My Barco cruiser review

[Liam Ryan]

I have wanted a cruiser axe for a long time, ever since I saw Dick Proenneke use one to build a log cabin in Alaska on a PBS show. Actually like a lot of people those images inspired my love of the outdoors, pretty much. Not a lot of cruisers are being made anywhere, but I found one company called Barco, and they make a cruiser called the kelly woodslasher. (what a cool name!) I tried getting them to mail me one to Canada after reading Woodtrekker's review on his blog, but they never even responded to my e-mail. It was a long journey, but finally, thanks to the help of fellow forumite Steve Tall, he got me in touch with the Vido family, who were able to get one ordered and mailed to their PO box in Maine, then it was mailed off to me.

I really had to do nothing but mail a money order and send a few e-mails, they were really great. (Despite me being pretty close minded and critical about Miss Vido chopping wood barefoot in a thread a while back, which she was able to forgive and I am glad to consider her a friend now. )
We ordered the barco double pack, and we would each get one. Miss Vido was kind enough to send me the nicer of the two, but they were supposedly similar in fit and finish, more or less.

OK on to the review. I picked it up at the PO on the way to work and the paint lasted only a few hours, as the whole thing fit into the sand blaster cabinet.
Weighed on a kitchen scale (after material removed) she comes in at 3 pounds, 6.6 ounces. (A bit more than the advertised 2.5, must be just the head weight) and just a bit under 28 inches OAL.
I also decided I wanted an octagonal handle so I clamped it down and sanded away with a power sander, then put a nice sharp edge on one side and a slightly blunter one on the other, all with a file. The steel was not overly hard and this was not too hard a task, it was not as blunt as I thought it would be, either. I was quite pleased with the handiness and weight of the axe, it was like a boys axe but just felt great to hold. It felt even better with an octagon handle, I think I am hooked, and it really didn't take that long, either.

I was informed that the vido's axe had not performed too well, but was not given any further details as it may detract from my review, such as cause me to not push it too it's limits. I was disappointed to hear this, both in thinking mine may be a dud, and that they had not been happy with their axe which I had pretty much made them buy. But I was determined to put this little axe through it's paces and see if it fell short in any way.

I started with a standing dead birch tree not far off the trail. It was slightly punky higher up but very solid up to about 6 feet. I am not a lumberjack, and had never actually swung a double bit axe, but I could feel how well balanced it was right away. Accurate cuts were very easy, and also being my first axe with a decent high centerline, I was pretty surprised to see the size of the chips being popped out. My dog is not the brightest but she keeps away while I am chopping, and I keep an eye on her too, but she was seeing the big chips flying and as soon as I stopped to look at some chips she came bounding in to grab a few choice ones. She is a fan of this axe too, then.

The stump.

So I was impressed at how fast this tree went down, but I was thinking too myself "Sure Liam, that' was some hard wood, but you are no expert here. That could have been a bit rotten." So I headed deeper off the path and picked a similar sized maple. It was alive but we have trees to spare up here in Canada. Plus I picked the ugliest one I could find and went to town. I had pretty similar results, and actually decided to see if I could chop left handed. I never tried this before and so I went slow at first. The combination of the balance and the octagon handle offering intuitive edge awareness (is that a thing?)
I was able to get some pretty decent chops on the opposite side. Checking the edge pretty frequently I saw no damage, only a slight dulling. I did notice that the blunter edge really did not perform as well at all, which is rather obvious I guess. I am wondering if I should match both sides so I can have too super edges, or keep one blunt just in case. maybe I will just refine the blunter edge a bit. I was feeling pretty pumped about the axe and decided it was time to head home. (but not before a quick shot of what was tagging along)

