- Joined
- Apr 25, 2005
- Messages
- 6
Hey all...
almost finished mounting up my poll axe from cold steel and thought I would share what I did.
Ordered it through their ITSpecPro website for $38 for shipping and all.
arrived about 8 days later in two seperate packages. One for the shaft and the other with the head and langlets and screws for assembly.
So as you can tell it comes powder-coated black. Which as far as my knowledge of original poll axes go, I'm pretty sure they didn't come like that.
So in that vain I wanted to get the coating off... so got some sandpaper and went to town; and boy I went to town... many times over. The powder-coating is pretty durable and thick which makes it a pain in the @^%#$ to get off.
Heres a scale shot to give you an idea of size and of my sanding efforts.
To top it off the whole head is cast and then welded to a short collar as you can see in the first pic. This is not a big issue as its an impact weapon and I got it for dry handling and looking fearsome on my wall
anyway, so durablity is not an issue but its built like a tank so I'm pretty confident it could handle some serious abuse. I mean come on... its from Cold Steel!
The only downside to casting is the small imperfections in the steel and the way the powder-coating gets in there and it is super hard to remove by hand. So I went out to the hardware store and bought one of those small wire brush wheels that fits in a drill. Much better and faster at removing the coating, wish I had done it from the beginning!
you can see the difference in this pic... the axe side has been done with the wire-brush and the hammer side only sandpaper...
you can also see the welding of the collar. I took a metal pipe-cutting saw and removed this part and I think it looks much better and removed some excess weight as well.
So after taking off the powder-coating I turned to the staff. I had some left over dark cherry and ebony stain from other projects. I was going for this "used battlefield" look...
So I took the dark cherry stain and to make it a little more darker, I added some ebony stain to the mix and now its a very, very dark reddish-black... very authentic looking if I say so myself.
So now all I had to do was mount the head and for that I just hammered it on. Mine was a very tight fit but I think thats a good thing and sometimes I had to use my 15lb dumbbells as a hammer. To prevent dinging and deforming the metal I covered it with either a folded towel or old leather glove.
and here it is stained and mounted...
I originaly wanted the head to be a little lower to facilitate handling as it doesn't have any counter-weight to balance it out, but it was so hard to get it flush with the top of the pole and I was afraid if I kept pounding it on I would damage the ash pole. I've heard the wood that comes with some Cold Steel products is crap but the one I got seems to be fine and solid. its round for about the first 1/4th of it and then planed flat on two sides for edge orientation during handling.
On a side note, I almost just took the haft and made a Japanese tetsubo'. For those who do not know what that is... heres a nice example...
It would be a good base to make one from if your looking for a uncommon Japanese weapon.
To attach the langlets I didn't want to use the black screws that came with it as that would just look wrong and cheap to boot. I tried to find nails with a more rounded head to represent real rivets but alas... none in the size I wanted. So I settled on just bright nails that were 1 1/4" long and used tin snips to cut them to about 3/4" long and nailed them in.
Heres the finished poll axe...
and full length shot...
its about 6' overall and a hefty 12lbs...
Its very solid and could generate some serious power with this thing but of course, lacking any counter weight, recovery is crazy slow and ponderous. At the time I thought adding the langlets would make it look really good while not adding too much weight, but upon mounting them I realize I don't like it as much as I thought I would. Mostly because it adds too much weight and makes it more of a workout tool than a battlefield weapon.
I'm thinking of several solutions to this, one being to remove the langlets and re-attach them to the bottom of the haft. The other is maybe grinding some material from the langlets and drilling new mounting holes. So we'll see how much work I want to put into it later on down the line.
Overall, for $40 and a little elbow grease, you can have a serious weapon that, with some modifications, I would not hesitate to take to the field with back in the day.
Comments and questions are welcome.
Best,
Brian James
almost finished mounting up my poll axe from cold steel and thought I would share what I did.
Ordered it through their ITSpecPro website for $38 for shipping and all.
arrived about 8 days later in two seperate packages. One for the shaft and the other with the head and langlets and screws for assembly.
So as you can tell it comes powder-coated black. Which as far as my knowledge of original poll axes go, I'm pretty sure they didn't come like that.
So in that vain I wanted to get the coating off... so got some sandpaper and went to town; and boy I went to town... many times over. The powder-coating is pretty durable and thick which makes it a pain in the @^%#$ to get off.
Heres a scale shot to give you an idea of size and of my sanding efforts.
To top it off the whole head is cast and then welded to a short collar as you can see in the first pic. This is not a big issue as its an impact weapon and I got it for dry handling and looking fearsome on my wall
anyway, so durablity is not an issue but its built like a tank so I'm pretty confident it could handle some serious abuse. I mean come on... its from Cold Steel!
The only downside to casting is the small imperfections in the steel and the way the powder-coating gets in there and it is super hard to remove by hand. So I went out to the hardware store and bought one of those small wire brush wheels that fits in a drill. Much better and faster at removing the coating, wish I had done it from the beginning!
you can see the difference in this pic... the axe side has been done with the wire-brush and the hammer side only sandpaper...
you can also see the welding of the collar. I took a metal pipe-cutting saw and removed this part and I think it looks much better and removed some excess weight as well.
So after taking off the powder-coating I turned to the staff. I had some left over dark cherry and ebony stain from other projects. I was going for this "used battlefield" look...
So I took the dark cherry stain and to make it a little more darker, I added some ebony stain to the mix and now its a very, very dark reddish-black... very authentic looking if I say so myself.
So now all I had to do was mount the head and for that I just hammered it on. Mine was a very tight fit but I think thats a good thing and sometimes I had to use my 15lb dumbbells as a hammer. To prevent dinging and deforming the metal I covered it with either a folded towel or old leather glove.
and here it is stained and mounted...
I originaly wanted the head to be a little lower to facilitate handling as it doesn't have any counter-weight to balance it out, but it was so hard to get it flush with the top of the pole and I was afraid if I kept pounding it on I would damage the ash pole. I've heard the wood that comes with some Cold Steel products is crap but the one I got seems to be fine and solid. its round for about the first 1/4th of it and then planed flat on two sides for edge orientation during handling.
On a side note, I almost just took the haft and made a Japanese tetsubo'. For those who do not know what that is... heres a nice example...
It would be a good base to make one from if your looking for a uncommon Japanese weapon.
To attach the langlets I didn't want to use the black screws that came with it as that would just look wrong and cheap to boot. I tried to find nails with a more rounded head to represent real rivets but alas... none in the size I wanted. So I settled on just bright nails that were 1 1/4" long and used tin snips to cut them to about 3/4" long and nailed them in.
Heres the finished poll axe...
and full length shot...
its about 6' overall and a hefty 12lbs...
Its very solid and could generate some serious power with this thing but of course, lacking any counter weight, recovery is crazy slow and ponderous. At the time I thought adding the langlets would make it look really good while not adding too much weight, but upon mounting them I realize I don't like it as much as I thought I would. Mostly because it adds too much weight and makes it more of a workout tool than a battlefield weapon.
I'm thinking of several solutions to this, one being to remove the langlets and re-attach them to the bottom of the haft. The other is maybe grinding some material from the langlets and drilling new mounting holes. So we'll see how much work I want to put into it later on down the line.
Overall, for $40 and a little elbow grease, you can have a serious weapon that, with some modifications, I would not hesitate to take to the field with back in the day.
Comments and questions are welcome.
Best,
Brian James
