George W. Sears, or Nesmuk, writes in a charming style. Camping and Woodcraft was published first in 1920. You can still pick it up new for about $6.
Here is what he wrote about the hatchet.
The hatchet and knives shown in the engraving will be found to fill the bill satisfactorily so far as cutlery may be required. Each is good and useful of its kind, the hatchet especially, being the best model I have ever found for a double-barreled pocket-axe. And just here let me digress for a little chat on the indispensable hatchet: for it is the most difficult piece of camp kit to obtain in perfection of which I have any knowledge. Before I was a dozen years old I came to realize that a light hatchet was the sine qua non in woodcraft, and I also found it the most difficult thing to get. I tried shingling hatchets, lathing hatchets, and the small hatchets found in country hardware stores, but none of them were satisfactory. I had quite a number made by blacksmiths who professed skill in making edge tools, and these were the worst of all, being like nothing on the earth or under itmurderous looking, clumsy, and all too heavy, with no balance or proportion. I had hunted twelve years before I caught up with the pocket-axe I was looking for. It was made in Rochester, by a surgical instrument maker named Bushnell. It cost time and money to get it. I worked one rainy Saturday fashioning the pattern in wood. Spoiled a day going to Rochester, waited a day for the blade, paid $3.00 for it, and lost a day coming home. Boat fare $1.00, and expenses $2.00, besides three days lost time, with another rainy Sunday for making leather sheath and hickory handle.
My witty friends, always willing to help me out in figuring the cost of my hunting and fishing gear, made the following business-like estimate, which they placed where I would be certain to see it first thing in the morning. Premising that of the five who assisted in that little joke, all stronger, bigger fellows than myself, four have gone where they never see the sun, I will copy the statement as it stands today, on paper yellow with age. For I have kept it over forty years.
A Woodsman
To getting up one limber-go-shiftless pocket-axe:
$3.00 Cost of blade
1.00 Fare on boat
3.00 Expenses for 3 days
3.75 Three days lost time at $1.25 per day
2.00 Two days making model, handle and sheath, say
------
12.75 Total
2.00 Per contra, by actual value of axe
------
10.75 Balance
Then they raised a horse laugh, and the cost of that hatchet became a standing joke and a slur on my business ability. What aggravated me most was, that the rascals were not so far out in their calculation. And was I so far wrong? That hatchet was my favorite for nearly thirty years. It has been upset twice by skilled workmen; and, if my friend Bero has not lost it, is still in service.
Would I have gone without it any year for one or two dollars? But I prefer the double blade. I want one thick, stunt edge for knots, deers bones, etc., and a fine, keen edge for cutting clear timber.
