Just bought my first axe. Help!

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rang3

Joined
Mar 18, 2015
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Hi, I just bought a Rinaldi American Boys Axe. 700g head, 24 inch slip fit handle.

While I was expecting the finish to be somewhat rough...

The head wobbles, front to back. There is considerable empty space at the top of the eye which the handle is not wide enough (front to back) to fill. You can even see all the way through the eye to the other side through the gap. (See photos below)

What's the best way to fix these?

Also, is the amount of handle space above the eye ideal for a slip fit, or should this be adjusted as well?


XqboS3w.jpeg



Looking down from top of handle:
0MFtW3m.jpg
 
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I’ve only ever used one slip fit style. The head can snug up as you use it. You can also shape the handle a bit to help the fit. I believe this is normal for your axe.
 
You can carve that for a closer fit, or make one that fits better.

Personally, although I don’t own a Rinaldi, I’d do both. I enjoy having multiple handles for my handforged tomahawks (which that Rinaldi looks similar to me). I often carve prototypes from an easy wood like red alder to test out weird shapes, before I carve the real one from a harder species.

Course, if you don’t enjoy carving, just go out and use it.

Parker
 
rang3 said:
Hi, I just bought a Rinaldi American Boys Axe. 700g head, 24 inch slip fit handle.

While I was expecting the finish to be somewhat rough...

The head wobbles, front to back. There is considerable empty space at the top of the eye which the handle is not wide enough (front to back) to fill. You can even see all the way through the eye to the other side through the gap. (See photos below)

What's the best way to fix these?

Also, is the amount of handle space above the eye ideal for a slip fit, or should this be adjusted as well?


XqboS3w.jpeg



Looking down from top of handle:
0MFtW3m.jpg
Click to expand...
If that eye is out of whack as it looks I would ask for my money back.
 
Eyes are not always perfectly formed. To get a better fit, tap the head on, then remove. Look for the rub marks on the wood and sand them down. Repeat as necessary and slowly you will reform the handle to match the eye. As you do so it will get tighter. Go slow, once wood is removed it can’t be out back on. This is not an uncommon thing to do when fitting a handle to an axe.
 
As stated above, it will become a tighter fit as you use it but if you want to help it along it's way you could just sand it. Get the fit as tight as you can get it and if there is still a large gap just mark the contact points. The higher up on the handle you can get the head the better it will fit.
 
A visible gap is common on that model since, for some reason, they manufacture the handles a little short front-to-back to fully fill the eye. Fortunately, with slip fit handles this is functionally not a problem, unlike with wedge-fit axes, as the wood above the eye completely prevents any possibility of the head actually coming off the end of the handle, and I've never seen any harm come to the handle itself as a result of a snug-fitting slip fit that didn't fully fill the eye.

The looseness is, however, and you'll want to remove the loose handle, deburr your eye with a round file, and then rasp off any visible ledge or shelf above the eye at the same slope as the region below it. Then re-chamfer the top of the handle for toughness and drive it back into the top of the eye. You should now have a secure fit, regardless of if a gap is present. If you prefer to make a fresh handle entirely, a pickaxe handle is a good off-the-shelf starting point to cut/rasp down to size.
 
FortyTwoBlades said:
A visible gap is common on that model since, for some reason, they manufacture the handles a little short front-to-back to fully fill the eye. Fortunately, with slip fit handles this is functionally not a problem, unlike with wedge-fit axes, as the wood above the eye completely prevents any possibility of the head actually coming off the end of the handle, and I've never seen any harm come to the handle itself as a result of a snug-fitting slip fit that didn't fully fill the eye.

The looseness is, however, and you'll want to remove the loose handle, deburr your eye with a round file, and then rasp off any visible ledge or shelf above the eye at the same slope as the region below it. Then re-chamfer the top of the handle for toughness and drive it back into the top of the eye. You should now have a secure fit, regardless of if a gap is present. If you prefer to make a fresh handle entirely, a pickaxe handle is a good off-the-shelf starting point to cut/rasp down to size.
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Wow, so it's normal for there to be a snug fit at the bottom of the eye (front to back), but almost a 1cm gap at the top??

If I'm understanding you correctly, even if such a gap exists (preventing a tight fit front to back), the side to side fit can be made tight enough that the axe head won't move front to back during use?

I had to look up chamfer, didn't know what it meant! It looks like it means, in this case, to make a 45 degree bevel at the top of the handle around the perimeter, rather than the kind of rounded 90 degree corners which are there now. Correct me if I'm wrong.

BTW I've been to your site a bunch in recent weeks. Love the images you have on a lot of the Rinaldi listings showing their profiles. Yours is the only site I've seen that on. Unfortunately, it seems many models are out of stock.
 
rang3 said:
Wow, so it's normal for there to be a snug fit at the bottom of the eye (front to back), but almost a 1cm gap at the top??

