Prototype Universal Fit Axe Handle From Split Stock

FortyTwoBlades

FortyTwoBlades

Baryonyx walkeri
Dealer / Materials Provider
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Mar 8, 2008
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A pet peeve of mine with off-the-shelf handles is that no matter how well made they are, you'll always need to do fine-tuning yourself to fit a head properly, but there's too much taken off in the spots that matter for that, and not enough taken off in the places it doesn't, plus there's always the question of if the tongue will fit the eye of your particular axe or not. This got me thinking, why does no one make a semi-finished blank where the hard work of thinning the main length is already done but the ends are left full? This allows the end user to fit this handle to practically any head, and shape the knob as they see fit (the flat sides even make it easier to laminate on extra material if they want it thicker.) The main length is slimmed down to only 5/8" thick but left 1-5/8" wide so that the balancing and alignment can be adjusted not just in the neck/tongue but by taking a little off the opposing faces/ends of the handle as well, or left broad as counter-torque for heads with bits so deep and heavy that they can't be set far enough back on the tongue to balance perfectly. It's made from a piece of split hickory for continuous end-to-end perfectly aligned grain, and is the single most perfect hickory board I've ever had the pleasure of handling. Not sure when a production version will be available just yet, but it's in the works, and they'll be split stock as well.

End dimensions: 1-7/16″ x 3-5/8″
Overall length: 34" (intended to result in a 32" finished length)
Midpoint dimensions: 1-5/8″ x 5/8″

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Will keep y'all posted! The current stage we're at is that our manufacturing partner for this uses a CNC lathe for the shaping, so they need either a physical sample to scan or a 3D CAD file, and so the easiest thing since I don't know 3D CAD was for them to send me a board and for me to make the physical sample for them to scan, which is what's pictured above. It's now on its way to them to scan and clean up the geometry on, and then we'll be getting a few test samples before going into production. The region just below the neck and above the lower grip point are a little thicker than the 5/8" thickness along the midpoint for comfort since those'll be your main grip points, but that thinned middle SINGS when you give it a whack, so I'm excited to hang an old Plumb National I've been meaning to get back in action on one and take it for a swing.
 
catspa said:
Any plans for a 36” version?

Parker
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Yes, but 32" finished length is my personal favorite for most work and yet they're very challenging to find, so I'm starting with that. If all goes to plan this pattern should be able to be scaled up or down pretty easily since it's done via CNC/CAD, and will probably do a 24" before adding 36". Note that the tongue is deliberately left long, so the end to end length is 34" and you can just move the shoulder up to squeeze a little extra length out of the finished length. Wouldn't QUITE get you to the same finished length as a 36" handle but almost.
 
As a warning these won't be inexpensive, but almost all of the cost is for the wood itself. Split stock hickory ain't cheap and the cost scales exponentially with the dimension of the starting blank. HOWEVER, I can tell you the board they sent me to make the template from was the single most perfect, dense and straight-grained hickory I've ever seen in my life. Absolutely perfect. The kind of wood axe nerds dream of but never find.
 
seems to be a good idea , but the model shown is for a boudle bit , right? is there something planned for single bits?
 
flexo said:
seems to be a good idea , but the model shown is for a boudle bit , right? is there something planned for single bits?
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No, it's for single bits. The knob region is simply left at full stock dimension so you have full freedom of the sort you put on it. However, the main length is set towards one side of the billet.
 
A couple of photos of one of the pre-production samples. Design is approved and preorder is up. As stated previously, the split stock does make them spendy, but the convenience of being able to customize them about as much as you could from a full billet while saving the time of having to thin out all the middle bits is immeasurable. There's enough meat in the neck that you can put in an offset with most heads to fine-tune the balance, and the flats of the knob region are nice and smoothed down for easy glue-up if you want to do a laminated palm swell, though it's thick enough not to need it. Upsizing the billet dimensions causes the price to scale just about cubically so a balance was struck with the starting billet dimensions to maximize the size we could get without ballooning the cost too much. Almost all of the cost of the handles is actually in the billet, not the shaping!

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