rockman0
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Post pictures of your hatchet head and you will get good advice on a handle. It may be easier to buy a handle and fit the head rather than make one from a stave. Thanks
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My first handle from a stave
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Post pictures of your hatchet head and you will get good advice on a handle. It may be easier to buy a handle and fit the head rather than make one from a stave. Thanks
This one looked straight to me but apparently I created a bow in it along the way. With a little advice from Quinton I got it pretty close to perfectly flat.
Nice looking piece of wood! My comment about straight vs crooked staves was not aimed to you. I could see right off that you selected wisely. You don't obtain straight staves from a crooked log!
rockman0
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Haha! And I didn't take it that way, I understood your post but wanted everyone to know a small mistake is something that can be fixed. Quinton won't send a crooked stave unless you ask for one. Provided one is patient and willing to adjust their approach, It's part of your earlier post regarding $15 house handle vs stave.
Betcha he could come up with a tantalizing horizontal grain 'stick', instead of vertical, though.
rockman0
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I refuse that bet! The man has some innate relationship with wood. He would do it just to infuriate Old Axe Man.
Were I still young and blessed with bountiful energy I'd have loved to straight haft (one vertical grain and the other horizontal) two identical heads and 'go to town with them' on a mound of hardwood rounds just to experience how much difference there was between the two.
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Quinton does not really infuriate me anymore. I changed my attitude when I found out about his fondness for pig meat and pineapples. I now think of it as "We agree to disagree" on the vertical vs horizontal grain issue. BUT, I have seen some Quinton photos lately that look like a vertical grain hang to me! I just did not comment so as not to stir the pot.
rockman0
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I would like to make that comparison myself, I'm no spring chicken so I best get a move on before my back decides to deny the activity.
rockman0
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Haha, it's best not to stir the pot if you can resist.
Glad you guys are at the agree to disagree stage. I'm with you and quinton on the pork and pineapples. Hard to top that dish!
Fresh, homegrown pork is magical. So are juicy, perfectly ripe German maters..I prefer the Sudduth strain of Brandywine. I just wish I could gorge myself on one of those perfectly ripe white pineapples someday.
Bernie, you are right about my recent hangs, all have been vertical grain hangs. There is a reason for that though. The tree that the staves were from was a good tree, but was a little on the small side with the sapwood being a tad thin. For a horizontal grained haft I need at least a 3" thickness of sapwood, and I just didn't have it from that tree. I have some staves seasoning right now that will allow me to make some horizontal grained handles.
It dawned on me a few months ago that the sapwood thickness issue may be the reason that we don't see more vintage horizontal grained handles than we do. The old timers preferred white sapwood for handles, as do I, and it takes a really good tree to get it. Most hickories just have around 2 1/2 inches.
Here is a video of me and my most prized axe. A friend gave me the head back in the 80's. The axe was issued to him in 1937 when he went into the CCC's. I went straight home and made a horizontal grained handle for it from a big pignut hickory, I guess the handle is nearly 30 years old now. The axe saw a lot of use for the first 10 years after hanging it, and has been used every year since then regularly, mostly in the winter for limbing, and topping firewood trees.
Me,and two of my sons went to work on some firewood one evening up the holler, when my oldest son asked if he could take a short video with his new phone of me chopping. I said sure, but I didn't realize it would be posted on YouTube, or I would have removed my jacket and put on a show.
As soon we got there, my little feist treed a squirrel, you can hear him in the background.https://youtu.be/5bekcCua5dY
Horizontal grain is smooth as silk, no shock like vertical grain. If you have chopped with an axe and know the feel, the feel of horizontal grain will be unmistakable.
Da da dada da dom 'Should you choose to accept this mission the tape (measure) will self destruct in 10 seconds': Seek out a stave with an inherent horizontal curvature to it to match that of a curved axe handle. It'll be a very gentle "S" in shape.
rockman0
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In order to have gone with horizontal grain on this handle I would have to work within the red lines. Not enough thickness as quinton stated earlier. But I'm waiting patiently on this new batch he is drying. Maybe I can talk him out of a good thick one.
And as you see it tapered down on the end for the fawns foot.
And as you see it tapered down on the end for the fawns foot.
Thanks! I'll have some good thick ones that will be dry enough to work this winter.