Cliff Stamp
BANNED
- Joined
- Oct 5, 1998
- Messages
- 17,562
I have been looking for one of these for quite some time, however until recently have never been available to get them locally and I wanted to have a look at them before I bought one. This turned out to be a well founded opinion because out of the few dozen pieces at the hardware store there were very few that I would have bought. The main problem was that the blade protectors (a folded over piece of plastic) were missing from a lot of them, and the blades had notches where they had slammed into each other. This was not of course the end of the world, but I didn't really want to have to grind out a 1mm notch out of the blade right away. As well the handles varied quite a bit in regards to grain orientation and some of them had bad knots. One of the worst ones had two knots right along the edge of the handle. That probably would not be a problem for this axe as it is rather light, still it is not something I would want if I could avoid it. There were a few clean ones with vertical grain and I picked one. Unfortunately when I got home I found it had a small nick in the blade, ~ 1/4 mm deep, I guess I had not checked that as carefully as I should have.
Why did I actually want this in the first place? Well before I describe its positive attributes, a bit about the downside. This really is a very narrow use tool. For example unlike an actual axe, it has no points and thus you lose a lot of functionality. This is not just on precise cutting, but there are a lot of heavy cutting chores that use points such as try and dig a hole in ice without a point and see how far you get. As well as a general use cutting blade for knife work it fares badly in regards to an axe because of the total lack of curvature, and the fact that it has a large bolt just under the head which gets in the way of your grip. It also has the rather obvious disadvantage that it can only cut a certain size of wood, as if you go any deeper than the head you will just bang the frame off of the wood. This also makes splitting not practical. Also its general usage as a maul is poor as it doesn't have the wide poll of an axe. Thus in short, it is really only designed to do one thing, cut through small to medium wood, and will fare rather poorly at just about anything else. Thus the obvious question is why would you buy one of these when you can get an axe that does the exact same thing and much more besides? The answer is that the Bush Axe has a number of very positive attributes and is about 1/2 the price of a decent similar sized axe.
The best thing about this as a brush clearing tool is the replaceable blade. I would not loan out my forest axe from Gransfors Bruks to just anyone as if the edge got heavily damaged the axe is ruined. Sure small damage can be fixed with a little grinding, but if the damage is deep then the amount of metal removal necessary to fix it can result in the head being significantly altered to such an extent that the performance is shot. With the Bush axe you can grind out much more damage without altering the geometry of the cutting blade, and it has little to no effect on the balance of the axe. As well of course you can always buy replacement blades and even have a couple that are just for really rough work. As well the Bush Axe combines the strengths of the brush clearing blades (machete / parang) with its thin blade with the heft and ergonomics of a quality axe handle so in theory it should actually outperform a axe on small wood.. It would seem on paper to be the ideal brush clearing tool for medium to small wood, perfect for light brush like Alders and limbing of fallen trees.
Some specifics on construction and a quick test :
It was 930g, which places it is just a little behind a quality 3/4 axe like the Gransfors Bruks forest axe. The blade is 6" wide and the face is 3/5" deep. The edge angle on the blade is flat ground to ~12 degrees per side. The edge showed no flaws under magnification, however it failed a simple thumb test as it had no aggression. It was overbuffed, and as well had a slight burr. Getting specific on sharpness, it took 650+ grams of force to cut light thread, a sharp edge will be ~ 100. Under a 1000 g load, with a full 6" slice, it could only score 1/4" poly. A sharp blade will cut through the poly under that high a load in less than half an inch. Is this poor sharpness a functional disadvantage? Yes. The blade performed poorly on really light brush, it could not cut into the wood at all. On heavier wood, limbing a couple of small trees, it was readily out cut by the forest axe. The Brush Axe did not start the cut smoothly and thus you could feel the initial impact more readily than with the GB axe. A quick check on the limbs revealed that there was too much denting, the edge was too blunt to start a clean cut. That is hardly an extreme problem though. Some time with a couple of small hones and finishing with some stropping on CrO loaded leather left the blade shaving sharp.
Thus initially my opinion is that in regards to cutting it is actually behind the GB forest axe and not actually enough lighter to significantly effect fatigue and thus its only real advantages are the lower cost and ability to replace the blades. I am hoping however that some work with the blade after sharpening will showcase its true abilities.
