Ice axes - any interest here?

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phidauex

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Jan 6, 2015
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I know this forum is mostly focused on woodworking and farm axes, but is anyone here into mountaineering axes, vintage or modern?

I do a little light mountaineering and ice climbing where ice axes are a required tool, and they are quite fun to use. The vintage designs are a lot like their woodworking cousins, but with longer narrower picks, adze or hammer heads, and long wooden handles. Modern technical ice climbing axes look more "tactical" than most tactical tomahawks (and work great, btw).

I've been half-heartedly searching for some vintage wood-handled ice axes, but there aren't a lot of sources beyond the very expensive offerings on eBay. Just not a lot made, I suppose. Unlike a vintage wood axe I probably wouldn't actually USE a vintage ice axe, but I'd like to restore some and have them around.

Any thoughts or people here with unique examples?
 
I think its an interesting topic that came up while I was Ice climbing with a friend recently who knows I make knives as a hobby. I was eventually going to start a thread to see about interest here. He wants me to make a few ice axes so we can test them. Curious what the general interest level is here. Sorry I don't have any pics of vintages to share, but it is a good topic. So anyone interested in custom Ice axes either? Love to see some vintage pics too.
 
I had actually gone down a little down the road of making some custom picks for Petzl interchangeable head axes. They are basically just cut from flat stock, beveled slightly, and drilled to fit on the screw posts of the head. They make a few options, but it would be nice to have even more. I hadn't intended to sell them, just a side project with a friend, but an interesting project. I think the hardest part would be getting the thickness at the mounting point exact.
 
Google Swiss Military Ice Pick. I have been checking out the ones on the bay also you can one of the vintage Swiss one's for around a 100.00
 
Was headed down the same road sort of. he uses petzl's and has a few sets so we were going to start there but I want to try making a whole axe. Was going to spring temper them from S7 or 5160. Thought mid 40's to low 50's RC would be good enough and tough enough for the ice use. Sorry to derail your thread, Just nice to hear of others with interest.
 
I've been meaning to try and make something myself. From time to time me and the wife end up on a spring hike where we're crossing a snowfield on the mountainside and we usually cut wooden hand spikes on the spot. I figured this would also be a good project for the average garage engineer since the temper requirements for a roughly functional ice axe aren't nearly as stringent as making say, a tactical tomahawk.
 
phidauex said:
I know this forum is mostly focused on woodworking and farm axes, but is anyone here into mountaineering axes, vintage or modern?

I do a little light mountaineering and ice climbing where ice axes are a required tool, and they are quite fun to use. The vintage designs are a lot like their woodworking cousins, but with longer narrower picks, adze or hammer heads, and long wooden handles. Modern technical ice climbing axes look more "tactical" than most tactical tomahawks (and work great, btw).

I've been half-heartedly searching for some vintage wood-handled ice axes, but there aren't a lot of sources beyond the very expensive offerings on eBay. Just not a lot made, I suppose. Unlike a vintage wood axe I probably wouldn't actually USE a vintage ice axe, but I'd like to restore some and have them around.

Any thoughts or people here with unique examples?
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An eminent Canadian geologist once (in 1985) asked me to (try to) repair the old "Stubai" (Austria?) mineral pick (hiking/climbing/ice axe/pick) that he had. Beautifully shaped thin and dainty tool (not unlike a 1/2 scale Pulaski with severe anorexia) with lovely steel and with a wood handle, but otherwise a piece of junk. My efforts (evening college welding course grad) to repair the broken tang straps on this were unsuccessful but that's when I realized that 'design and appearance' were but a very small part of 'engineering' of striking tools
The Bergins (two brothers and both of them WWI vets) that subsistence-farmed right next to where I grew up, used a timber saw and ordinary axes (and two draft horses) to cut and move ice blocks from the Rideau River into the 'ice house' they had. In late summer it was a real treat for us kids to participate in 'shifting the sawdust' in there so as to unearth yet another block of ice for the kitchen ice box.
You're correct in that dedicated ice axes are overlooked and special. And that n. American versions are perhaps not what you're going to be looking for.
 