So, on the way home I was thinking I was pleased with my new axe, but what had gone wrong with the Vido's axe? The only thing I could think of was the head slipped loose, as mine moved up a fraction of an inch during some chopping, but really it was half a hair right at the start, and keeping a close eye on it, it did not budge again. But I still couldn't get it out of my head that maybe I had not given it enough of a challenge. At the same time I was thinking about fatwood, I had never found any in my casual searches for it, and I had to buy some from walmart. I decided to look for some along the trail on the way back, and booted a stump, no dice. I spotted another stump and on my way to it I literally tripped over what looked like a rotten gnarled thing in the ground. I gave it a kick and it was as hard as a rock, then dug my mora in and dug a chip out, gave a whiff and it smelled like turpentine . I decided then and there to kill two birds with one stone and test this axe and get me some good Nova Scotia fatwood. I was not sure if it was crazy to use an axe for this but I was determined, and since it was covered in dirt I used my blunter edge.

With duct tape sheath.

The good stuff.

This was some hard stuff and it went very well, I can see no edge damage, and now I have some fatwood.:thumbup:

So, from my perspective, I can recommend this axe. Miss Vido will be along shortly to share her experience, too, so don't run out and buy all they have in stock, I am very curious to hear it myself. But the bottom line is I am happy with mine and I was not disappointed in the cruisers that I have wanted for such a long time. Now I just need to make a nice sheath for it.

 

[Square_peg]

Great write up. Thanks.

Sounds like a dandy little axe you have there. And I like the octagon handle.

Have you tried the fatwood yet? It should burn like a candle. Looks like good stuff you found.

 

[Liam Ryan]

Not yet, I had just done a little test of all my firemaking stuff and the poor performance of my fatwood got me thinking about it.
I just pulled the chunk out of my pack and resin is seeping out of it, I think you are right, it's good stuff! Now I have to clean my pack.
Oh yeah, first coat of tung oil going on the axe soon, too.

 

[Square_peg]

Hahaha! I keep a little round tinder can like that in my pack, too. Cotton balls sure take a spark from ferrocerium rods well.

 

[Liam Ryan]

Yeah they are really the best tinder I have tried. If you want to see the review I did of my fire kit there here's the link.
http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php/1044526-Tested-out-my-fire-kit-today?p=11924527#post11924527

I am linking both these threads to each other now, haha.

 

[neeman]

Good review

Been on my want list for ages
Next time I am in the US..........

 

[garry3]

Nice write up Liam. Going to have to try out one of them knifes(the mora) like you got sometime. So popular there must be a reason.

 

[coreboy]

nice write-up. good job touching it up too.

 

[Sparrow92]

Miss Vido is finally here with a review of her own. Since Liam gave his cruiser a pretty high praise, I feel ever-so-slightly bad about what I'm going to share of my experiences.

First of all, let me say that I consider this axe to be very unique. I'll elaborate on that, but for now, some of my first impressions:

Barco's general axe description on their website sounds very impressive. They don't say too much on the specific product descriptions, but the implication is that these are US made.

"These are the finest quality US made axes available. The Kelly Perfect® features a full polished head with deep bevels to reduce binding of the head in the wood, painted a distinctive blue, while the Kelly Woodslasher® line is painted red with polished edge."

However, I am not convinced, and though I would like to think that this company would not deliberately mislead their customers, at this point I am doubtful of their honesty.
The most obvious thing to cause my suspicion that these "Forged with pride in the USA" axes are imported, was that the heads are not stamped with any name or trademark, or even weight. The heads do have a faint "BARCO / WEAR SAFETY GOGGLES USA / 08 1" printed on one face (oh, thanks for reminding me, where did I leave those safety goggles that I always wear when using an axe?). As soon as the red paint is removed, the only mention USA is gone with it. If one of the last remaining axe manufactures in the US was proud of their product, don't you think they would be sure to leave a prominent trademark, one that will speak to the quality of their axes in years to come?

Back to the actual axe, whatever the origin.

The two-pack "2 1/2 lb. Kelly Woodslasher Michigan double bit cruisers" from Barco; I snapped this photo before the one on the left was sent on it's way to Liam.

