Phantom Bevel or no Phantom Bevel

D

db cooper

Joined
Aug 13, 2014
Messages
3
I just picked up a lovely looking Connecticut head from a garage sale. Its got phantom bevels and was just wondering how they help/hurt and if they are to be looked at as a good thing/bad thing
 
I believe they serve a purpose in allowing the axe to be somewhat multipurpose. The phantom bevels reduce the friction/binding while the wedge/convex center portion can aid in splitting.
 
Here's a patent for the bevels (hollows) on axe heads, by William Kelly in 1889:

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https://www.google.com/patents/USD19056?dq=kelly+ax&hl=en&sa=X&ei=CUHsU_GhNua6igKG54CICA&ved=0CDEQ6AEwAw

Whether it helps or hurts, I think it helps, but by how much? Does it make a noticeable difference, or was the advantage mostly theoretical and used mainly for marketing purposes? Plenty of convex-sided axes seem to work fine without them.
 
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I bought the Council Tool jersey with the phantom bevels. Does it chop better? Not noticeably, but then I'm not swinging it into a tree for eight hours a day. If you appreciate the aesthetics of a beveled bit that's great, but for the amount of use a modern axeman needs from a tool you'd be fine either way. I freely confess that I like the look of the bevels and when I find a beveled head in the junk store the odds are good it'll follow me home. I think that the only way the "bevel" argument might be settled would be if someone unearthed a testimonial from an actual lumberjack from the turn of the century (well, the century before last actually) who had occasion to use both.

I just had the thought that someday some kid'll be asking me about how hard it was to use "turn of the century internet"
 
The subtle shaping of metal in that area was present on a lot of older axes. My guess is that bevels grew out of that shape as a stylistic development. They might lessen the weight of the axe a bit comparative to its size, but I can't see how they might effect efficiency in use (and boy, I've thought about it).

"turn of the century internet" Ha! It will be known as "the internet that used wires"
 
wow very cool info about the patent. yea ive heard that they can be good by limiting contact that the wood has to the blade and reducing friction, therefor making it easier to pull the axe out, but ive also heard that they are useless and can weaken the blade.

Heres the link to a pic of the head

http://gyazo.com/c09aa4c79cbcabc8ad645590a84a9bb5
 
Wait guys... I was in IT long before internet ;) UPS, shadowed drives, etc.... we used keypunch decks- a cup of coffee on meeting for anyone familiar with those.

I like the various style of bevels, be they convex cheeks, the center "ridge" of AA&T or the more flowing style as pictured above by Kelly.
I think it interesting to see the same maker both with and without cheeks based on contract or what was popular at the time? Plumb made fewer bevels than Kelly.

Bill
 
This forum was the intro for me to those unique bevels. Canadian, German nor Swedish axes feature them (and I have to admit to never having had the occasion to use an American axe during the past 50 years) but I can see the design/concept for a slight dip in the blade to avoid severe pinching (hydraulic lock?) when trying to split a round or chop through an ornery tree trunk. Would be great to hear from someone that actually compared the two profiles and used a tensiometer of some sort to measure the difference.
Out in my neck of the woods I suspect that old Morley Walters (Walters Axe, Hull Quebec 1913-1973) would have bought into this improvement in a moment if he thought it made a noticeable difference. But he never did. So I have to ask 'was this a marketing gimmick or did it actually serve a purpose?'.
Verbal debate is not going to cut the mustard (since everybody has their favourites) for me but I'd like to find out more about this in an objective manner.
 
db cooper said:
wow very cool info about the patent. yea ive heard that they can be good by limiting contact that the wood has to the blade and reducing friction, therefor making it easier to pull the axe out, but ive also heard that they are useless and can weaken the blade.

Heres the link to a pic of the head

http://gyazo.com/c09aa4c79cbcabc8ad645590a84a9bb5
Click to expand...

thats definitely a michigan, and not a connecticut. i dont think i have ever seen a picture of a connecticut with bevels. that would be a different looking ax!
 
as for the question of if phantom bevels help performance of an ax.

i personally believe that CAN help a whole bunch in particular situations. if you sink the bit all the way to the haft in the end grain of a round, the bevels can drastically reduce the friction that causes an ax to get plain ol' STUCK... allowing you to rock it to get it out.

some beveled designs seem as though they would help very little, and some seem as though they would help a lot more.. as ilmaterna mentions, some like the Kelly design seem to atleast, that they would not reduce sticking as much as the AA&T CO. type with the ridge and shorter raised bit section in those particular situations.

i dont believe bevels do very little to nothing when chopping, felling, bucking, etc... in pretty much all the "normal" hardwoods and softwoods most people deal with.
 
