Fitting an axe from a handle blank

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Whiskey_Jim

Joined
Feb 21, 2017
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I understand not many people have access to these but I feel it could be helpful when hanging from a home made handle. This is a factory made handle that was rough made and rejected. It has worm holes in it. The male wasn't shaved down. It's a cosmetic blemish but they make great project handles. This axe head has a non standard eye that is shorter and wider than these handles are cut. I should have taken a starting picture but I jumped right in.
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You can see the amount of wood that has to be removed. The hardest part here is that the head seats square as straight.
 
Now we play the tap and fit game.
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This is the most critical part. Once the head fits on the end of the halft you have to make sure it's square and straight. I put the head on the handle and strike it once from the bottom to seat it. Then adjust buy striking the head to make it square and straight. This is the key, if the head didn't start skookum it won't finish skookum
 
That picture is misleading. You never strike an axe head with metal. That hammer in the picture is for knocking the handle back out with a drift punch.
 
I have no experience with a sureform so I started looking in to getting one and discovered they have a replaceable cutter.
How do these hold up? Do you get quite a bit of use out of a blade?
 
Scribe some lines of symmetry (with a pencil or magic marker) along the eye end of the handle. You can rasp, saw, sand a rectangle in the exact dimensions of the eye (length and width, and even depth if you want) and then start shaping into the oval without removing the reference lines/marks. Trying to do all this entirely 'by eye' is fraught with the eventuality of being 'off' when you're done.
 
300Six said:
Scribe some lines of symmetry (with a pencil or magic marker) along the eye end of the handle. You can rasp, saw, sand a rectangle in the exact dimensions of the eye (length and width, and even depth if you want) and then start shaping into the oval without removing the reference lines/marks. Trying to do all this entirely 'by eye' is fraught with the eventuality of being 'off' when you're done.
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This is very good advice.
 
That's what I did on the heel of the handle. Everything else I could dicker out with my eye. This head has to go on this handle because the eye hole is about 1/4 shorter and wider than normal. I could hammer out on to a regular handle easily and fill it with wedge but that dog won't hunt in my house
 
Moonw said:
This is very good advice.
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Thank you! Axe handle/head alignment is no big deal but if you ever decide to get more ambitious and carve a new butt stock for an old rifle or shotgun you're gonna want to remember this.
 
Well Thank YOU, it's these "little" things that trigger those "Aha!" moments with benefits for years to come, that make me glad to be part of what is happening here. "How come I didn't think of that?" has a simple answer...experience :).
 
Moonw said:
Well Thank YOU, it's these "little" things that trigger those "Aha!" moments with benefits for years to come, that make me glad to be part of what is happening here. "How come I didn't think of that?" has a simple answer...experience :).
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That's part of why I'm posting a lot of hanging an axe threads with pictures and explanations of what I'm doing. I'm not good at this by any means but I have watched a lot of YouTube and forum threads and I just haven't found much content that I find helpful. I'm marking my path so that tyre next guy that gets into this hobby has a better way to find his path.
 
I like watching these.
Yesterday I was delighted to discover a 40-grit Zirc belt in my pile. Made short work of destroying an already seconds-grade haft. :D
 
Back to the trenches fellers

So we could knock her up and rasp her down 50 times and mover it one mm at a time but an easier way there be.

The head sits true so I am cutting the seat using my lady lookers and my four hands. When you have two reference points you can remove your wood in the middle without all the head fitting and what not
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daizee said:
I like watching these.
Yesterday I was delighted to discover a 40-grit Zirc belt in my pile. Made short work of destroying an already seconds-grade haft. :D
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I love second or third grade. You can see on this one that some big drilled cosmetic blemish holes in this tree and turned a ten dollar handle into a two dollar handle. Strait from the mimic lathe until my hands
 
So the head wants to lean forward. It happens. I marked the rotation point with the perpendicular to the head line ave now I remove material behind that to straighten it up
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As we work the head down use the sureform as a scalpel. Where the rasp destroys the wood fibres the plane cuts them. Holding the handle and working the tool under its own weight you keep it right at the line made by seating the head just until it's removed
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