Taking a closer look at the one we kept, it seemed worthwhile to document how the edges had been ground. Or over-ground, I should say. The edge had been unevenly ground, too much taken off at the top and bottom corners, with one corner nearly burned and a big burr left on the edge.

Peter (the guy who post occasional rants on AxeConnected) spent half an hour thinning down one of the faces to the kind of edge we keep on our felling axes, which is thinner than the standard these days, but nearly on par with how the old fellas in these parts liked their axes. He didn't file right up to the corners, but the top right one already looks like it's had too much metal removed.

I should add that we hadn't done anything to the handle by this point; I could already tell that, at 20mm, it was thicker than I would like to use (though admittedly thinner than most conventional axe handles these days), but Peter suggested that I try it out as is.
So, I ran off into the woods to give it a test run, felled a small green fir tree and then quickly hewed a short piece of the trunk.

The thick handle bothered me, and I felt like it should have been longer for the weight of the head, but overall, I was pretty pleased with the little cruiser by that point. Even impressed with how clean a hewing job it did, I was already thinking about the review I'd be giving it; if not glowing, at least pretty positive. Well, that was before I went to limb the few small branches…
About three-quarters of the way along the length of this little tree, something felt wrong. There was a fair bit of swearing involved when I looked at the axe; the edge had gotten both chipped off and bent over -- "rolled" is the proper term, I think. So I went back over the length of the tree and located the largest limbs they were all smaller than 1/2 an inch in diameter.

This is where I started feeling that I was in possession of a pretty unique little axe; I've never before heard of this happening. I am by no means knowledgeable when it comes to steel quality and forged tools in general, but I was under the impression that edge tools can sometimes be too hard, causing the steel to chip, or too soft, causing it to buckle or bend over. Never seen both at once though…
Here's a closer look at the edge. Unique, all right!

I had taken another axe along that day, a 2 3/4 lb. Swedish military surplus single bit on a 27" handle, with the edge filed down the way we like them. So before heading back home, I felled and limbed another fir with that one. The edge remained intact…
Then for good measure I chopped down and limbed a third tree using only a kukri knife, a new one that Steve Tall kindly sent for us to test out. (Thanks Steve!) The edge on this kukri was thinner than others I'd seen, but when put through the same treatment as the cruiser, it passed the test with flying colours, no damage whatsoever.

Thus I suspect that it can't have been only those 'tough' branches that were to blame…

Back on topic, now, at Peter's suggestion I took the cruiser out again, this time using the opposite face (I took the burr off and smoothed the transition between the micro-bevel and the rest of the face but no actual re-shaping this time). I managed to take down a small green beech with a great deal of effort, but the edge had virtually no penetration ability, unsurprisingly.

The next day Peter removed the damaged edge on the first face, this time leaving a thicker profile on it. By this time I had gotten tired of using that handle the way it had come from the factory, so I took a rasp to it and pretty much just removed the lacquer, then smoothed it down with a piece of broken glass (best scraper I've ever used!). Never got too close to the head though…

I happened to think of taking photos of the labels on either side of the handle before scraping them off.

Good thing too, this one had a very important message, as I was soon to find out.

Not nicely 'octagonalized' like Liam's, but it sure felt better after being slightly flattened and the lacquer removed.

Then I headed off into to the woods and picked a fair-sized poplar to try it out on.

I was nearly done notching it, when I took another swing and the handle came back empty, with the head lying in the snow at the base of the tree. I just stared in disbelief. No, I never hit the handle; that fine american hickory just couldn't take the combination of the soft green poplar wood and the girl swinging it. (Weren't these cruisers supposed to be used by grown men?)

The "wear safety goggles" is still faintly visible; now I understand... Shouldn't they have added "wear steel toe boots"?

Now, I'd like to hear your opinions on this one; have you ever seen such a porous-looking hickory?

