Hangmatus Piiluous, (piilu gripping)

Ernest DuBois · Mar 22, 2018

Call it what you will, unorthodox, uncalled for, non-conventional a radical deviation, well I always did take an irreligious attitude toward handling my axe. This is an alteration on a handle that's been in action a little while and had some quirks that with time worked themselves into down-right irritations and so I went at it with a Billnäs 1234 in hand to get some things straight 'twixt me and my handle. It's called, the piilu hang.

jake pogg · Mar 22, 2018

The handle looks great...But...the head(what is visible in the photo)...Does that rate as a Piilu?...No iconic thickened edge....or the extended socket?...
(Sorry,before i cry coitus interruptus,maybe my concept of a Piilu needs to be updated/expanded...?)

Ernest DuBois · Mar 22, 2018

Rats, one more time a complete failure on my part to communicate. The piilu reference not having a thing to do with the axe head itself but to the finish on the handle's surface, the wave pattern, (or attempt at it), left after - lets call it hewing - the handle to reduce an unevenness or thickening along the length and the way I went about the reduction with an axe, chopping tangentially. Maybe it's not as apparent as I once thought for anyone not standing along side when I was going at it and absent adequate explanation, excuses. Nothing wrong with your conception, of piilu Jake. But for some clarity, pay no attention to the upper and lower sections of the photo, only the area of focus.

junkenstien · Mar 22, 2018

Hatchet wound,i think.

jake pogg · Mar 22, 2018

Ernest DuBois said:
only the area of focus.

And a nice area it is indeed.(sorry to be daft-"piiluousness"("piiluousity"..."piilusifernouness"?) is a good term

I think that sort of texture(Norwegians(among others)actually have names for each of these scalloped types of surface,but i'm too dyslexic to've memorised them...

)
has a good solid place on an axe-handle.It's used by our brain as a system of coordinates,sent by the nerve endings that are so numerous in our hands...
Maybe,(going Way out on a limb here...) the octagonal haft here in US is one of the last vestigial remnants of the concept.
Except that a long-handled felling axe,like a shovel and other tools where one hand needs to slide freely up and down the haft,dictates that the scalloping be uni-directional...

There's also the difference in the specific wood-grain.I'm not sure if hickory lends itself well to such randomised depth,being ring-porous and splintery in it's nature...Birch,soft as it is,does that beautifully...And so i'd imagine a number of other species...

https://imgur.com/a/JzcGq

Ernest DuBois · Mar 22, 2018

Really just experiment. I'm pleased enough to try it some more.

jake pogg said:
I think that sort of texture(Norwegians(among others)actually have names for each of these scalloped types of surface,but i'm too dyslexic to've memorised them... )

It would be great to see a list, an example of the texture or pattern, a description and explanation, AND the axe used. When it's in Norwegian it'd have to be pretty elemental before I could get anything out of it.
Having a textured handle has always been Something I go for and s'why I seldom turn to sanding and consider myself lucky if the shaping can be gotten at with drawknife and carving knife - here watered wood is a great improvement over not watered - which leave the surfaces nicely burnished. This handle is ash, also ring porous and there is no reason why it wouldn't work with hickory wood, only requiring a truly sharp edge on your axe and light cuts, the cuts here from a small bitted Billnäs.

Ernest DuBois · Mar 22, 2018

Even more, the handle on my pitchfork used for cleaning the stalls is one I made heavily textured, also watered wood, and it is a pleasure to use, grabbing it always a matter of consciousness and never automated knowing my hands are going back to familiar territory.

Agent_H · Mar 22, 2018

You had me at “Piilu”

Not to be confused with “Pillu”

Ernest DuBois · Mar 22, 2018

Oh shit, you're walking on this ice AH.

Ernest DuBois · Mar 22, 2018

Oops you are right AH... time for some edit servicing. Thank you.

jake pogg · Mar 22, 2018

Ernest DuBois said:
It would be great to see a list, an example of the texture or pattern, a description and explanation, AND the axe used. When it's in Norwegian it'd have to be pretty elemental before I could get anything out of it.

From a man i've corresponded with in the past,Steffen Dahlberg,of Helgeland,i've gathered that there's "Sprettetelgjing" ,and "Glepphogging"....
..the former apparently exemplefied by the middle one of the three logs in this image:https://imgur.com/a/8tKkz....

(to get better at Norwegian you must read "Beowulf" every night before bedtime...but you can't do it so far south of certain lattitudes,too much sunlight,birds,leaves...it's not scary enough,and won't work...)

Square_peg · Mar 22, 2018

jake pogg said:
I think that sort of texture(Norwegians(among others)actually have names for each of these scalloped types of surface,but i'm too dyslexic to've memorised them... )
has a good solid place on an axe-handle.It's used by our brain as a system of coordinates,sent by the nerve endings that are so numerous in our hands...
Maybe,(going Way out on a limb here...) the octagonal haft here in US is one of the last vestigial remnants of the concept.
Except that a long-handled felling axe,like a shovel and other tools where one hand needs to slide freely up and down the haft,dictates that the scalloping be uni-directional..

