My new favorite axe

[Twindog]

This is my new favorite axe — an old Walters head that I hung on a 36-inch haft with perfectly imperfect horizontal grain. The head isn’t marked, but I think it’s a 3.5 pounder. I chose this haft with the poor grain orientation because it was going to be a practice hang until I got my skills up.


Here it is next to my 5-pound Collins, which is the splitting axe I’ve used extensively for about 30 years. It, too, has a 36-inch haft. It’s one heavy beast with a thick haft. It’s like swinging a dump truck.

You can see that I thinned out the Walters’ haft a lot. It’s curvy and flexible. What makes me love this axe is that it is lightening fast to use, comfortable and secure in the hand and has incredible shock-absorbing qualities, probably due to the horizontal grain and curvy, thinned out haft. It’s so fun to use it rivals binge drinking.


Here’s the head:

The learning curve on this hang was steep. The axe is basically a result of a long chain of mistakes and corrections. The first hang failed, largely because I didn’t cut the kerfs deeply enough and didn’t sink the wedges deeply enough. So I hammered out the haft with a drift, recut the kerfs — this was a double cross wedge — refit the head and banged the wedges in deep.


The head is on solid now.

To rehang the head, I had to cut off the swell of the haft enough to hammer on it with a dead-blow hammer. Then I recut the faun’s foot, but cut it the wrong way.

Cut this way, the base of my hand would fall off the haft, making the swell useless. To fix this mistake, I cut a wedge out of a block of black walnut that I had. I was going to make wedges out of the walnut, but they were not strong enough to take a beating. They’d break off. But as a swell, walnut should work and maybe make a fashion statement. I drilled some shallow holes for the glue and drilled out a hole for a 1 5/8 coated exterior screw.

This fix turned out really well. It gave my hand a solid grip and allowed the exaggerated undercut of the swell to provide excellent purchase.

I tried the new Walters out on some rounds I had stashed in my wood shed. The Collins is going to be better for heavy stuff, but the Walters just ate up normal rounds like it hadn’t eaten for a week. It’s much easier to use than the Collins. I suspect that it will be a perfect felling axe because it takes deep bites and is so easy to swing accurately. The long haft gives the head nice acceleration and speed.


Here are both axes in their natural haunts:

 

[Twindog]

Here's the profiles of the two axes. And, yes, that's a giant aluminum wedge on the Collins. I tore up the original haft on five cords of nearly unsplitable 4-foot diameter Doug fir that loggers left because the bole was too curved for the mill. I'd never hung an axe before, but the aluminum wedge made it easy because I could bang it in super tight.

 

[rjdankert]

. . .But as a swell, walnut should work and maybe make a fashion statement. . .

. . .

Lemonade out of lemons. Good job.

Bob

 

[quinton]

You'll be searching the bins for horizontal grain before long, Twindog..

 

[Square_peg]

This is my new favorite axe — an old Walters head that I hung on a 36-inch haft with perfectly imperfect horizontal grain.

I like how you fixed the swell. The swell doesn't take a lot of impact or shock. It just needs too feel good in the hand. And I've always liked the look of those Montreal pattern axes.

Many have noted that a light head on a longer haft feels great in hand.

Thanks for the post and the pics.