Another thing we realized once the handle broke, was that the 1 ounce difference between our axe and Liam's was in the handle. Its wood was amazingly light, not even close to the weight of normal hickory. If we take Barco's word that the handle was USA hickory, not some strange Chinese wood that looks like an Aero bar on the inside, then our tentative conclusions are that this wood had dry rot.
Steve Tall thought that it may have been due to poor quality hickory, from being spring growth, instead of stronger summer growth (but Peter thinks it had more of a wood quality flaw than just that).

Okay, but we didn't give up on this axe yet; Peter knocked the remaining broken handle out of the eye, and quickly fitted it with a thin (18mm) 30" maple handle.
This time I tried splitting some firewood with the still original (thick) face. This axe does not have a great splitting profile, but it worked fine with the "flicking" technique I use.

Then, with that lovely new maple handle, I headed off to see what damage I could do next. Taking along the Swedish military surplus axe again, I did some comparisons of the chopping efficiency. Not a real fair comparison, but the Swedish axe's extra weight and the Barco's (now) longer handle, balanced out a little bit.
I took down a pair of dying poplars, trying to make an unbiased comparison of the effort expended, then did the same with two larger firs. (One more strike against this "USA" cruiser; the steel has such poor edge retention in comparison to all of the other axes I've been using. I could hardly believe how fast it dulled even while bucking poplar with no knots.)

The Swedish axe won, hands down. I chopped the trees down in approximately 1/3 less time, and as I limbed their respective firs, the Swedish axe left much "cleaner" cuts, while the cruiser tore the bark surrounding the limbs more. Not great examples in these photos, but I think it shows okay.

I wasn't happy with the edge on the cruiser (the one that had been thinned, damaged, repaired and left thicker) so in the spirit of second chances, Peter filed it down again, though not quite as thin as the first time. Again, I chopped down a couple firs, then carefully limbed them. Whew, no damage! Then I took down a tiny little fir to use as a pushing pole for the larger trees, and started limbing the 1/4 " diameter branches. Woops, there goes another piece of the edge! A few good cuss-words, and I headed home.

That was the end of my using this axe for the time being. During the time that I was testing the Barco cruiser, I'd also done some chopping with several other axes of adequately thin edge profiles, none of which ever suffered torn edges and broken handles. I might add that the maple handle is still intact, after being put through tougher treatment than the hickory one lasted long enough to endure...

So, would I recommend this axe to anyone based on my experiences? Com'on, now, do I really have to answer that one?

~Ashley Sparrow Vido~

 

[bearhunter]

Thanks for your honest review Sparrow
Whew... That's sad

ETA...
I question whether or not their really made in the USA too.

 

[Liam Ryan]

Wow, I was not expecting it to be that bad! I would be sending that axe back for sure. (that is if you even wanted another one)
I had mine out today to do some more testing, not much but I found a standing seasoned pine, because I wanted to try cutting some hard pine knots. (Ashley had mentioned it was something that was hard on the axe.)
Brought along my older style wetterlings, very hard and sharp thin edge, the barco out cut it easy.

The knots were really hard,

I really want to make sure I am not being too easy on it, but I can pretty confidently say that Ashley got a lemon, now. I feel bad, I was responsible for you guys getting this axe in the first place. If they won't refund your money I will buy it from you, if nothing else I will polish it up and make a wall hanger out of it.

BTW, Sparrow where did you get the maple haft? I am always looking for a local source of axe handles.

 

[Steve Tall]

Miss Vido, I believe that's the most comprehensive (and informative) review of an axe I've ever seen.

In other words, your first time up at bat, and you hit a home run.
(Hmm, maybe I should use a hockey analogy. )

 

[Double Ott]

About two moths ago, I ordered a Barco Kelly Perfect Dayton and a two pack of their Woodslasher Cruisers. The Barco Kelly appears to be OK. The cruisers were a different story. One of them had a decent finish to the head and a nice grain alignment to it's helve. The second cruiser had a terrible finish to the head, like any forging scale had been left on it prior to them painting it. The grain alignment of the second helve was as bad as it can get. Both needed to have the bits touched up.

