The BladeForums.com 2024 Traditional Knife is ready to order! See this thread for details:
https://www.bladeforums.com/threads/bladeforums-2024-traditional-knife.2003187/
Price is $300 $250 ea (shipped within CONUS). If you live outside the US, I will contact you after your order for extra shipping charges.
Order here: https://www.bladeforums.com/help/2024-traditional/ - Order as many as you like, we have plenty.
Same idea for grade B. However, I want to play with 16 inches handle for little while (In case I like short haft, I might end up buying 2nd one). I believe I still have 22 or 24 inch NOS Snow & Nealley handle lying somewhere.
It does look pretty thick in the bit. Is it convex or chisel ground?Some quick notes about the Flying Fox. First, it came fast and well packed as I'm accustomed to when buying from Baryonyx Knife Co. Kudos there.
Now on to the hatchet. It's very well made. The "sport utility finish" suits me fine. An axe should be first and foremost a utility tool. The bit, poll, top and bottom are accurately ground. The rest appears to be a sand cast finish. It came with a relatively sharp edge but with a noticeable burr on one side of the bit. I spent 60 seconds with an Arctic Fox round stone to clean it up. I took off the burr with the coarse side and then honed each side quickly with the fine side. This produced a good working edge but not quite shaving sharp.
The bit is perfectly aligned to haft.
It's easier to control this alignment in cast steel than in forged steel. And cast steel can be just as good as forged steel it the heat treat is done right. I haven't file tested this yet but I will and I'll report back when I do.
The hang is extremely good with the eye filled tightly top and bottom. If it wasn't for the round wedge I'd be proud if all my hangs looked like this. I'm impressed.
The grain alignment in the handle is good. Not exactly perfect but nearly vertical and good enough that it gives me no concern whatsoever on this size/weight of tool. The handle wood is solid and rings like a piece of flawless hardwood should.
I took it out back and did some chopping on a piece of fully seasoned black locust - a good solid hardwood. The bit experienced no chip or roll. Nor did it stick in the wood as many thin-bitted hatchets would.
Next I tried it on a semi-dry softwood, a piece of arborvitae. It didn't stick while chopping this softwood either, which is what I was testing.
Council has made a very good compromise in the geometry of this hatchet. Marketed as a throwing axe it has to be thin-bitted to stick reliably in the target. Still they've given it enough of a high centerline that it isn't sticky as a chopper. It's a fine balance but I think they've struck it well.
If I were going to use it as a thrower I would resharpen the bit with a very slightly concave bevel to give it the maximum stick. As a camp utility chopper I will file the bevel back just a little further in the center and I will blend it in along the the entire bit. It will chop better after this.
Overall I'm very pleased and impressed with the tool. They got a lot of things right to a very high degree. For my uses as a camp utility hatchet I think it will benefit from being re-fitted on an 18" straight haft with a little more pronounced swell. In fact the only think I would mark this hatchet down on is the transition from grip to swell. It's not as pronounced as I would like. But this transition is appropriate for a thrower. Again a good compromise.
Not sure why you seem to think it's thick? I like mine a touch thinner right at the apex and a touch off the shoulder, but it's a pretty good geometry out of the box, overall. The visually bright edge bevel goes back about 10mm (0.4") and it's only 3.8mm (0.15") thick at that point.
Just by looking...
Seriously, it's not at all thick or chunky. It might not be as dialed in as it would be after an experienced user works it over to their liking, but for a stock geometry it's really quite good.Not sure where my calipers have run off to but I am a bit unorganised at the moment getting ready to go hunting.And how thick are those full-sized axes 0.4" behind the edge? Bear in mind, this is a hatchet.
I think it would be a fair comparison too because if a manufacturer wants to build a better mouse trap and put a chisel grind on a hatchet which is very nontraditional we should see how it stacks up to a traditional convex edge. I think I have the trio of the hard poll True Tempers with about the same length handle and roughly the same weight. Should we compare it to other hatchets? Open to suggestions here and I am not interested in the fit and finish, just performance.I'd say it's fair to compare them against vintage axes. They're certainly not as polished as a lot of older axes were, but they're a very strong value, and if a user wanted to put a finer finish on them, it's easily done with an angle grinder and flap discs. As-is, they're functionally fine. I think the apex being thickened is possibly deliberate to create a "tough" edge for the lowest common denominator of users, as is common, but it's just a tiny thickening right at the apex that's pretty quickly knocked off, while being pretty good and thin right behind that. A good compromise for a factory edge that's already prone towards cutting through the rubber edge covers they send 'em out with. Is it gonna' tickle everyone's fancy? Probably not. But it uses a design based on some classic patterns, and the foundation it's built on is solid. Everything else is taken care of by us picky folks in additional grinding/polishing/rasping, which allows it to hit a very low price point for the overall quality.
