Handle Preservation?

O

OutdoorEnvy

Joined
Nov 22, 2011
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My first hatchet I hung and brought to life has been my main user for awhile and it seems to take a beating each year. It's holding up well but showing wear. I got to thinking if using a gun stock oil finish would help preserve it? Something like Birchwood Casey. I was curious if anyone had tried something like that on an axe handle or if it would just make the handle uncomfortable to use with that kind of finish. I do treat it with boiled linseed oil 1 to 2 times a year. Thoughts on this or experience with it?
 
Boiled linseed oil really needs to soak into the wood to be effective so it needs to be immersed for a couple of days. Then you have the issue of oil weeping out for a few more days before it hardens up properly. I've also found that the linseed oil affects the grip. I usually oil my handles and then when they're fully dry I rub on a 50:50 Carnauba wax /beeswax mix and then polish off with a cloth. The wax gives superb grip and buffs up pretty good too.
 
It seems to me that the environment of storage is important as well. Back of the pickup, the barn, leaning on the side of a shed in the sun, or garage, etc..
I've had friends that just drop the tool when and where they are done with it. If you actually take the time to use BLO once in a while and keep it away from extreme environmantal changes, then the handle should last for many many years.
I don't own too many wood handled tools, of any significant age, but I've seen lots of old tools that were never treated. Some of them are cracking, from drying out, but still are strong enough to be used. If they had been given a good soak in BLO once a year, I can only imagine them being much better off. These tools are in a building, out of the weather, but have no heat/AC.
 
I find it better to do lite coats of linseed more often then big coats 1 to 2 times a year. Regular small coats you can control better to your personal liking as far as excess, etc, and avoid hang time to dry, too sticky, etc. A little linseed goes a long way.
 
I've got a couple helves that I'm guessing are at least 60-70 years old and they would still be useable if they hadn't dried out at the eye end and cracked and disintegrated. Who knows how they were treated but it goes to show that the most important part to preserve is the part attached to the head. I've soaked newly hung axes eye down in a bucket of linseed for a day or so to allow it to penetrate the end grain, which dries out faster than the rest of the handle.

I'd look up the MSDS (material safety data sheets) on whatever finish you'd like to use. Manufacturers are required by law to make these sheets available. It will give you the ingredients and their functions in the finish. For instance most Danish oil finishes are just linseed, pigment, and acetone or other drying agent.
 
I use tung oil, I apply a light coat, rub it in with my hands, then let it sit for a day or two. Then I rub with fine steel wool, and repeat, up to 3 or 4 times.
Repeat this every once in a while, depending on how much you use it and the humidity and such. It gets a slightly tacky and hard finish, and repels water as well.
Learned this trick in a gun forum, lot's of old timers use tung oil on rifle stocks I guess.
 
Start with thinned BLO for penetration and follow with Birchwood Casey True-oil and then finish with Birchwood Casey gunstock wax--that is my typical finish.
 
I like a light wipe down on hadles now and then, when I get an oily rag I do a lot of handles, hatchets, axes, hoes ,shovels, rakes, picks, cultivator/weeders. A little goes a long ways and freshens up handles, I brought a 4 tines cultivator I left on my parents farm when I got married and moved to town. they would leave it outin the garden in the summer sun and fried it out kinda bad, it is looking good after a nice wipe down with linseed oil and then when garden time comes around, treat it again.
 
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