It was almost like they packaged a second quality cruiser with a nice one. It only coast an extra $20 for the second cruiser when you buy the two pack so it wasn't a great loss. Just be aware.

There's a Barco Woodslasher Swamper behind the Kelly that I had purchased earlier. Barco bought the Kelly name and tooling giving them the right to produce & market Kellys.

The Kelly Perfect came with a blunt edge. I did see a review that had mentioned the same thing about the blunt edge. It is left that way for one to profile the bit the way you want it. They don't tell you that, so for the novice axe buyer, it will be a challenge.

I have around 140 axes, so these haven't taken a bite of wood yet.

Tom

 

[Liam Ryan]

Tom, I remembered reading this info a while back doing research for this axe. That's a real shame a company would do that, tossing a crappy axe in with a good one. Not to mention dangerous, a sharp (relatively) axe head flying through the air is not something I would want to be anywhere near.

 

[Square_peg]

Thanks for the very detailed write up, Sparrow. You were much more patient with that axe than I would have been. You really gave it a chance and it failed miserably.

Lousy steel and a rotten handle to boot! Sad.

 

[Sparrow92]

bearhunter - I've already started attempting to make Barco "own up" to that which I am quite certain of, but we'll see what comes of it.


Steve - It's probably a good thing that this in an internet conversation… no one sees me blushing when you give me such an over the top compliment.
And you know how big a part you played in me posting this review, so thank you!


Liam - Please don't feel bad about any of this, it's been an interesting little experiment, we didn't mind at all. I tried to approach the review of this axe as open-mindedly and unbiased as possible, and had a good time with it (even with all the swearing involved).
And no worries, we'll keep this axe, even if only for posterity. I'll probably use it as a splitter for easy wood, and maybe we'll even find some other uses for it.
I'm not so much looking for a refund, but I do plan to follow up on my communication with Barco. I will try to keep you all updated as it plays out, to hopefully save other people from having this experience.

I'm really glad that you're pleased with your axe though. There must have been a difference in the two of them, because just by the look of those pine knots, I know my cruiser wouldn't have held up to them. You may not have had yours filed down as thin though.

As it happens, that maple handle was a "reject" from an old handle maker friend who gave us some of the handles that he couldn't sell, ones that twisted slightly, or had other imperfections. This one had slightly too much wood removed at the knob as he roughed out the blank with a hatchet, but even so, it feels better than Barco's Aero bar handle. (just found out that Areo bars may not be available in the US, so for anyone who doesn't know what they look like, just refer to my photo of the broken handle and imagine that in chocolate; filled with tiny air bubbles, it tastes alright, but it doesn't have much structural strength).


Double Ott - While writing my review I had referred back to Liam's original "quest for a cruiser" thread, and thought of linking to your comment, with my own thoughts on the subject. I ended up deleting that part of my review, because it was based on my speculations, and the review was already on the long side. But since you brought the subject up again, here are my musings:

Thinking about this, I wondered if perhaps Barco received an inferior batch of handles at some point, and decided to sell them off by offering this "2 shelf pack", with the second axe at a reduced price… always making sure to put one good and one inferior axe into each order, thinking that the customers would be happy enough with one, and consider the second axe not such a bad deal even if it didn't perform as well, (never mind break within the first hour of use) and not bother complaining.
However, Peter felt that it was more likely just low quality control, and in fact I have to agree. Why would Barco knowingly sell a second quality when this is obviously very bad advertising for their company?

 

[Double Ott]

Sparrow92, I've sold that second quality cruiser to a friend WITH a full discription of it's condition. He bought it to give to a friend of his. I haven't heard back if there was any issues with it.

If the bits were touched up, I'm sure it would work well. Sometimes I wonder if I make too much of an issue about grain alignment???

Thank you for your great review.

Tom

 

[halfaxe]

Great reviews and information from both of you. Thanks for doing them.

 

[chuxwan]

Thanks for the excellent reviews