designing our own pattern?

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phantomknives

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Mar 31, 2016
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i dont really know how we'd go about it, maybe a double bit, but i think we could design a pretty decent axe head with all the knowledge here. maybe a double bit, one for east coast and one for west, but that would neglect our friends in europe and down under (new zealand and australia). we might have trouble getting the head or heads made. i'd love to hear what you guys think about our own custom pattern.
 
Pretty hard to satisfy users let alone potential buyers. How much effort do you want to go to in order to sell maybe a dozen production axes without having to fork over tens of thousands$ in publicity, advertising and promotion?
The Chinese (or India and probably Mexico) will cheerfully do what you want (after you spend months or years figuring out how to communicate and deal with them and their gov'ts) quickly and for an unbelievable low price but that isn't going to do much for you either when prospective buyers are expecting an upscale (regardless of quality) product.
 
If you mean a blade forums group buy ax that would be awesome. The problem is anything designed by a committee sucks.
 
i was thinking just design it to our standards as a limited run and get them milled or something as a machine shop. no commercial at all, just a few custom axe heads, maybe have a smith make'm, like liam hoffman. i was thinking we design a head all of us like (or compromise for ) and find someone to make them, or have a few heads made, do a pass-around where a few of us work on a head and draw straws to see which lucky few of us gets them
 
i was thinking we pick a base pattern and say how we would modify it, like "puget sound, but it has sharp toes and weighs 3.5 instead of 4" and go from there. i got the idea for doin this when i was walkin one day, i thought to myself "what if i cut a north carolina and a kentucky through the eye and made a double bit" but thats a waste of two axes
 
I think you should start with a list of woods that will be encountered by the said ax. Then the activities. So if most people will be splitting hardwood for fire and bucking softwoods for fun with no felling and a little limbing, that would be pretty easy to figure out. I think the list of tasks and woods could be whittled down to the most common. Then you can land on the very specific historical pattern and the maker that did it best. Then you could try to improve from there.
 
give me a bit and i can get a concept that we can add and take from, feel free to make your own sketch if you have an idea. but woodcraft, you make an interesting point about the activities, im thinking we get the head made, but leave the edges blank. add our own bevels. we'd all do it anyways. say we have trailtime, virginia, oak, pine and poplar, say he doesnt want to split with this axe, one thicker edge for oak, one thinner edge for pine. now saw we have dead box, similar types of woods but different work, lets say he wants to split and buck. he can make the cutting edge relatively thick and give the other side a splitting bevel. it's no more work than we do now, so why not make our semi-custom tools our touch. no better way to finish a tool than by your own hand
 
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I can't think of any pattern that I couldn't get for less by buying vintage than buying into a small production run.
 
I think this is a great idea. They do this in Traditionals every year, and if you're not a slip-join crazy person, you'd never be able to tell the difference. But they sure can.

I'm interested in a bearded carving tomahawk pattern OR hatchet. Also a shepherd's axe, like our compatriot ordered from Yurp (that's how they say it in Rhody). Something like a 3/4lb slightly polled (square) tomahawk with a hatchet eye. We'd need to make a pattern for a loooong straight hatchet-topped handle too, which would be half the fun.

Pegs is also right, you'd never be price-competitive with flea markets for basic performing tools, but if you think of it as something H&B, Wolf Creek, or similar could produce, a short run annual group buy thing might be reasonable.
 
phantomknives said:
give me a bit and i can get a concept that we can add and take from, feel free to make your own sketch if you have an idea. but woodcraft, you make an interesting point about the activities, im thinking we get the head made, but leave the edges blank. add our own bevels. we'd all do it anyways. say we have trailtime, virginia, oak, pine and poplar, say he doesnt want to split with this axe, one thicker edge for oak, one thinner edge for pine. now saw we have dead box, similar types of woods but different work, lets say he wants to split and buck. he can make the cutting edge relatively thick and give the other side a splitting bevel. it's no more work than we do now, so why not make our semi-custom tools our touch. no better way to finish a tool than by your own hand
Click to expand...

The bit "shape" or "thickness" is just the beginning when it comes to hardwood or softwood. While you need a stronger bit for hardwood, that can read steeper angle I guess, you need a thinner ax. You need less of a high centerline. You can also benefit from a shorter bit. In softwood you can get away with a thinner bit. Also taller. But you can benefit from a higher centerline. More of the "wedge" shape. A thicker ax. While you can use any ax on any wood, that doesn't mean you are using the best tool for the job. I do not think a double bit is a good idea, I would want a fourish pound single bit. And you should probably be asking what the best "crossover" pattern was. In other words what pattern worked better on both hard and soft woods than others.(Edit, or what pattern people would like and works ok for both) I would imagine you are about to hear the word Connecticut a lot.
 
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woodcraft i have a quick sketch i made in class i can post in a bit. it's a bit of a marriage between a jersey and a puget sound
 
alright, pictures suck, they either show not much detail, or too much detail. this is a case of the latter.

http://imgur.com/a/Hs3La it's like an extended, asymetric western DB with an upturned toe on the right side blade. the right side is the cutting edge. I wanted sharp corners and a jersey style toe on it for cutting, i'v heard that sharp western pattern style toes help with bucking.
blade curve is TBD, I think i good length would be about 6.5 to 7" from the middle of the eye. the "utility" blade, or left side, i think should like a north carolina pattern. meaty and plain, nothing fancy done with the toes like the other side. maybe 6 to 6.5 inches for this side. Overall length of about 13-14.5 inches.

this isnt to scale, just a quick sketch. i think a good weigh for this would be 4 to 5 pounds. phantom bevels would be optional as they would add cost, and i'm nearly broke
 
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This is a very cool idea. While designing in a committee is hectic and frustrating, I'm sure we could figure something out before we all kill each other.

I'm game.
 
My submission
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