If I'm understanding you correctly, even if such a gap exists (preventing a tight fit front to back), the side to side fit can be made tight enough that the axe head won't move front to back during use?

I had to look up chamfer, didn't know what it meant! It looks like it means, in this case, to make a 45 degree bevel at the top of the handle around the perimeter, rather than the kind of rounded 90 degree corners which are there now. Correct me if I'm wrong.

BTW I've been to your site a bunch in recent weeks. Love the images you have on a lot of the Rinaldi listings showing their profiles. Yours is the only site I've seen that on. Unfortunately, it seems many models are out of stock.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't call the gap "ideal" but it's functionally just fine, so long as you're able to get the rest of it nice and snug, and it's very common for that particular size of that model to have a bit of a gap, yes. No need to change the existing rounded edge on the top of the handle, but in the process of thinning it out above the eye to match the taper of the region it was occupying usually ends up creating a pretty crisp edge on the top and you want to take those sharp edges off the wood so accidental impacts don't chew it up real bad. This can be either in the form of a chamfer (easiest) or a filleted edge (like it has currently) but basically just needs to not be a fully sharp 90°, which is vulnerable.

And yes, due to supply chain challenges we're out of a lot of stuff from Rinaldi currently. We're working on fixing that, but it's an uphill battle, mostly against other tasks we have to tackle on a daily basis with our limited manpower lol
 
FortyTwoBlades said:
I wouldn't call the gap "ideal" but it's functionally just fine, so long as you're able to get the rest of it nice and snug, and it's very common for that particular size of that model to have a bit of a gap, yes. No need to change the existing rounded edge on the top of the handle, but in the process of thinning it out above the eye to match the taper of the region it was occupying usually ends up creating a pretty crisp edge on the top and you want to take those sharp edges off the wood so accidental impacts don't chew it up real bad. This can be either in the form of a chamfer (easiest) or a filleted edge (like it has currently) but basically just needs to not be a fully sharp 90°, which is vulnerable.

And yes, due to supply chain challenges we're out of a lot of stuff from Rinaldi currently. We're working on fixing that, but it's an uphill battle, mostly against other tasks we have to tackle on a daily basis with our limited manpower lol
Click to expand...

Great info, thanks.

I just found out that a bunch of the Rinaldi axes are apparently wedged. I had been thinking for weeks they were all slip fit! (which is what I prefer)

I had my eye on the Trento 700g with 30 inch handle, but I was just informed that Rinaldi axes with the handle protruding above the eye in the photos, and a hole in the bottom of the handle, as is the case with that one, are wedged.

I've also been told that there is a slip fit version of the 700g trento, and I see that your site has one of those (albeit sold out).

Do you know if the 700g Trento head is identical on the wedged and slip fit versions, or are there two different style heads/eyes?

I'm wondering the same about some of their other axes, like the Lavagna (which photos on the listings I'm looking at show a hole at the bottom of the handle and no protruding handle above the eye).

What do you think of their 7.75 inch blade Hunter's knife, and the half wide Bergamo (13.5in blade) billhook? Too long/unwieldy compared to their 10-in blade billhooks, or is the extra length nice?
 
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rang3 said:
Great info, thanks.

I just found out that a bunch of the Rinaldi axes are apparently wedged. I had been thinking for weeks they were all slip fit! (which is what I prefer)

I had my eye on the Trento 700g with 30 inch handle, but I was just informed that Rinaldi axes with the handle protruding above the eye in the photos, and a hole in the bottom of the handle, as is the case with that one, are wedged.

I've also been told that there is a slip fit version of the 700g trento, and I see that your site has one of those (albeit sold out).

Do you know if the 700g Trento head is identical on the wedged and slip fit versions, or are there two different style heads/eyes?

I'm wondering the same about some of their other axes, like the Lavagna (which photos on the listings I'm looking at show a hole at the bottom of the handle and no protruding handle above the eye).

What do you think of their 7.75 inch blade Hunter's knife, and the half wide Bergamo (13.5in blade) billhook? Too long/unwieldy compared to their 10-in blade billhooks, or is the extra length nice?
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Their eyes are still slip-fit but they started offering wedge-fit handles a while back and I consider them sorely lacking. They're always loose when they get here due to the difference in humidity between Italy and the USA and you have to pull the wedges and rehang, which is doable but a pain, especially since it's a shallow slip fit style of eye. And yes, ones with a lanyard hole and no wood above the eye are the wedged handles. They just really aren't adept at doing wedge fits and the heads weren't designed to be optimized for it, so they require extra care when wedge fitting that just isn't there currently. Fortunately, the heads are great.

Dealers out there that have access to Rinaldi stuff largely have me to thank, as I advised the current distributor bringing most of it in on what to get. Unfortunately they happened to pick up wedged versions of a lot of models despite my stating clearly that they should opt for the slip fit handle versions.