right next to where I grew up... the Rideau River...
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Lovely country up there... Bob's Lake has been my family's vacation site for almost 50 years!
(Sorry for unrelated rambling)
A long, pointed bodywork hammer could be a decent starting point for a custom reforge piece, but as far as vintage goes I've never even heard of a wooden handled ice climber's axe. Would be lovely to see one, though.
 
moraldilemma666 said:
Was headed down the same road sort of. he uses petzl's and has a few sets so we were going to start there but I want to try making a whole axe. Was going to spring temper them from S7 or 5160. Thought mid 40's to low 50's RC would be good enough and tough enough for the ice use. Sorry to derail your thread, Just nice to hear of others with interest.
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I'd love to see an attempt. I'm nervous about the true technical ice axes - I'm not sure I'd be comfortable with someone dangling their entire weight on the tiny tip of an axe I made, even "tactical" hawks don't have to put up with that sort of abuse, or have those consequences of failure. Even more impressive are the newer axes meant for mixed ice/rock climbing. You can flip them upside down, jam the tip into the rocks, and use it like a giant lever to hoist yourself up. All in a package just over 1lb.

412078_79_cobra_adze_hammer_web.jpg

Black Diamond Cobra - $340, 1lb 5oz. Very cool tool.

That said, a light mountaineering axe could be a good project for a skillful amateur. They don't have to accept anywhere near the same loads, being more for arresting slope falls, and ice chopping utility. Grivel makes this "vintage style" axe:

11_l.jpg

Grivel Monte Bianco, $135. Nothing fancy, but looks like a nice snow climbing axe.
 
My father and I climbing the Z-couloir above Lake Agnes here in CO, about 800ft of steep and narrow snow climbing. Of course, skiing down is the truly scary part. This use of the axe is fairly simple, and I'd use a simple tool. This Black Diamond is not a fancy tool, as you can see.


Climbing the Z-Couloir by phidauex, on Flickr
 
phidauex said:
A little blurb on ice axe history from the maker Grivel (who makes great modern tools too).

http://www.grivel.com/company/product_history

Even better is this expanded article, also from Grivel, showing drawings of traditional "piolets" which were modified agricultural tools. You can see how they were assembled. It is in Italian, but Google Translate does a passable job with it.

http://www.grivel.com/inc/read_more_iceaxes.php

06_picche.jpg
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See, that's exactly what I'd like to do in attempting to build my own; find an existing tool head that I can reshape to suit. Not for hanging off rock faces mind, but to give some purchase while crossing snow covered slopes.
 
They are very cool, and there are definitely collectors of vintage climbing gear out there. Might not get a lot of response in this forum from guys that collect this stuff, but they are out there.

Boots, crampons, axes, and ropes are all interesting to mountaineering collectors.
 
Alocksly said:
Just as an aside; I was in the REI flagship store in Seattle yesterday and I found, tucked in amongst the Gerbers and official Ber Gryls approved merchandise, a small selection of Wetterlings hatchets with honest to god wooden handles.
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Who'd a thunk it?
 
Just a quick note to DIY. The reading that I have done on ductile to brittle transition temperatures indicate that the simple steels 10xx, loose a lot of toughness around 0 F, @ -18 C. So repurposing an old ax might not be a good idea.
 
I just scored a different kind of ice axe, made for harvesting & selling ice. It's a Gifford-Wood model 607. Curiously these don't have the rounded bit of most ice harvesting axes.

4.JPG




It's also called a New York pattern.

Gifford%20607%20ad.JPG
 
Sweet! There's one in an antique store not too far from me that I thought about picking up, but the blade is pretty bent...almost like a banana. Wouldn't be good for much other than a wall hanger, and I have plenty of axes for that if I wanted.
 
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