Axe head identification

Well....Steven Did ask,and the consensus was fairly reserved,noncommital-like:)...And who'd have known Steven would go for it with Such vim and vigour?!:)

And technically(if one got Very technical),deep pitting May conceal the kind of corrosion that later will propagate,eventually destroying the object.

I myself am anything But a conservator,and hesitated going into all the complexities of preservation(of which i know only from the web,and frankly am still seriously confused about many a step...(mostly intimidated by the chemistry of assorted oxides involved).

But it's done now,and possibly for the best-this tool now has this second start in life as a brand-new object.Hopefully the mass and proportions were not significantly changed,and it'll make a perfectly functional tool.

Steven,it'd be kind of you,if further photos are planned,to post a couple of shots of the area around the eye,from top or bottom of it,and also of the edge.Thanks in advance.
 
I did like it better at just the wire brushed stage, but then there is no accounting for taste.
Probably just about no chance that the weight and structure, possibly balance and who knows what more, has gone unaltered, which could be grounds for a more critique-able assessment. As it is it'll be prone to rusting, for better or worse. What's best to do I wonder, some kind of coating, a chemical surface treatment, nothing at all? It's clear I have very little experience in the matter.

As for conservation, even the pros have no answers, in reality nothing more than subjective, and I must say very suspect as well, opinion. There too it seems to me the guiding factor is nothing more than that fluffy ambiguous nothing-saying term taste, driven by whatever happens to be the convention of the day.
 
Yes,it's a difficult issue...
The Science pursues different goals,they're interested in preserving the oxides for the information they contain.
But even to stabilise those is not easy(there're two separate directions,Acids and Bases,each with their own pluses and minuses).
Then Those,in turn,must be neutralised,also a tricky deal.
Finally,the whole is encapsulated in a layer of tricky,expensive conservation wax,which is (semi-)easily removable,for further conservation processes or study...
For us,tool-lovers,and users,many of these methods are not exactly suitable,for obvious reasons....
 
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