Finnish/Earlier Scandi axes - Kirves

veeteetee said:
museovirasto-a9592919-c03f-4ee4-9508-dc2a71e715c7-0-original.png


Those were real men
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It's interesting that there is no joggling - notching of the log before hewing. Just getting right after it. And note that he is hewing from bottom to top.
 
In the top-down photo it appears as if the poll is wrapped and welded over the top...For convenience while welding,or extra security,not sure.
Great axes,both,thanks,VTT.
 
Sending out roof wood - rafters - was big-time export business in Scandinavië, Finland, (we see now) and the Baltics even back to the Middle Ages. Though not till now did i know shipments went to the Middle East parts! Its the most common material for barn and in-town house's roofs in the Netherlands, mostly from Riga and Gdansk in that case.

This axe must be the modern Finnish version of spaarbila and those are very Nice axes indeed.


As i always say it, no better or more sensible use than this for hand made building material, even in such modern times as our own.
 
jake pogg said:
In the top-down photo it appears as if the poll is wrapped and welded over the top...For convenience while welding,or extra security,not sure.
Great axes,both,thanks,VTT.
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Had to check this and I cannot detect any signs of welding🤔
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BTW, I dug deeper into finna.fi and found this, a more or less perfect match for my tervapiilu. You can also see, why the cutting edge is so wide:
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This picture shows Egyptian rafters being shipped from the port of Rauma, my home town, in the early 1900s:
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Yes, poll is welded, ( one way or the other one ), the socket more or less a symetrical wrap and the blade sandwiched between at the closure. Likely even a high Carbon content cutting egde welded Up blade. A Nice piece of forgery😉
 
veeteetee said:
Had to check this and I cannot detect any signs of welding🤔
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Dammit,i wish anyone could say this about any of my welds!:)

Thank you for these additional close-up photos,but actually the weld i was talking about is better visible in the previous one (it's the way the light falls).
There's a number of welds in that axe,at least 5 separate pieces went into this construction. But the craftsmanship is such that one has to Really search to see any one of the seams.
In this post's photos,on second one down one can see the line transecting the base of blade,parallel and not too far from bottom of photo,better visible on the right side of photo...That's where the inner,male part of V of the blade fit inside the female of socket...
It looks like the outside of tool has been ground,but very slightly. It's just the care and the sheer competence of people forging that made the welds so invisible....

Lovely photos of port too,thank you. Those are barques? Barquentines? (i don't know my rigs!:)...
 
As an example of a schematic similar to many such large hewing axes here's a photo i pilfered from a Facebook page of Ernest's friend Mathieu Collette,one of the smiths at Les Forges de Montreal https://lesforgesdemontreal.org/

The details may differ with regional or historic particulars,or even the personal forging techniques,details such as the "V" of junctures may point in opposite ways,or at times even be a simpler scarf ("scew weld"),but the general idea remains the same:

https://imgur.com/5wrOqOQ
 
With this model the welding gets very complicated as well as historically ambiguous and also interesting and mysterious in particular regarding the tapered bit composition. Most of the old one's have an odd asymetric weld meaning, left side completly different than right. Many aproaches have been tried to replicate.
 
veeteetee said:
This is what I had in my mind when reference was made to welded head.
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Yes,it looks very much like an Electric weld. I'm not that well versed in Billnas factory processes,very possibly at some point in history/on some models,the electric welding was used. (Arc welding dates back to the later 1800's,though it did not become all that widespread before the early 1900's).

The difference is that a forge-weld (properly a Diffusion-weld) does not involve either of parts being joined to reach liquidus ,it is a solid-state process where both parts exchange Some electrons,and make Some molecular bonds.
A forge-weld is fairly weak in some stress situations,that's why it's area is normally made to be very large.
A forge-weld in stress-testing will Always break along the weld-seam.

An Electric weld liquifies both parts being joined (as well as the filler-metal),and mixes all these mechanically,so in effect is much like a smelt,and once cooled the joint is entirely seamless.
And electric weld in testing would Never break on the seam,being considerably stronger than surrounding metal.
 
Ernest DuBois said:
What I always like to call, "the zone of death"
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Well,yes,i think i know what you mean. The (possible) very localized difference between the el. weld and material to either/both sides of it at times causes a problem,even failure.
It happens when the transition is too abrupt,much like a knot in wood it can be troublesome.
By using correct filler rod alloy,and more importantly-correctly thermo-cycling the weld area all that is avoided.

In the simplest form the entire area including the weld is heated to the visible heat and insulated,allowing it to cool as slow as possible.
 
Zone of death - ZOD - admitedly, not really a technical term but it seems with your skills of imagination you have the basic idea. These methods of mitigation - thermocycling, rod alloy, insulation and so on and so on - plausable enough to get round adjoining more ore less dissimilar materials but for me this is in a way the very principle at which I draw my red line and not only in terms of putting steel together. I think of it as a basic misconception whenever the idea of putting two substantially different elements together gets proposed. That said there is this grey area in the instance of el. Weld vs a forge weld but I'll always, till now, rely on the principle of similarity of materials.
 
Jake, The tool skills are good but there is a major design flaw in the corner notch. On exposed crown ends (corner notches) all the horizontal surfaces should slope out, never level, so that the water drains out when it rains or snows. I can't tell you how many historic log buildings with exposed crown ends I have had to repair for this reason. Also, the sticks they are using show no signs of being hewn, also no signs of enough chips to have been hewn. Looks sawn from what I can see. All the sticks are sawn to even thickness. So, this type of notch, which I have found on historic log buildings in The USA, are a lot more difficult to construct with hewn logs.
 
Old Axeman said:
Jake, The tool skills are good but there is a major design flaw in the corner notch. On exposed crown ends (corner notches) all the horizontal surfaces should slope out, never level, so that the water drains out when it rains or snows. I can't tell you how many historic log buildings with exposed crown ends I have had to repair for this reason. Also, the sticks they are using show no signs of being hewn, also no signs of enough chips to have been hewn. Looks sawn from what I can see. All the sticks are sawn to even thickness. So, this type of notch, which I have found on historic log buildings in The USA, are a lot more difficult to construct with hewn logs.
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Yessir,you're Very much correct of course...Unfortunately,the sheer expediency/economics of modern construction requirements reign supreme...:(

I'm right now continuing working on a cabin i started on for someone a year ago. I too have done things (in the notches in particular) that i Oughtn't have,in an ideal world...:(
 
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