The word I use is 'registration'. The octagonal handle hepls to register the axe's position in your mind. Slight rotations are quickly recognized and corrected for almost automatically.

Agent_H · Mar 22, 2018

Ernest DuBois said:
Oops you are right AH... time for some edit servicing. Thank you.

Just excited about the post and a fan of Finnish, Ernest.

Square_peg said:
The word I use is 'registration'. The octagonal handle hepls to register the axe's position in your mind. Slight rotations are quickly recognized and corrected for almost automatically.

I am thinking a larger hewing axe/hatchet with somewhat of an octagonal would "register" well. Something with an offset with a large plane on one side and some tight angles around the top - softened edges and wider behind the grip to the end maybe.

jake pogg · Mar 22, 2018

Thanks,Square_peg,"registering" is a good,precise term.

Agent_H said:
Something with an offset with a large plane on one side and some tight angles around the top - softened edges and wider behind the grip to the end maybe.

That sounds very cool,Agent_H,one may call that the macro-scale.

Here's a decent example of micro-,Braille-like texture that Svante and Eliza Djarv leave on their handles(these are marks left by the eccentric lathe they use to produce their handles,click on one of the adze or axe photos to see the texture)
http://www.djarv.se/djarvenglish/newtools.asp

Agent_H · Mar 23, 2018

jake pogg said:
Thanks,Square_peg,"registering" is a good,precise term.

That sounds very cool,Agent_H,one may call that the macro-scale.

Here's a decent example of micro-,Braille-like texture that Svante and Eliza Djarv leave on their handles(these are marks left by the eccentric lathe they use to produce their handles,click on one of the adze or axe photos to see the texture)
http://www.djarv.se/djarvenglish/newtools.asp

Ernest DuBois · Mar 23, 2018

And the more geometric cross-section (octagonal) on a felling axe makes perfect sense with the sliding hand action, gives you a smooth ride all the way.
Now I remember my first encounter thanks to Agent_H bringing it up from back around yr.2000. It's when I got my hands on one of the new-fangled styles axes from Gränsfors

see Jake, the principle applied to a grip from hickory. Here you've got a kind of conglomeration of the topic's theme, a sort of piilu - double check that spelling for sure this time. And by the way, also pertinent if not interesting, personally I always envisioned this word piilu as having some equivalence to the word carving. Don't know if that would pass mustard or not. An axe with certain likenesses to the piilukirves, used for hewing and, having a textured grip, not lathe produced as far as I can tell but likely done by hand with a motorized hand planer.
Here are some other registration patterns I've got.

These are clearly a diffuse porous wood, birch in this instance.
I wonder what if any other asymmetric solutions others are using to for their grips.

Square_peg · Mar 23, 2018

Ernest DuBois said:
I wonder what if any other asymmetric solutions others are using to for their grips.

I made my broadaxe haft wider and flatter at the grip than a normal axe handle. This makes it easier to apply a counter-rotational force to the haft to combat the tendency of the offset head to roll. Because off the offset handle all the weight is to one side with respect to the axis of grip.

Somehow you need to get your hands out of the way when hewing. You can do this through either offset or rise or a combination.

Ernest DuBois · Mar 23, 2018

jake pogg said:
From a man i've corresponded with in the past,Steffen Dahlberg,of Helgeland,i've gathered that there's "Sprettetelgjing" ,and "Glepphogging"....
..the former apparently exemplefied by the middle one of the three logs in this image:https://imgur.com/a/8tKkz....

(to get better at Norwegian you must read "Beowulf" every night before bedtime...but you can't do it so far south of certain lattitudes,too much sunlight,birds,leaves...it's not scary enough,and won't work...)

So much of the interesting work Roald Renmælmo is doing is matching these tool marks up with the axes that made them and then getting those axes reproduced by the smid who's also been looking into construction methods and materials and, blah, blah, blah.
It seems a better description of the handle is to say it's gleppt.

The particular section the timber getting worked is hopeless, thwarting the necessary progress in order to produce a recognizable pattern, but as an experiment it is an enjoyable work style even if at the same time being a total irrelevance outside of a specific context. It's why in large measure I've given up on Scandinavian techniques, not because I don't like them but because I'm not going to go a glepphoging on a vakwerk construction.

jake pogg · Mar 23, 2018

Thant's wonderful,Ernest,to practice something like that is marvelous...Thanks for the video...

"....not because I don't like them but because I'm not going to go a glepphoging on a vakwerk construction".

Verily,that's the trouble,you must think and chant to yourself,as you hew along,the following(make sure to listen to that "audio" link at the bottom of page)...
Otherwise,Glepphoging doesn't go so well;see,it's the Rythm of that old Norse poetry that must be maintained,otherwise it's just too ...Celtic,i suppose...(Gaellic?...

http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/changlang/activities/lang/beowulf/2beowulf/beowulfpage2.html

Ernest DuBois · Mar 23, 2018

Irresistible as long as you bring up those Gaellic rhythms.