As far as their hunting knife and half-wide Bergamo hooks go, they're excellent and whether you pick one up or not depends on if you have uses for those kinds of tools.
 
FortyTwoBlades said:
Their eyes are still slip-fit but they started offering wedge-fit handles a while back and I consider them sorely lacking. They're always loose when they get here due to the difference in humidity between Italy and the USA and you have to pull the wedges and rehang, which is doable but a pain, especially since it's a shallow slip fit style of eye. And yes, ones with a lanyard hole and no wood above the eye are the wedged handles. They just really aren't adept at doing wedge fits and the heads weren't designed to be optimized for it, so they require extra care when wedge fitting that just isn't there currently. Fortunately, the heads are great.

Dealers out there that have access to Rinaldi stuff largely have me to thank, as I advised the current distributor bringing most of it in on what to get. Unfortunately they happened to pick up wedged versions of a lot of models despite my stating clearly that they should opt for the slip fit handle versions.

As far as their hunting knife and half-wide Bergamo hooks go, they're excellent and whether you pick one up or not depends on if you have uses for those kinds of tools.
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Thanks for the feedback. Are the eyes of the various Rinaldi axes compatible at all (so that the same handles can be used with different heads), or all different?

To be totally honest, I'd really like a slip fit Russian ax. I love the head style. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a single seller of them in the US. All I can find is a couple professional sellers on eBay operating out of europe, selling used stuff, and I unfortunately don't have enough experience to know what I'm looking at.
 
Some models do share the same eye. Rinaldi's system of forging uses presses rather than drop forging, so they can forge thinner than drop forgers can, and they forge the bit and the eye separately from one another. When I first started importing them at one point they had a deal on some Trento pattern axes where they accidentally used something like a #5 eye on a #3 bit.
 
rang3 said:
Wow, so it's normal for there to be a snug fit at the bottom of the eye (front to back), but almost a 1cm gap at the top??

If I'm understanding you correctly, even if such a gap exists (preventing a tight fit front to back), the side to side fit can be made tight enough that the axe head won't move front to back during use?

I had to look up chamfer, didn't know what it meant! It looks like it means, in this case, to make a 45 degree bevel at the top of the handle around the perimeter, rather than the kind of rounded 90 degree corners which are there now. Correct me if I'm wrong.

BTW I've been to your site a bunch in recent weeks. Love the images you have on a lot of the Rinaldi listings showing their profiles. Yours is the only site I've seen that on. Unfortunately, it seems many models are out of stock.
Click to expand...
if you have a good round file i would try to get that top of the eye cleaned up so you have good contact through the whole eye to the handle. im not sure but i would imagine if you have a bits eye that has play with the handle your asking for possible breakage through any heavy usage.
 
FortyTwoBlades said:
Some models do share the same eye. Rinaldi's system of forging uses presses rather than drop forging, so they can forge thinner than drop forgers can, and they forge the bit and the eye separately from one another. When I first started importing them at one point they had a deal on some Trento pattern axes where they accidentally used something like a #5 eye on a #3 bit.
Click to expand...

How do Angelo B and Prandi products compare to Rinaldi?
 
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rang3 said:
How do Angelo B and Prandi products compare to Rinaldi?
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Both are good, but I consider them a step below Rinaldi. Both spend more money on presentation aspects (cosmetics to the would-be buyer) rather than performance factors like Rinaldi does. They're closer to the equivalent of an Italian "hardware store axe" if that makes sense. Rinaldis are forged the thinnest and have the hardest heat treatment, they're just rough-cut gems that need a little extra work to get them shined up, but they're fundamentally ready for work. Angelo and Prandi need a little extra work to get them *performing* well but less to get them pretty looking.
 
FortyTwoBlades said:
Both are good, but I consider them a step below Rinaldi. Both spend more money on presentation aspects (cosmetics to the would-be buyer) rather than performance factors like Rinaldi does. They're closer to the equivalent of an Italian "hardware store axe" if that makes sense. Rinaldis are forged the thinnest and have the hardest heat treatment, they're just rough-cut gems that need a little extra work to get them shined up, but they're fundamentally ready for work. Angelo and Prandi need a little extra work to get them *performing* well but less to get them pretty looking.
Click to expand...

Thanks, great answer.

Regarding billhooks, do people tend to prefer the longer (~13 in blade) or shorter (~10 in blade) ones?

It seems many of the models I see in YouTube videos (from other countries) aren't available here, like the mid size (~11.5 in blades) and extra thin Rinaldis.

The only thing I can find that's close (11-11.8 in blades) are ones made by Due Cigni and sold by Leoneshop, neither of whom I'm familiar with. They look just like the Rinaldis though.
 
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