Balisong Future Axe Handles and How They Get There

catspa said:
Not locally. I’ve heard there’s some in Oregon, but I don’t get down there too often.

Parker
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We have some Oregon Ash in the Puget Sound lowlands but they tend to be small. Garry oak is OK if you can find a straight piece. Pacific yew is tough but rare now because so much was poached before they learned to synthesize Paxol.
 
Ernest DuBois said:
Ok, I'm starting to get the picture. But it reminds me of the old stories they used to tell about settlement out West, the one that went on and on about these settlers who'd bring the necessities that were known to not exist so much in those places one of which was wood for implements and re-handling, so they'd include appropriate saplings in their things.
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Settlers brought black locust for fence posts and other needs. I know of one abandoned locust orchard but it's not close. But I find some scattered about.
 
Idaho's Mountain Ash (Rowan) is a bush. We have a Green Ash that is found growing along streams and rivers. It's a smaller diameter tree but I guess it would be fine.

Forget about yew, it's a soft wood that has low durability. I do have a hewing hatchet with a yew haft because I needed a haft while I was working a yew stave, and well there it was on the ground as cut off waste. I think it still lives but has been reinforced with a sinew wrap.

Idaho has Rocky Mountain Maple, it is not the same thing as Vine Maple, even though some people call it Vine Maple. Oregon has both Vine and Rocky Mountain Maple and I would guess Washington does as well. Vine Maple is just OK, personally I wouldn't bother with the Rocky Mountain Maple unless I had little choice.

There are always Elms and locusts. If not I would be inclined to try some of the smaller diameter hardwoods like service berry or hawthorn. Pretty sure I could come up with something no matter where I was in Idaho. Then again it's just hard to beat Hickory.

Don't be out there cutting down trees with out permission or permits. It's no joke, do it right or don't do it at all.
 
garry3 said:
Don't be out there cutting down
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Joking aside, or not, it reminds me of my visit with Rio last spring. I'd heard he had fixed up and was living in an old cabin up the canyon in Molina so I was interested in talking with him about his methods since this fit with my plans for doing something along those lines with some buildings at my place. One of the first points he made was that I should by no means go asking permission when cutting on public land, just go up on the mesa with your tractor and haul out what you need, the way he had done and try not to get caught at it, he says. Something of the anarchist in me was in agreement.
 
Garry, I have used yew for knife handles before. Pretty wood, carves and turns well but is somewhat prone to cracking, so I don’t make axe hafts from it. Mostly I use the bigleaf maple, which is fairly common here.

I have bought standing trees from a couple neighbors, and milled them into lumber. No public land immediately adjacent, but some nearby. Both the Forest Service and state DNR have issued firewood permits, so if I wanted wood off public land I’d try to go that route.

The corporate timberlands here are pretty camera-d up, and they prosecute wood theft and vandalism pretty vigorously. But there’s enough private wood around here for my uses.

Parker
 
catspa said:
Garry, I have used yew for knife handles before. Pretty wood, carves and turns well but is somewhat prone to cracking, so I don’t make axe hafts from it. Mostly I use the bigleaf maple, which is fairly common here.

I have bought standing trees from a couple neighbors, and milled them into lumber. No public land immediately adjacent, but some nearby. Both the Forest Service and state DNR have issued firewood permits, so if I wanted wood off public land I’d try to go that route.

The corporate timberlands here are pretty camera-d up, and they prosecute wood theft and vandalism pretty vigorously. But there’s enough private wood around here for my uses.

Parker
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Is that the Maple that is being poached for the highly figured wood? It's a shame, but I know they have prosecuted some cases. Using DNA they can match it right up to the stump.

We have a Canyon Maple in south east Idaho. In my limited experience with it it seems to be a good hard wood. Not quite as hard as sugar maple but along those lines. It's a smaller tree and usually branches out pretty low.

The yew is a nice wood to work but it has limits. What has been written about it doesn't always match up to my experiences. I used to go to Oregon to cut yew mostly on forest service land with special use permits. I haven't been in more than a couple of decades and it was already getting more restrictive. Site specific verse district wide search when I first started, and I could cut less. Idaho also has Yew but they issue no permits to cut it. There is some on private land though and if I lived up that way it might be an option worth exploring. I have seen some Japanese cutlery with Wa style yew handles. They were of wide growth rings and plain.
 
