COTS Project Thread

300Six said:
My compliments. You do very nice work. Has prompted me to wire wheel some rust off (only to try to look for maker stamps) derelict hammer heads I've found in cleanups, wrecked cars/trucks and in abandoned buildings over the years. A couple of the foundlings are Craftsman-USA stamped ball peens and obviously those are not now going to wind up in a scrap bin.
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I figure a good hammer can either be given to someone who needs one or kept for whatever excuse sounds good .... SHTF, whatever. Anyway, thanks!

Scored a cruiser on ebay from a "buy it now" - I don't know why some go for a fortune and others don't but I'm going to tell myself that it's worth the $30 I gave for it, with an extra zero. A friend bought the broad axe for me at an auction the other day. If anyone reading knows anything about the hammer, jump in - I am pretty certain the handle was just some random thing the owner found to stick on it.

axes_hammers_projects by city_ofthe_south, on Flickr

broadaxe_stamp by city_ofthe_south, on Flickr

plumbcruiser_eye by city_ofthe_south, on Flickr
Why? Why must some neanderthal be allowed to treat things this way?
 
Word on the street is that some axes I'm kinda excited about might be coming my way, so I decided it was time to finally do something with this first pass handle. Some of you will probably recognize it from other threads - HH will sell you one like this.

Here it is still in original condition. Good grain, straight, and huge (the tongue area is just massive - so much to work with for good fitting). Hard to tell about run-out when it's this rough but all indications are positive at this point.

firstpass_handle_original by city_ofthe_south, on Flickr

firstpass_handle_originalside by city_ofthe_south, on Flickr

Here it is after a quick once over with the draw knife to knock off the steps - most of them anyway.
firstpass_handle_drawknife by city_ofthe_south, on Flickr

Scored some 36grit belts for my 2x42 and began to make it really look like something. The vintage handle in this picture now serves as my guide for handle shaping.
firstpass_handle_36grit by city_ofthe_south, on Flickr

There is some discussion about handle companies not using vintage patterns and I have also been wondering why handles look different. If they are using a copy lathe, what's the deal? Well there are videos on youtube of House Handle at work - which of course is one of the reasons I ended up inquiring about the first pass handles - and now that I have been working on this stick, I think the issue is not the pattern. There is more than enough wood here, and the correct shape, to make a handle just like they would have 100 years ago. I think it really boils down to the hand sanding that happens to "finish" the handle after it comes off the lathe. Based on what I see in the videos, they go from the klotz lathe in the condition you see mine in, to a belt sander. The shaping is done "by hand" if you will, so I conclude that it's simply the time, or lack there of, taken to make them look right. At any rate, I am very pleased with this handle so far but my brain is beating on the inside of my skull, so I gotta go take a load off. More later.
 
cityofthesouth said:
I actually put the short wedge in first. The way I have been doing this is to drive one wedge, then split it slightly with a chisel, then drive the other as usual (so there are actually only 2 wedges involved). I learned that I have to make the short wedge no wider than the handle so that it can spread as the second wedge is driven.

In my mind, the long wedge seems more important. Is it? I don't know, but I like the idea of it not being split, so I do it second. I started doing this because it seems the taper in hammer eyes is more extreme (or maybe just more noticeable since they are smaller?) and uneven, so that I was ending up with gaps toward the front and rear of the eye. It may be a visual problem more than a real problem but I didn't like it. So all this babbling is to say, I drive the short wedge first to spread the handle front to back to my liking, then the long wedge as usual. It works great. I feel that this technique provides the multi-directional wedging effect of a metal wedge, but without splitting the handle.
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Interesting take on wedges. The steel wedge that was the standard for so many years was to lock the wooden wedge in place by spreading it, driven on a 45 or so to prevent splitting the handle, that worked, sometimes.
Great job on those wedges.
 
garry3 said:
Interesting take on wedges. The steel wedge that was the standard for so many years was to lock the wooden wedge in place by spreading it, driven on a 45 or so to prevent splitting the handle, that worked, sometimes.
Great job on those wedges.
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Yeah I'm not sure they are all bad (they are a source of mental conflict for me truthfully) but they have to split wood in order to get in, and the crack in every broken handle I've ever pulled originated at the metal wedge.
 
