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- Nov 29, 2000
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An interesting find in a local Harbor Freight store: a Hunter brand 4 1/2 lb felling axe, made in Germany by Helko, for $26.
It has a 36" American hickory handle, the butt of which is painted red. It comes with a tiny, ridiculous edge "guard" made of thin, synthetic leather-like material, which would be sliced through immediately would have been the axes sharp.
Harbor Freight isn't famous for carrying high quality stuff, and among the 8 axes in the store only 2 had decent grain orientation, most had various amounts of grain run off.
Head alignements were much better than the comparable hickory handled Mexican made axes which flood the major hardware retail stores.
The bit profiles were relatively thick, not the dedicated hard wood felling axe ones, but more of a general use axe type, which could be used for felling both softer and harder wood, and splitting it too.
There was a variability with the profiles, edges etc., but I did not see the skewed bits so common amongst today's hardware axes.
The heads were attached with a plastic wedge and an additional tubular steel wedge of the type Wetterlings uses too.
I don't know anything about the heat treatment, but my guess would be that it is probably good, since it is a German made product.
A side pic from the company's web-site:
http://www.helko.de/produkt/k4e.htm
The axe in question is the last one pictured.
For that price though, I think these Helko axes are a good choice if one looks for a heavy felling axe.
On a side note: this Harbor Freight store carried two other wood handled Helko axes: a shorter Fireman axe, and a longer axe-pickaxe combination (fire axe for forestry uses?). The only other wood handled axe there was a cheap (both in price and quality) Chinese hatchet with maple handles. The fiberglass handled axes and hatchets seem to take over the market everywhere.
It has a 36" American hickory handle, the butt of which is painted red. It comes with a tiny, ridiculous edge "guard" made of thin, synthetic leather-like material, which would be sliced through immediately would have been the axes sharp.
Harbor Freight isn't famous for carrying high quality stuff, and among the 8 axes in the store only 2 had decent grain orientation, most had various amounts of grain run off.
Head alignements were much better than the comparable hickory handled Mexican made axes which flood the major hardware retail stores.
The bit profiles were relatively thick, not the dedicated hard wood felling axe ones, but more of a general use axe type, which could be used for felling both softer and harder wood, and splitting it too.
There was a variability with the profiles, edges etc., but I did not see the skewed bits so common amongst today's hardware axes.
The heads were attached with a plastic wedge and an additional tubular steel wedge of the type Wetterlings uses too.
I don't know anything about the heat treatment, but my guess would be that it is probably good, since it is a German made product.
A side pic from the company's web-site:
http://www.helko.de/produkt/k4e.htm
The axe in question is the last one pictured.
For that price though, I think these Helko axes are a good choice if one looks for a heavy felling axe.
On a side note: this Harbor Freight store carried two other wood handled Helko axes: a shorter Fireman axe, and a longer axe-pickaxe combination (fire axe for forestry uses?). The only other wood handled axe there was a cheap (both in price and quality) Chinese hatchet with maple handles. The fiberglass handled axes and hatchets seem to take over the market everywhere.