Bevels originated during a time when the steel used for the body of an axe was of lower quality than steel which came later. This steel required a thicker axe body to maintain strength. But naturally the thicker bodied axe cut less efficiently. The original bevels (not phantom) served the purpose of increasing penetration while still preserving the necessary strength through the body of the axe.

When better steels came along fat axe bodies were no longer necessary. But people had become accustomed to seeing bevels on a high quality axe. 'Phantom bevels' were a stylistic feature put there solely to please the customer's eye. An axe with a convex high centerline will perform just as well as a phantom bevel axe. So while there is no longer any structural need for phantom bevels they remain popular because they look nice and still produce an image of quality in the customer's mind. They're just marketing now and have been so since the early 20th century.
 
Square_peg said:
Bevels originated during a time when the steel used for the body of an axe was of lower quality than steel which came later. This steel required a thicker axe body to maintain strength. But naturally the thicker bodied axe cut less efficiently. The original bevels (not phantom) served the purpose of increasing penetration while still preserving the necessary strength through the body of the axe.

When better steels came along fat axe bodies were no longer necessary. But people had become accustomed to seeing bevels on a high quality axe. 'Phantom bevels' were a stylistic feature put there solely to please the customer's eye. An axe with a convex high centerline will perform just as well as a phantom bevel axe. So while there is no longer any structural need for phantom bevels they remain popular because they look nice and still produce an image of quality in the customer's mind. They're just marketing now and have been so since the early 20th century.
Click to expand...

i have never been able to bring myself to buy into this explanation, although i have heard it a number of times.

the bevels showed up too late to be contributed to poor steel, and structural strength of the head itself. the whole point was to have a soft head with a welded in hard bit. if the soft iron or steel being used was too soft and required beveling to increase strength, i have to assume they would use the obviously available better steels used in the bits...

and on another point, i dont see how thinning(beveling) the body of the ax would make the "weak" ax body stronger. bevels thinned the body and kept the bit thick enough to produce a proper profile. the material that would fill in the bevel on an unbeveled ax would be stronger than the thinner beveled version. i think most of us have read the patent information on the beveled ax shapes.

right or wrong, my head just cant find a reason to make sense from that explanation..

i still firmly believe that if there is less material in that particular part of the ax, the part that will get itself "Stuck", then there is less material to create friction with. high center lines help tremendously, but a high center line can only be so high, and will always maintain a very gradual arc as it thickens toward the center of the body. on a beveled ax, the bevel is the high center line, with the high point left intact, and the rest "scooped" out. a more drastic application of the same concept.

if one believes that a high center line helps performance, its hard to claim that the bevel does not. IMHO
 
Curious topic and interesting debate. Perhaps phantom bevels signalled to prospective buyers/users that the axe fabricator no longer used primitive and time-consuming methods to make heads. This technique would have required a substantial drop hammer, a forming die and better quality steel. Watching the videos of current H-B axe making techniques I have a hard time imagining their talented smiths being able to produce phantom bevels. A convex face is difficult enough that they don't do those either.
 
Twoinch said:
i have never been able to bring myself to buy into this explanation, although i have heard it a number of times.

the bevels showed up too late to be contributed to poor steel,
Click to expand...

I don't recall the source but I believe bevels pre-dated the Bessemer process. So the bodies may have been wrought iron which would certainly require more volume than steel to produce the required strength.



and on another point, i dont see how thinning(beveling) the body of the ax would make the "weak" ax body stronger.
Click to expand...

No, bevels don't make it stronger. Bevels made the thick body penetrate deeper and cut more efficiently. Meanwhile the thicker metal remaining down the centerline supplied the necessary strength.
 
Square_peg said:
I don't recall the source but I believe bevels pre-dated the Bessemer process. So the bodies may have been wrought iron which would certainly require more volume than steel to produce the required strength.





No, bevels don't make it stronger. Bevels made the thick body penetrate deeper and cut more efficiently. Meanwhile the thicker metal remaining down the centerline supplied the necessary strength.
Click to expand...

may be true. i find definitive info on these subjects very hard to find and source.

i believe that the bevels improved performance back then. i think the issue though, is the fact that the bevels still function the same as they did back then. they may be on thinner axes now, but the same principles must apply. although they may be much less drastic, the removal of material from that particular place on an ax head reduces potential friction when its penetrated too deep.

i dont agree with the idea that bevels help clear chips and all that stuff commonly claimed today.
 
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