Yep, bigleaf maple has enough figure to make it poachable, sure enough. Few years back, I was with a friend on his land and we surprised a couple local poachers in the act of stealing his cut rounds. Scared ‘em pretty good before we let them go, with a couple of reminders not to come back. He’s got cams up there now that ping him right away if anybody enters.

Most of my yew comes from view enhancement pruning at vacation cabins, so it’s small pieces not entire trees.

Parker
 
catspa said:
TS, interesting. I had always thought it was too wet here to grow them, but turns out they like moist bottomland. Maybe I confused them with hickory, probably researching them at the same time. This time of year, my clay-ey soil is fully saturated, in fact every rainstorm leaves me with standing water in the low spots.

So how big are your trees? Are they in a mixed stand of other species, or off by themselves? Supposedly older specimens can be subject to heart rot, I find that true with bigleaf maple as well. But “stovepipe trees” are what I look for, because 1) the owners are more likely to take them down as danger trees, and 2) the outer ring of sapwood and recent heartwood is likely to contain the staves I want.

Parker
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Trailsawyer said:
There is "Oregon Ash" in the Willamette Valley. I even have a couple in my small pasture here in SW Washington. I think that they grow too fast to be of very good handle quality?
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It's a ring porous hard wood. So what matters is the early to late wood ratio. If most of the growth is in the spring it will be weak. The early wood is the first part of the growth ring that appears pithy with open pores, it's laid down in the spring. Younger trees tend to have a better ratio of early to late wood than older ones do. That is why second growth hickory is prized for handle material, a younger stronger tree. I would guess it gets water through out it's growing season and be good strong wood.
 
Personally I have a bias against any and all Maple use in axe handling. Not necessarily rational but stemming from a bad experience riving long sections and I'd like to overcome or verify this by one day getting and using an axe with Maple for its handle. That said, there is a massive difference twixt the Maple I know from Europe and North America's Maple which is a far superior wood by almost every measure. Likely this continental variation holds up for other woods. For example the oak wood of North America suffers a deadly lack of character in comparison to European.
Well, one aspect of axe handle preparation we cannot neglect is how you perform your balisong and at which stage along the way. But this has to be obvious, of course

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Handles on axes
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garry3 said:
Idaho's Mountain Ash (Rowan) is a bush. We have a Green Ash that is found growing along streams and rivers. It's a smaller diameter tree but I guess it would be fine.

Forget about yew, it's a soft wood that has low durability. I do have a hewing hatchet with a yew haft because I needed a haft while I was working a yew stave, and well there it was on the ground as cut off waste. I think it still lives but has been reinforced with a sinew wrap.

Idaho has Rocky Mountain Maple, it is not the same thing as Vine Maple, even though some people call it Vine Maple. Oregon has both Vine and Rocky Mountain Maple and I would guess Washington does as well. Vine Maple is just OK, personally I wouldn't bother with the Rocky Mountain Maple unless I had little choice.

There are always Elms and locusts. If not I would be inclined to try some of the smaller diameter hardwoods like service berry or hawthorn. Pretty sure I could come up with something no matter where I was in Idaho. Then again it's just hard to beat Hickory.

Don't be out there cutting down trees with out permission or permits. It's no joke, do it right or don't do it at all.
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My example of Mountain ash, Sorbus aucuparia, (we can see it's no ash at all), though this handle has not seen much use. In Scandinavia and Finland, probably some of the Baltic countries too this is a well established native wood for axe handling.
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Hey y’all, good news! Last week I was in a town where there’s a wood warehouse, and bought an ash plank. They had some 1” thick hickory, or this 2x6 ash for $8+ per bd ft. Wasn’t really planning to spend the money, but if I can get some handles out of it, good. And they brought out a small deck of it on a forklift, and let me choose my own plank, so I’m happy.

I asked two employees what kind of ash, but they didn’t know. Looks like it was milled out of a 16-20” tree though.

Parker
 
Ok, you'll have no worries about the growth ring orientation since with ash radial and tangential strengths are similar, but this orientation may have bearing if you were going to rive your two inch plank.
 
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