:rolleyes: My camera thinks hickory glows like a wooden light saber .... I need to just wrap the thing around a pole so I have an excuse to get a new one. The wood on the hammer was just as bright until it had a BLO bath and the color change isn't THAT drastic. Anyway, this handle is just excellent, I love the way it looks. So excellent that today I ordered 4 more and a cruiser DB handle in "first pass" condition. One of the pics shows the huge swell with a ruler and don't ask me what kind of deceiving photography magic I was doing but it is a full 1-3/4 inches in real life, I swear. Grain is great, the stick is arrow straight, zero run-out. I will leave final finishing for when I actually hang somethin on it.
Also finished up that little rounding (I believe it's called?) hammer for a friend. I cleaned up the faces a little and hung it upside down from how it was. Why? I dunno, I thought it looked better. Pretty sure it's symmetrical, or was meant to be. I can't find any maker's marks and I don't detect any evidence of flashing. It appears to have a dark brown finish of some kind on it. The nice thing about hammers is, I can just buy the biggest blacksmith style handle for $3.50 at the hardware store and turn it into whatever I think it should be. I don't like the appearance of heart and sap mixed wood, but it's no biggie and I rounded this handle because I thought it fit the shape of the head better that way, vs the somewhat hard lines I do more often - it has a "soft" feel in hand.

firstpass_hammer_sidebyside by city_ofthe_south, on Flickr

firstpass_hammer_side by city_ofthe_south, on Flickr

firstpass_straight by city_ofthe_south, on Flickr

firstpass_endgrain by city_ofthe_south, on Flickr

roundinghammer by city_ofthe_south, on Flickr
 
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Looky there would ya! In the giving spirit of Christmas a very generous individual set me up with a couple patterns that I have been searching for - Connecticut and Jersey. Out here in flyover country it would seem that they aren't especially common and I am always envious when I see some of you guys' pictures of them. In trade I hung the Legitimus with the nice stamp on the first pass handle seen above.

connie_jersery_new by city_ofthe_south, on Flickr

connie_stamp by city_ofthe_south, on Flickr

connie_sidebyside by city_ofthe_south, on Flickr

These deep heads don't leave much extra so you can see where this stick hung on the lathe. It annoys me but I dropped the shoulder as much as I thought I could get away with. I also knocked a piece off the back of the wedge which seems to be a bad habit of mine - there is wood inside the eye, I just chipped off that little chuck at the back of the eye. That's a homemade oak wedge.
connie_wedge by city_ofthe_south, on Flickr

connie_headfit by city_ofthe_south, on Flickr

connie_alignment by city_ofthe_south, on Flickr
I detect the slightest amount of angle to the bit (toward the heel), and even though it doesn't show well, a slight curve in the handle - it was very apparent when I first got the head on but in the end it came out nice.


connie_stump1 by city_ofthe_south, on Flickr

connie_woodpile1 by city_ofthe_south, on Flickr
 
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lmalterna said:
Sir, You do FINE work!! :)

Bill
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Agreed! Every piece on here is exceptional. That Connie was just too much to stand. I had to say something.
Solid motivation for me to dust off the shave horse and get back into haft making for the winter.
Thanks for this thread.
 
lmalterna said:
Sir, You do FINE work!! :)

Bill
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CB-R said:
Agreed! Every piece on here is exceptional. That Connie was just too much to stand. I had to say something.
Solid motivation for me to dust off the shave horse and get back into haft making for the winter.
Thanks for this thread.
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Square_peg said:
Top notch hangs.
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Thank you! CB-R, I like to hear that. I've taken a lot of inspiration from many of the folks around here and I think many of us would enjoy seeing what comes off that shave horse for sure.
 
Cruiser time. Thoroughly chubby stick showed up today and it was belt sander time. It's finished but you know, it gets dark at like 3:30 these days and my camera sucks, so this is a teaser post. Sorry.