A picture, showing it alongside the Gransfors Bruks Forest axe :
http://www.physics.mun.ca/~sstamp/images/brush_axe.jpg
A web page with some amusing and useful information :
http://www.crazyweenie.com/BrushAxe/
This is the next large blade profile that I want to have a look at :
http://www.woodmanspal.com/
anyone who has used one and can compare it to a decent axe and heavy machete I would appreciate any commentary.
-Cliff
Why did I actually want this in the first place? Well before I describe its positive attributes, a bit about the downside. This really is a very narrow use tool. For example unlike an actual axe, it has no points and thus you lose a lot of functionality. This is not just on precise cutting, but there are a lot of heavy cutting chores that use points such as try and dig a hole in ice without a point and see how far you get. As well as a general use cutting blade for knife work it fares badly in regards to an axe because of the total lack of curvature, and the fact that it has a large bolt just under the head which gets in the way of your grip. It also has the rather obvious disadvantage that it can only cut a certain size of wood, as if you go any deeper than the head you will just bang the frame off of the wood. This also makes splitting not practical. Also its general usage as a maul is poor as it doesn't have the wide poll of an axe. Thus in short, it is really only designed to do one thing, cut through small to medium wood, and will fare rather poorly at just about anything else. Thus the obvious question is why would you buy one of these when you can get an axe that does the exact same thing and much more besides? The answer is that the Bush Axe has a number of very positive attributes and is about 1/2 the price of a decent similar sized axe.
The best thing about this as a brush clearing tool is the replaceable blade. I would not loan out my forest axe from Gransfors Bruks to just anyone as if the edge got heavily damaged the axe is ruined. Sure small damage can be fixed with a little grinding, but if the damage is deep then the amount of metal removal necessary to fix it can result in the head being significantly altered to such an extent that the performance is shot. With the Bush axe you can grind out much more damage without altering the geometry of the cutting blade, and it has little to no effect on the balance of the axe. As well of course you can always buy replacement blades and even have a couple that are just for really rough work. As well the Bush Axe combines the strengths of the brush clearing blades (machete / parang) with its thin blade with the heft and ergonomics of a quality axe handle so in theory it should actually outperform a axe on small wood.. It would seem on paper to be the ideal brush clearing tool for medium to small wood, perfect for light brush like Alders and limbing of fallen trees.
Some specifics on construction and a quick test :
It was 930g, which places it is just a little behind a quality 3/4 axe like the Gransfors Bruks forest axe. The blade is 6" wide and the face is 3/5" deep. The edge angle on the blade is flat ground to ~12 degrees per side. The edge showed no flaws under magnification, however it failed a simple thumb test as it had no aggression. It was overbuffed, and as well had a slight burr. Getting specific on sharpness, it took 650+ grams of force to cut light thread, a sharp edge will be ~ 100. Under a 1000 g load, with a full 6" slice, it could only score 1/4" poly. A sharp blade will cut through the poly under that high a load in less than half an inch. Is this poor sharpness a functional disadvantage? Yes. The blade performed poorly on really light brush, it could not cut into the wood at all. On heavier wood, limbing a couple of small trees, it was readily out cut by the forest axe. The Brush Axe did not start the cut smoothly and thus you could feel the initial impact more readily than with the GB axe. A quick check on the limbs revealed that there was too much denting, the edge was too blunt to start a clean cut. That is hardly an extreme problem though. Some time with a couple of small hones and finishing with some stropping on CrO loaded leather left the blade shaving sharp.
Thus initially my opinion is that in regards to cutting it is actually behind the GB forest axe and not actually enough lighter to significantly effect fatigue and thus its only real advantages are the lower cost and ability to replace the blades. I am hoping however that some work with the blade after sharpening will showcase its true abilities.
A picture, showing it alongside the Gransfors Bruks Forest axe :
http://www.physics.mun.ca/~sstamp/images/brush_axe.jpg
A web page with some amusing and useful information :
http://www.crazyweenie.com/BrushAxe/
This is the next large blade profile that I want to have a look at :
http://www.woodmanspal.com/
anyone who has used one and can compare it to a decent axe and heavy machete I would appreciate any commentary.
-Cliff