Need your opinions on thishaft

[A17]

Another thought for your haft. This is a neighbors 4lb Stiletto double bit. Hopefully soon to be mine....

 

[Curt Hal]

View attachment 1072316 View attachment 1072317 So, I got this 3.5 lb Kelly Perfect and it was one of the most bashed up heads I’ve ever worked on. After hours of wire cupping and filing, I decided it could be salvaged. I had a straight, octagonal, 36” House Handle that I wanted to use. I got it nicely fitted, shaped a wedge to fit the tricky eye, tapped it into place then drove it home. For the first (and last) time, I set the base of the handle on a thick piece of quartz I had left over from a Reno. When the wedge was set and I put the axe in the vice to trim the wedge, I noticed a chunk of the knob had broken off. I trimmed the knob to remove the chipped section.
My question is this: is there enough swell to use this axe safely? Can it be used, or would you cut off the handle and hang it again?

So, I thought about what to do with this haft for awhile. One night, I was watching a YouTube piece featuring a guy wrapping his hatchet handles with cord, then covering the cord with epoxy. Now, I’m not a fan of using paracord unless it has a specific use; seems kinda trendy among the bushcraft folks and survivalists. But I do use it to hang tarps when we are camping, so I had some. I decided to experiment. I did a 2” wrap, as you can see, applied a few coats of crazy glue around the wrap to solidify it and bond it to the haft, sanded the crazy glue to remove any roughness, and finished it with several coats of spray varnish. Now it feels like there’s a lot more purchase.