ETA: I noticed that I said above that I ordered the cruiser handle in first pass condition and wanted to clarify. I actually contacted them and told them to skip it and just send a finished handle instead. Since first pass handles come off the lathe, you have to wait until they are actually turning that particular handle. I am happy to wait for the curved handles because I want good ones for my Jersey and Ct, but I didn't figure there could be a whole lot wrong with a straight handle.

cruiser_handle_group by city_ofthe_south, on Flickr

cruiser_handle_width by city_ofthe_south, on Flickr

cruiser_handle_thickness by city_ofthe_south, on Flickr

This shows how much handle I planned to remove as I started.
cruiser_handle_shaping1 by city_ofthe_south, on Flickr
 
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"Turning sows ears into silk purses, one stick at a time!" LOL!

A good table top sander is high on my list. I see videos of shaping using them, with practice they help make a nice job.

Bill
 
lmalterna said:
"Turning sows ears into silk purses, one stick at a time!" LOL!

A good table top sander is high on my list. I see videos of shaping using them, with practice they help make a nice job.

Bill
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Hahaha thanks!

In hindsight I am thinking that's what I should have done. I can see so many uses for a 4" belt. But, for me it's indispensable either way. I recently got a stack of 36 grit belts because I go through so many 80s and that has helped - I'm not sure they are faster, but they hold up better. I can say that it certainly takes some skill to finish an axe handle on a huge belt sander like a factory would .... and keep the handle even three dimensionally. Which probably explains certain .... aspects ... which are common with some handles.



On the subject of handles .... which is always the subject I'm on ..... do any of you guys know, or care to speculate, on how handles would have been made before the copy lathe? Wikipedia tells me that Thomas Blanchard invented the copying lathe in 1818. Where handles therefore essentially hand made before that, or before the lathe became common place in factories? Is there a "missing link" device in there that I am just not aware of? I realize the lathe is a somewhat ancient invention itself but one for irregular shapes ...?
 
Just got some pics of the finished cruiser - with a 36" handle and full size DB for visual reference for people like me who've never seen a cruiser before.

plumbcruiser_size by city_ofthe_south, on Flickr

Next one kinda makes the handle look more baseball bat than it really is, but I dunno. What do you guys think of the swell? There wasn't much to work with.
plumb_cruiser_wood by city_ofthe_south, on Flickr

plumbcruiser_alignment by city_ofthe_south, on Flickr

The head slid onto the stick loosely with no fitting so I had to drop the shoulder about an inch (there was plenty of width to work with) to get to tight wood, then I hacked an inch off the swell since it was actually smaller at the bottom - ended up making the stick exactly 26 inches long.

Another oak wedge. I think I like oak for this. There was a bunch of pieces of rough cut studs in my shed when I moved here - made legs for my work bench from them and with a few scraps laying around I have a good supply of wedge material. The supplied wedges just don't meet standards anymore - plus I think they look neat.
plumbcruiser_wedge by city_ofthe_south, on Flickr
 
I think the swell looks perfect! What tool do you use for most of your handle work? I can see the drawknife, but how about for finishing? even a rasp leaves a pretty rough finish and yours are perfect.
 
triggahappy said:
I think the swell looks perfect! What tool do you use for most of your handle work? I can see the drawknife, but how about for finishing? even a rasp leaves a pretty rough finish and yours are perfect.
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Yeah I'm not really patient enough for the draw knife I don't think, or I'd like to blame the wood, but I use it only for rough work at this point - at least until I am more skilled with it. In a minute there will be a post about spoke shaves, just you wait, but to be honest I really would like to get one. For one thing I like the idea of making less dust (respirator mandatory), for another thing I think it will provide more control. I roughed the handle down with a 36 grit belt on the 2x42, then a finish with 80 grit. Then, knock down the flats left by the belt sander with a random orbital (I know, pretty old fashioned in my shop) and finish by hand sanding with more 80, then 120 if I'm feeling really into it. I have noticed, and I don't know why, and maybe it's not even related, but the handle takes BLO faster when I use 120.

I've experimented with broken glass and I inherited these .... well I can't remember what they are called ... but they are essentially cabinet scrappers but cut into funky shapes for doing tight spaces. They are actually pretty handy for axe handles and will make a pretty nice finish. This is the sort of thing old timers would have used.

ETA: Flute Scrapers is what the package calls them.
 
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