
It just might fly!:)
(i hope so,the best of luck in wonderings about with it).
 
I only wish I was more informed about the lines and form of these axes particularly in the profile but it goes back a ways, and got carried over for some time after the factory took over. The fish-tail is more self evident extending the bits reach but this wavy, swooping form, you see it across a range of patterns coming out of the central Alpes, Southern Tyrol, that specific area. The easy explanation is as a sort of regional identity or idea that they had nailed some specific etherial secret to capturing the dynamic of swinging an axe.
 
Ernest DuBois said:
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Wood grain can be challenging - that's why we love working with it.;)

Ernest DuBois said:
so cutting loss out of an inclination for caution, despite the hours of work to no end ends up being the right course of action
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Reminds me of this from the song "The Gambler":​
. . .​
And the night got deathly quiet
And his [the gambler's] face lost all expression
He said, "If you're gonna play the game, boy
You gotta learn to play it right

You've got to know when to hold 'em
Know when to fold 'em
Know when to walk away
And know when to run
. . .
Songwriters: DON SCHLITZ​



Bob
 
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Hard to say how it happened. A fracture as it was fell would be my guess. Wind, other trees striking it, etc could also be the cause. Those cracks usually end up showing some signs they've been there awhile though. Yours looks pretty fresh to me.

Looks like a really nice job on the second one though, so maybe it was for the best!
 
Ernest,i know little of such things,but as a possibility-a felling error.
Dropped on something laying across,with Lots of leverage both ends of that fulcrum.

If you can tell if this trauma was was caused with tree still alive,it could be so-called "wind-shake",a twisting stress in a strong storm.

Possibly,also,nowadays the arborists' equipment is massive,and can likely do something like this.
(i built a cabim out of logs that were taken out of the water using the Thumb on excavator bucket...some major,deep contusion-type breakage...).

But these all just uneducated guesses.It maybe a total fluke.
Good on you for catching it in any case,right on.
 
It just goes to show how poor I am at keeping a record of things. Normally I have a pretty good scope on how the trees get cut, who does it, conditions, none of it by any means on an industrial scale or a thing like it, but by not making a note the knowledge itself becomes useless in any particular sense after some years and all mixed up in my mind. It's not a wind-shake - those nasty buggers - too mealy for that. I tried showing that there was in fact some obvious discoloration. That it's not more prominent is no surprise because my process is fairly controlled and I make a point of minimizing any exposure to grime and dirt and it would have been collected, split and put up for drying right away with no lying about. The only thing the picture shows clearly is that the inside definitely was exposed to air circulation so I like this description muleman makes, a fracture, that captures what I was seeing well.
 
muleman77 said:
Hard to say how it happened. A fracture as it was fell would be my guess. Wind, other trees striking it, etc could also be the cause. Those cracks usually end up showing some signs they've been there awhile though. Yours looks pretty fresh to me.
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jake pogg said:
Ernest,i know little of such things,but as a possibility-a felling error.
Dropped on something laying across,with Lots of leverage both ends of that fulcrum.

If you can tell if this trauma was was caused with tree still alive,it could be so-called "wind-shake",a twisting stress in a strong storm.

Possibly,also,nowadays the arborists' equipment is massive,and can likely do something like this.
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Can't discount what M muleman77 and J jake pogg have mentioned as possibilities.:thumbsup:

I have a recent experience to share with a crack/(split?) that I am not sure exactly where it came from. One day I grew tired of making the same old kindling. You know, just let the axe follow the grain and accept what ever shape comes out. Sure, I can vary the size, but this really gets old after awhile. Well, I had some four year old air dried apple and a "Eureka" moment hit me. Why not make ladle shaped kindling with it? How cool is that? So I got a crotch piece and went to work with a hatchet. As it turned out the handle section of my ladle kindling had a crack in it. Not good - fold or stay in? Well I stayed in thinking the crack might not be all that deep. I started carving with a knife, but when I got to a point where I didn't want the handle any thinner the crack was still there - time to fold.

So I didn't get the piece of kindling of my dreams, but I guess it will still work.


May even start a trend?

Bob
 
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